Gauguin (13) Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Description of Paul Gauguin’s painting Landscape with Peacocks

Bright, contrast-rich colors in a story of the measured life of a people far from civilization and the enigmatic inscription in the bottom corner of the painting, "Motamoe." This is how the painting Landscape with Peacocks looks like, created by Gauguin in 1892 on the Pacific island of Tahiti at the height of his artistic gift.

Like other works of the time, "Landscape" has an unusual coloring, made by the method of imposing many layers of oil paint. The composition is built by piling up several plans. Directly in front of the audience are two figures of peacocks, strolling among flowers and large stones. Then - a young man in the process of labor with a tool of tree cutting behind his back. Still higher is a hut and two female figures.

The upper half of the picture is occupied by landscapes of mountain ascents, peaks and cliffs. A surprisingly tall, curved coconut palm crosses the hilly background and extends with its top to the very sky.

The peacocks, judging from the title of the painting, are its main characters looking rather inconspicuous: a small reddish female, a larger dark blue male with folded plumage. But one gets the impression that the lushness and beauty of the peacock’s open tail is expressed in the variegated colors of the entire painting.

The second designated title of the work translates as "death."

Gauguin explained such a paradoxical designation for a painting blooming with vivid colors by the fact that the subjects of island life he observed were killing the civilized man in him.

"Landscape with Peacocks" conveys to us the artist’s impressions of the exoticism he saw during his walk, with the help of pictorial means immerses him in a state of colorful dream, fantasy, and reverie. Paul Gauguin has executed a marvelous, kaleidoscopic, eclectic picture of a secluded corner of the earth, where man coexists harmoniously with the natural world.