Description
The Black Pigs – the museum says these figures come back
The sky is a strong blue, and from the left the pale trunk of a palm leans into it and opens its leaves. In the middle stands an open shelter with a large thatched roof; beneath it a woman in a white dress and another figure in the shade. At the lower right a woman sits in a white top and a red-orange wrap, her chin resting on her hand, with a figure in yellow behind her. On the grass in front stand two small black pigs. At the left a brown horse grazes with its head down. To the right of centre a tall reddish carved post rises towards the sky. At the lower right a signature with a year is painted in. The work is held by the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest under inventory number 355.B; it was painted in 1891.
The museum says these figures are known from other canvases
The museum record claims something about this work that is worth checking and can be checked: the figures on this canvas are known from other paintings by the artist and are arranged here into a new and picturesque composition. The painting is therefore not the record of an afternoon but the arrangement of figures already used. Anyone who knows his other Tahitian scenes meets them again here.
Two of them are on this shelf as well
You can check that with us. The horse with its head down, grazing at the edge, appears in almost the same pose on another Tahitian canvas from these years. The woman with her chin on her hand, seated at the lower right, repeats a pose the same painter uses elsewhere too. Both works are linked at the foot of this page, so you can compare them yourself.
What is actually happening in the scene
Almost nothing. The pigs root in the grass, the horse grazes, one woman stands, two are seated. Nobody looks towards us except the seated woman at the front, and even she looks past us. The scene is therefore an inventory of a place rather than a story: a list of what is there, without an event to hold it together.
The tall carved post
To the right of centre stands a narrow reddish post with carved shapes, reaching higher than the roof. What exactly it represents cannot be settled from the painting, and so we give it no name: describing what can be seen and settling what it is are not the same thing. What can be seen is that it is wooden and made by hand.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every painting here is made by hand in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the sky is the hardest part: the blue is strong and even, but it has to stay alive or the palms in front of it lose their depth. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval. Nothing on these pages is printed; the colour is mixed and laid on again for each canvas.
- Subject: a Tahitian yard with a thatched shelter, two black pigs and seated figures.
- Technique: oil on canvas, a strong sky blue above the green.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 40 x 50 cm to 160 x 200 cm; 72 x 90 cm and 87 x 110 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: the museum record says the figures on this canvas appear in other works as well.
Compare for yourself: Landscape with a Horse on the Road, Te Faaturuma (The Brooding Woman) and Two Tahitian Women. The museum record gives the measurement as height by width: 92.5 x 72.2 cm.
