The Mango Trees, Martinique

The Mango Trees, Martinique

This work is on display in the exhibition Gauguin & Laval in Martinique, from 5 October 2018 to 13 January 2019 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (and we highly encourage you to visit it:)

Discontent with what they considered to be the decadent Parisian way of life, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Charles Laval (1861-1894) travelled to the French island of Martinique. In the short time that they stayed on the ‘exotic’ Caribbean island, they created a series of exquisite artworks. The trip had a huge impact on their further artistic development.

Gauguin & Laval in Martinique features a wide selection of the warm, colourful paintings created by Gauguin and Laval on the island, together with their preparatory studies and large, elaborate pastels. This is the first time that so many works from their Martinican period are being displayed together.

Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo, who traded art together, purchased The Mango Trees, Martinique for their own collection very soon after Gauguin returned from Martinique. This collection today forms the heart of the Van Gogh Museum’s permanent collection of works by Van Gogh’s contemporaries.

Vincent van Gogh called the painting ‘high poetry’. Gauguin was also deeply satisfied with this work, and considered it to be his best painting from his time in Martinique.

If you are not able to visit the exhibition you can buy the catalogue here.
作者简介：
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as assisting in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. Many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector Sergei Shchukin and other important collections. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with color led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.