Bold interlocking shapes and contrasting colours create a flattened sense of space and lend an abstract quality to Gauguin’s 1888 painting Seascape with cow. A black and white cow appears to extend off the bottom edge of the canvas, while the central path of a cascading creek leads us up towards the red sail of a Breton fishing boat, emerging from behind a cliff. Strategically placed flecks of red paint serve to intensify to the vibrant green creek water as it meets the surging surf and crashes against the rocks. Compared to the towering orange haystacks in the foreground, the small scale of the fishing boat emphasises the artist’s high vantage point.
In February 1888, Gauguin returned to Brittany and spent most of the year based in the small fishing village of Pont-Aven, before departing in autumn on his ill-fated trip south to join van Gogh in Arles. From Pont-Aven Gauguin visited the sea-cliffs overlooking Porsac’h creek, west of Le Pouldu. While the cliff-top location served as inspiration for this painting, Gauguin chose to steer away from naturalistic representation. Instead he expressed his approach to abstraction in a letter to his painter-friend Emile Schuffenecker:
In the absence of religious painting, what beautiful thoughts can be evoked with form and colour. How prosaic they are, those naturalist painters, with their trompe-l’oeil rendering of nature. We alone sail on our phantom vessels, with all our fanciful imperfection.
Gauguin’s orchestration of harmony in colour and form is evident in this dreamlike, yet carefully constructed composition, making Seascape with cow an exceptionally radical painting for the late nineteenth century. It was one of 47 paintings later offered by Gauguin for sale at Drouot’s auction house, to finance his first voyage to Tahiti.
