In order to easier distinguish Le Pouldu’s influence on Gauguin’s art it would be wise to look at the seascapes he had painted before ever laying eyes on Le Pouldu. Gauguin painted few seascapes in his early years (Wildenstein), but in the summer of 1885 Gauguin stayed in the seaside town of Dieppe, where he painted several seascapes. The seascapes at Dieppe are in many ways different from the ones at Le Pouldu. Nature is protrayed in a rather different way. The scenes appear to be much more pleasant and accessable by the viewer. The use of line is also rather different.
Beach, Dieppe depicts a calm beach with people swimming and boats in the water. The brushstrokes throughout the whole painting are very regular; the contours of the waves are long, parallel semicircles, while the sky and sand are painted with crosshatched lines that are constant over the whole canvas. These give the painting a sense of calmness and order, especially compared to paintings that will follow. Rather than creating the tension of perspective that can be seen in some of his Le Pouldu paintings (Rocks, Sea and Rocky Coast), the sky, sea and sand are not painted with such strongly visible brushstrokes, and thus there are no receding lines from the horizon that create this effect.
Cliff Near Dieppe, another painting from this period, also features the same use of line as Beach, Dieppe. Although a cliff is inherently less calm than a beach scene, the whole painting is covered with laminar
brushstrokes and smooth lines. The cliff is not painted as being jagged and violent, but rather it consists of parallel, continuous strokes going down its entire height, it resembles a waterfall more than a cliff, especially when compared to the cliff in Rocky Coast. The sea and sky are painted with long, wavy strokes, while the greenery is painted with relatively short, thick parallel lines that suggest a calm breeze, thus this painting also does not give off an sense of wildness or savagery at all, but rather a feeling of calmness.
The paintings in Dieppe are painted in a more peaceful and reserved manner. One explanation for this is simply that the nature of the coastline was vastly different to the coast at Le Pouldu, and Gauguin did not feel the need to paint it in the same way he painted the Pouldu coast. Another possible explanation is that Gauguin had not yet released his violent nature at that time to the extent that he had in Pouldu. Whichever the case, these seascapes reflect the drastic change that occured in Gauguin’s work the following year.
Works Cited:
Wildenstein, Daniel. Gauguin, A Savage in the Making: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (1873-1888). Milan, Skira Editore. 2002