Pont-Aven Landscape or The Red Tree

This canvas was painted in 1888, at a time marked by the new aesthetic developed in Pont-Aven. The main characteristics of the emerging style can be seen here:flat perspective, bright colours, a high horizon line, geometric shapes and large, single-colour forms. The painting depicts an open field composed of wide horizontal bands in a variety of greens and yellows. Among the trees bordering the field, one, with a simplified round crown, majestically dominates the composition. The horizontal structure of the work is broken here and there by the trees’ vertical trunks. This painting, once belonging to Maurice Denis, is also known as L’Arbre roux. This second title was provided by the Denis family and has no historical reference.