The White Horse
Artist: Paul Gauguin
Year: 1898
Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was a French painter with a post-Impressionist style influenced by Picasso, Matisse, and more. His work often contained symbolism like primitive art. He was born in 1848 and was ahead of his time. His fame didn't come until after his death, which occurred in 1903.
1954 Commentary by John Rewald:
THIS PAINTING ILLUSTRATES PARTICULARLY WELL the peculiar fashion in which Gauguin combined the fiat pattern and asymmetrical composition of Japanese prints with an execution derived from the Impressionists and a palette rich in exotic colors and’ contrasts. He painted this work with vivid brush strokes (occasionally using a palette knife), applied on a coarse canvas, the rough texture of which adds to its mysterious savagery.
The diagonal branches of the tree—a device frequently used by the Japanese—provide the arabesque that pulls together the various large planes of more or less uniform colors: the dark blue expanse of water with its intense orange accents, and the large green spots of ground. Against these fiat areas which give the landscape an abstract character, appear the horses and their riders treated in a three-dimensional way, with shadows carefully modeling their forms. The lone white horse in the foreground is actually of a greenish-gray tone, owing to the reflections of the leaves which protect it from the sun. A flash of purer white is dramatically provided by the radiance of the flower in the lower right corner. Yet contrasts of colors, of lines, and of forms are well integrated in a composition that leads the eye from that single white note to the curved lines of the horse and across the meandering branches into an undefined distance.
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