Haystacks in Brittany - Paul Gauguin 1890

We look out onto a landscape with tawny-brown haystacks and trees among a patchwork of moss, lime, mint, and pine-green fields in this stylized, horizontal painting. The scene is painted with mostly flat areas of color. Closest to us, along the bottom edge of the canvas, a woman wearing a white cap and dress and a navy-blue jacket stands among three black and white spotted cows, which form a line facing our left in profile. Several round, tangerine-orange forms surround the head of the cow near the lower right corner. The strip of land on the other side of the cows is divided into alternating rows of spring green and coral pink to our left, and forest green dotted with white to our right. The landscape stretches to the horizon, which comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. Rectangular parcels of land are dotted with four rust-brown haystacks beyond the cows, and trees cluster around several brown roofs in the distance to our right. A band of cream-white clouds lines the horizon beneath the topaz-blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint against the white of the cow in the lower right corner: “P. Gauguin 90.”