Blue Trees, 1888, Ordrupgaard Collection, Denmark.
I have had this on my desktop for a while now and it seems to always pull my eyes over to it. I don't really have much to say about it except that I'm just in awe of his sense of colour.
Remarkably, one might think upon seeing it, that it was from Martinique or Tahiti, but curiously its's from the small time when lived with Vincent in Arles in 1888.
Unlike Van Gogh who needed a 'motif' in front of him to kick off his vibrant imagination, Gauguin infamously worked almost entirely from his imagination.
These different ways of painting reveal something about their connection but also their strong differences. They were almost like two opposing sides of an AA battery, one so positive while the other so negative.
Gauguin 'invented' this landscape while painting next Van Gogh in Arles. The small figures near the foreground are Breton. Was it an homage to a place that got him into this 'Painting Racket' in the first place? Or souvenir painted out due to homesickness? Either way, like the Instagram Influencers of today, both painters were motivators for each other's work during this period together.
Even their colours during this period seemed to accentuate each of their palettes in a similar fashion. Their Chrome Yellows and deep Ultramarines appears to clash like ancient warriors upon their canvas's. And as we know from their correspondence afterward, their particular personalities also crashed into one another almost daily.
But, in this picture of the 'Blue Trees' above, I personally marvel at the pictorial intelligence in it, of its colour and its drawing and invention. It has mysterious and abstract hold over me as I wander about around its surface. It's an endless lesson for painters of any moment, anytime.
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