
In the Vanilla Grove, Man and Horse
1891 · Guggenheim, New York City
A man and a white horse in a Tahitian grove, painted on Gauguin's first stay, flat and warm and looking for a paradise.
★ 5.2

A man and a white horse in a Tahitian grove, painted on Gauguin's first stay, flat and warm and looking for a paradise.

Green and rose slopes flattened into bold shapes, with rather less interest in what the island actually looked like than in the color.

A girl lies face down and frightened while a hooded figure sits behind her. Gauguin said his Tahitian companion was afraid of the dark.

Three Breton women in white caps kneel at a wooden cross in an autumn field, everything flattened into blocks of color like stained glass.

Gauguin thought he was dying and meant this to be his last work, reading right to left from a sleeping infant to an old woman.