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Paul Gauguin 1848-1903
Paul Gauguin - Landscape with Poplars 1875
 Landscape with Poplars |
From Indianapolis Museum of Art:
This landscape ranks among Gauguin's most ambitious early works, painted in the 1870s while he was still a bank agent.
With its dark color scheme and naturalistic treatment of the countryside, the canvas shows the influence of Barbizon painter Charles François Daubigny. It is nevertheless a work of considerable originality that reveals Gauguin's dramatic temperament. Seen in a profile against the tempestuous sky, the slender poplars seem to cower before the menacing presence of the enormous trees. The lone laundress in the center of the landscape is dwarfed by her setting, a typically Romantic reference to the power of nature. Earth and sky clash with an abruptness unknown to Daubigny.