Paul Gauguin 1848-1903
Oil on canvas 50.5 x 81.6 cm
Given by the Very Rev. E. Milner-White, Dean of York, in devoted memory of his mother, Annie Booth Milner-White, 1952
Collections record: PD.20-1952
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
This landscape was painted in 1873, when Gauguin was still working as a stockbroker, and painting in his spare time. He first sent his work to public exhibitions in 1876, and in 1879 accepted Pissarro’s and Degas’s last-minute offer to contribute to the fourth Impressionist exhibition.
In tonality and composition, it recalls landscapes by Corot, however the elongated canvas (a non-standard format) and deep perspectival recession following the lines of the fields, closely recall a landscape by Pissarro, one of a series representing the seasons which Gauguin’s godfather, Gustave Arosa, commissioned the previous year.
