In 1888, Paul Gauguin created the “Breton landscape with a swineherd.” The canvas belongs to the Assembly of Norton Simon in Los Angeles.
The Breton landscape with a swineherd is distinguished by an abundance of color combinations. The image is replete with a variety of colors. Soft, smooth color transitions are different in saturation and “luminosity”. The painting shows a clear sunny day, open to warmth and harmony.
The paints that the artist chose to create this pictorial canvas, echoes each other, forming a pleasant harmony. The landscape turned out to be complex, with a heap of images and color spots. The image came out decorative and colorful, like a single visual image, quaint and uneasy.
The landscape looks like a whimsical mosaic. Colorful strokes are applied vertically, imitating a woven surface or skilful, fine workmanship. The picture also resembles an image made by a pastel. This “pastel” painting represents a vibrant existence, easy breathing of life, when the surrounding reality is beautiful in itself, without requiring any pretentious embellishments. The idea of life, its bright open colors, expressive forms and lines serves as a real source of inspiration for the artist.
The landscape is distinguished by the color saturation and is enriched in terms of shades. The artist does not resort to rigid black contours, dividing a silhouette and as much as possible delimiting images. On the contrary, his painting is more like an all-embracing, unobtrusive, imperceptible transition of one form and color to another. There is no variegation or excessive brittle lines, typical of the example, for painting by Van Gogh. There is nothing to impede perception or disturb sensual admiration for work.
The picture plane is extremely full. The space of the sky, the so-called space of freedom, airiness is somewhat smaller in the total volume of the canvas. The sky is written in clear blue color, the color tone of which complicates the shades of yellow, recalling a slight golden glow. In the sky, several clouds are depicted, from which this warm golden light emanates. Either way, gold particles, particles of sunlight and energy are present in every component of the picture, transforming and filling the landscape with its bright and inexhaustible power.
The landscape is charged and inspired by the idea of color and bright sun. The image has a sonority and a vital force, a self-affirmation of the ordinary, but eternal and full of eternal secrets and questions of life, which, if it reveals its secrets, it is only to the true creators whose genius gift is given to them from above. The landscape is great and attractive as much as the genius of Paul Gauguin is great and attractive.
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