Landscape in Le Pouldu

Painted in 1894 at Le Pouldu on the Brittany coast, this landscape belongs to Gauguin's return visit to France after his first Tahitian stay (1891–1893). He was troubled by his reception in Paris, where his Tahitian work was largely misunderstood, and he returned to Brittany seeking familiar inspiration. Le Pouldu, a remote fishing village on the Atlantic coast, had been a productive base for Gauguin in 1889–90, and this return visit reflects his continued affection for Breton landscape. Now at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

The landscape is treated with flatter, more Synthetist simplification than his early Impressionist work — the forms of fields and coastline are reduced to bold colour areas bounded by firm contours. Gauguin's palette draws on the rich greens of the Breton coast and the grey-blues of the Atlantic sky. The composition has a quiet, melancholic authority characteristic of his Breton landscapes.