Cow in Meadow, Rouen

Paul Gauguin painted this landscape of a cow and trees on a sunlit hillside while living in Rouen during a period of financial hardship. Two years before 'Cow in Meadow', 1884 was painted, he had lost his job as a stockbroker in the 1882 French stock market crash, prompting him to decide to paint full time. Facing mounting financial pressure, Gauguin devoted all his energies to painting landscapes, the most lucrative art genre at that time. 'Cow in Meadow, Rouen' is one of 30 or so paintings that he produced while in Rouen between January and November 1884. The almost clichéd Normand motifs of apple tree, contented cow, and church rooftop were perhaps designed to appeal to the widespread nostalgia for the ‘old France’ which was widely perceived to be disappearing with the advent of industrialisation.

The slanted brushstrokes reveal the influence of Paul Cezanne and the older Impressionist Camille Pissarro, who was living nearby at Éragny. The painting’s chromatic mosaic of clouds, sky and vegetation anticipates Gauguin’s later ‘cloissonist’ style of outlined patches of colour.

− 2024

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