Paul Gauguin's Post-Impressionist Art

Paul Gauguin was a prominent figure for the French avant-garde. His career was teeming with work that was much different to the previous Impressionists. His Post-Impressionist art showed new explorations of color. These discoveries had vast reviews from art critics– mainly after his passing in May of 1903. Gauguin studied and practiced numerous techniques during his investigations. These studies consisted of Delacroix’s use and application of color, chromo-therapy, Cloisonnism, Seurat’s stippling techniques, and Goethe’s experiments with color, light and the human eye. After leaving his wife and children and pursuing a career in art, Gauguin travelled throughout France and later into Tahiti and Martinique. During these travels, Gauguin’s surroundings changed and with that came new colors and new attempts at how he could apply them to his work. An example of these changes occurred when Gauguin first settled into the island of Martinique. Back in France, the imagination of many people were construed. They believed that the land was bare– nobody lived on the island. The landscapes were envisioned having bright impressive trees and sizeable fruits. It was as if the landscape was merely a dream. After staying in Martinique for four months, Tamar Garb described the influence the landscape had on Gauguin. He wrote, “Gauguin’s evocation of this place retains the distilled, de-familiarized intensity of pure landscape, providing the textured and heightened color field for half-glimpsed figures and statuesque groups who seem embedded, almost fused, into the lush vegetation that embraces them”. Gauguin had landed on what some artists would consider a gold mine. His experiences brought forth new understandings of landscapes and a way of life that was decorated in color. However, these new discoveries would not heighten his color use until the late 1880’s. Instead during the beginning stages of his career, Gauguin started to understand and test how Impressionists depicted colored light. Colors that he used were not yet at a bright and fully pure stage. Instead, Gauguin had a very limited vocabulary and knowledge of colors. John Gage stated that when Gauguin would analyze paintings and sketches, he would annotate them simply. Colors were plain– “red, yellow, blue, green”. Eventually, Gauguin became extremely attracted to one particular color diagram. This diagram was originally created by J.C. Ziegler, a pupil of Ingres. The diagram was star shaped and consisted of primary colors and secondary colors. Between these colors, were the colors that Gauguin would later utilize in many of his paintings. Colors such as turquoise, garnet, and sulfur became a part of his color palette. Similar to many French people, Gauguin was …show more content…
These colored light experiments assisted him on mastering a type of harmonic tonality with his paintings as well as a brush stroke that would be used in his later works. A brush stroke that had similar angularity and was consistent throughout the overall composition. An example of these colored light and brush stroke studies is Gauguin’s 1880 painting titled, Flowers and Carpet (Pansies) 1¬¬. In this painting, the background is nearly impossible to read. The background appears to be flat with different tones of red, blue and purple. The flatness of the background creates the main object, the flowers, to have mo¬re depth. The colors of the flowers are harmonious with the overall composition. Dark purples and greens are used to define the characteristics of the present flowers. These colors are similar to Delacroix’s application of …show more content…
The base of the image has consistent strokes upwards with browns, oranges, and yellows. These colors resemble the fringes on the end of the carpet. The colors are muted compared to his later paintings. These browns, oranges, and yellows were likely mixed to create different pigments on the fringes. Towards the center of the painting, the brush strokes seem to translate horizontally. The horizontality of these strokes make the background feel less three dimensional. However, the white and blue jar has vertical strokes which helps alleviate it from the rest of the background. These techniques begin to reflect the techniques used by the Nabis. The Nabis, a Post-Impressionist avant-garde group in France, were interested in non hyper realistic paintings. Similar to the Flower and Carpet painting, the forms are abstracted and not exact. Color derives the f¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬orms similarly to Delacroix’s