Landscape at Le Pouldu

Paul Gauguin

National Gallery of Art

We look across rolling, bright green pastures and honey-brown farmland to a cluster of buildings nestled beyond a copse of trees, along the horizon in this horizontal, stylized landscape painting. The scene is painted with mostly flat areas of color. Closest to us, low, vibrant green pastures are bisected by a narrow, gingerbread-brown path. The path meanders from the lower left corner of the composition to a metal gate, near the right edge of the painting. A short distance from us to our left, a man wearing navy-blue pants, shirt, and hat walks along the top of a hill, hands in pockets. Two black and white cows and one brown and white cow graze nearby. In the distance, the copse of trees is painted with pockets of pumpkin orange, lavender purple, sky blue, and spring and muted sage green. Beyond the trees, a white, square, two-story house with a spruce-blue roof sits within the grouping of buildings. Another white building with a blue roof stands a bit to our right. Wisps of white clouds dot a vivid blue sky, which is tinted with pale pink and lilac purple near the horizon. The artist signed and dated the work in harvest yellow against a mound of dark brown rocks in the lower right corner: “P. Gauguin 90.”