Paul Gauguin - Blue trees 1888
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Blue trees 1888
92x73cm oil/canvas
Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen:
The picture has a very distinctive composition and colouring for its time. Gauguin has divided the canvas into undulating surfaces indicated by a dark, searching contour line. The colours are complementary like orange and purple, and their juxtaposition has an intense effect. The perspective is unorthodox: the fields behind the trees almost cover the horizon and tilt like a flat surface out towards the observer. In particular the tall ornamental blue trees give the picture an alien feel that is typical of Gauguin’s work as a whole.
The strong symbolic charging of the landscape also colours the experience of the two almost hidden figures in the right-hand side of the picture. One senses a drama, but the story is played down and thus all the more suggestive.