About this work
places the viewer at the edge of a sun-drenched Caribbean pastoral scene, rendered in Gauguin's characteristic bold, flattened line. Two Creole women warmly embrace in the company of both a European-style tree and a leafy palm; in the foreground, a goat feeds milk to its black kid, a direct evocation of rural, elemental life. The composition, printed in stark black against the suite's now-iconic chrome yellow wove paper , crackles with graphic tension — the dense tropical vegetation reduced to interlocking silhouettes, the figures and animals arranged with the rhythmic authority of a frieze. Flattened compositions, strong contours, and vivid color contrasts define the visual logic here, making the image feel simultaneously archaic and modern.
*Pastoral in Martinique* is a zincograph, created in 1889.
On the fairgrounds of the Paris World's Fair of 1889, at Volpini's Café des Arts, Gauguin exhibited a brand new suite of ten zincographs printed on bright yellow paper — known as the "Volpini Suite" — which served as a pictorial souvenir of his recent travels in Brittany, Martinique, and Arles.
Young avant-garde artists were unable to show their work at the Expo's official art show, so Gauguin and his friends organized this alternative exhibition at Volpini's café.
The themes are loosely based on paintings Gauguin had produced in the previous years, and the prints were a means of publicizing his painted work. The imagery itself reaches back to Gauguin's stay of nearly four months, from June to October 1887, in Martinique , where he broke away from the Impressionists both geographically and stylistically, the strong light and brilliant color of the island bringing out his deep feeling for the decorative.
Despite all odds, the Volpini exhibition was the first public presentation of artwork from the Synthetist movement.
As wall art, this print rewards a spare, considered setting — a white wall in a room with natural light, where its stark black draftsmanship can breathe against a neutral ground. The work speaks to collectors drawn to the threshold moments in art history: this is Gauguin at the precise instant his vision crystallized, before Tahiti, before legend. Theo van Gogh, who promoted Gauguin as an art dealer, knew there was demand for prints of his paintings — but precise reproductions were inappropriate for an experimental and innovative artist like Gauguin,
