The Large Tree

Painted in the artist’s first Tahitian year, this landscape is dominated by the thick trunk of a fruit tree whose dense canopy fills the upper half of the canvas. Gauguin arrived on the island in June 1891 determined to escape the civilization of Europe, and the painting’s flat, decorative colour and the near-abstract rhythm of trunk and leaves show him at work on the new style he would develop in the South Seas. It belongs to the opening sequence of paintings from his first Tahitian journey, among the most celebrated of his whole career.