Description
Landscape in Le Pouldu – a shut gate across the whole foreground
The lower third of the canvas is crossed by a wooden gate of five bars with a diagonal brace. It is shut. To its right rises a stone wall with dense brown-green scrub growing over it. Close beside the gate stands a man in a blue waistcoat, white shirt and brown trousers, wearing a dark hat; he is turned to one side and carries something pale at his hip. A black dog stands next to him. Beyond the gate a broad yellow-green meadow rises, with a pale cow lying on it, and on the right stand a house with an orange roof and a white fence. On the left slender poplars reach into the sky, and at centre right a large pale blue-green rounded crown. The sky is blue with white clouds. The work is held by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art under the inventory number F77-32.
The viewer stands outside
The gate is not an incidental detail but the first thing the picture puts in front of us. Because it is shut and runs across almost the whole width, the viewer is placed on the outer side. Everything bright and open in the picture – the meadow, the trees, the sky – lies beyond it. This simple barrier turns the landscape into something we see but do not step into.
The man and the dog on our side
The man and the dog also stand in front of the gate, that is, with us. The man does not look towards the meadow but to one side, and the dog faces another direction. Neither of them opens the gate, and neither gives any sign of meaning to. The scene is therefore neither an arrival nor a departure but a halt.
How the museum gives the measurement and the signature
The museum record gives the measurement first in inches and then, in brackets, in centimetres: 92.08 x 69.85 cm, as height by width. It places the signature at the lower left, together with the year. Both agree with the canvas: the signature in the lower left corner really is visible.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the bars of the gate are the hardest part: they must be straight and evenly spaced, or they lose their barring force and become mere pattern. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: a shut wooden gate in the foreground, a meadow with poplars beyond it, a man and a black dog in front.
- Technique: oil on canvas, strong greens and yellows and a blue sky.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 30 x 40 cm to 150 x 200 cm; 60 x 80 cm and 90 x 120 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: nobody in the picture touches the gate.
If the same period interests you, see also Winter Landscape (Vinterlandskap), Breton Peasant Women and The Green Christ.
