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Lot Essay
Exuding the mysticism that would come to dominate his later work, Les roches noires ('The Black Rocks') is a potent seascape filled with energy and activity. Executed in 1889, it reflects the various influences that were combining in Gauguin's work during this formative period. Towards the end of 1886, Gauguin had met, and immediately become friends with, Vincent van Gogh. The latter artist had an immense impact on Gauguin's work, which was still strongly influenced by his former mentor, Pissarro. Van Gogh essentially emancipated Gauguin's art, giving him the confidence to treat form and colour in a new, subjective manner as well as increasing his interest in Japanese prints. These strands are both clearly evident in Les roches noires, where the swirls of the waves are reminiscent of van Gogh's rich impasto paintings and also of the Japanese artist Hokusai, whose prints came to have such an influence on Western art and whose rendering of the sea, especially in the now iconic Kanagawa oki nami ura, had such verve and energy.
Gauguin needed more than his friend's example to develop his painting. The true liberating moment appears to have been his trip, via several exotic locations, to Martinique and back in 1887. There, his early landscapes managed to remain in Pissarro's shadow, somehow less appropriate to the tropical scenery than to Brittany. It was perhaps this incongruity between his means of representation and the conservative images of jungle that encouraged Gauguin to escape the bounds of his already pioneering Impressionism. The return to France combined with van Gogh's continued influence came to be the basis of Gauguin's most modern images, for instance the scandalous Le Christ jaune ('Yellow Christ'). Gauguin had at last found a true means of representing not only his scenes, but also his emotions and his mind.
Gauguin's experiences abroad had reawakened his openness to completely foreign influences. His experiences both of childhood and as a young man in foreign climes had left a deep mark on the artist, and so this reawakening found fertile ground. The rock in the foreground of Les roches noires has a woman's face in it. There is something pagan in this blend of rock and person - it speaks of animism and, despite being a picture of cliffs in Brittany, seems to pre-empt the subjects and spirit of his later Tahitian works.
Gauguin needed more than his friend's example to develop his painting. The true liberating moment appears to have been his trip, via several exotic locations, to Martinique and back in 1887. There, his early landscapes managed to remain in Pissarro's shadow, somehow less appropriate to the tropical scenery than to Brittany. It was perhaps this incongruity between his means of representation and the conservative images of jungle that encouraged Gauguin to escape the bounds of his already pioneering Impressionism. The return to France combined with van Gogh's continued influence came to be the basis of Gauguin's most modern images, for instance the scandalous Le Christ jaune ('Yellow Christ'). Gauguin had at last found a true means of representing not only his scenes, but also his emotions and his mind.
Gauguin's experiences abroad had reawakened his openness to completely foreign influences. His experiences both of childhood and as a young man in foreign climes had left a deep mark on the artist, and so this reawakening found fertile ground. The rock in the foreground of Les roches noires has a woman's face in it. There is something pagan in this blend of rock and person - it speaks of animism and, despite being a picture of cliffs in Brittany, seems to pre-empt the subjects and spirit of his later Tahitian works.