Martinique Landscape
Paul Gauguin, 1887
For now, just to look at
The photograph we have of this work is not sharp enough to print at the quality we want, so we are not selling it for now. We are looking for a better one.
About the work
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin
- Date
- 1887
- Collection
- National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
- Reference
- XDV-3464
What the museum label doesn't tell you
That red dirt path winding through ferns and flowering shrubs leads nowhere real. Gauguin painted the bay of Saint-Pierre as seen from Morne de Orange, but grafted onto it vegetation from Le Carbet, where he lived with fellow painter Laval, erasing every trace of the town: no roofs, no harbor, no people. Only a rooster hides among the bushes on the right, read by some as a nod to French colonial presence. Years later Mont Pelée actually destroyed Saint-Pierre. Gauguin's invented paradise ended up outliving the real place it distorted. Was he painting escape, or already sensing it wouldn't last?
