Willow by the Aven

Pont-Aven, a small village in the Brittany region whose culture and customs retain a strong Celtic tradition, had attracted numerous painters since the 1860s. Gauguin, who had visited this village for the first time in 1886, was also attracted by the charm of the village, and stayed there four times between 1886 and 1894.
This work was painted during Gauguin’s second stay in Pont-Aven. It exhibits the shift toward a more innovative composition and color palette while retaining the Impressionist elements. The impressive vertical tree trunk on the right side of the picture evokes the ukiyo-e prints by Utagawa Hiroshige. The tree trunk which constitutes an important component for this composition had in fact been painted out by a former owner after 1938. It was restored in recent years and returned to its original appearance. It is unknown, however, what meaning and intention this owner had in painting out the tree. In the place depicted in this painting, the river was dredged from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. On the deep right is a building with red thatched roof, and we can see that the earth and sand dredged up from the river is piled up on the path in front of the building. We can also see that the hillside on the left side is bare, and a road is being built there. Today, this area is used as a dock to moor boats.
In October of the year when he painted this work, Gauguin was invited by Vincent van Gogh to visit Arles, and eventually started living with Gogh. Their living together, however, ended in tragedy in two months, and later, Gauguin would break away from the Impressionist style of portraying the visible world to create his own unique style which depicts the spiritual existence dwelling in a primitive form of human body with simplified colors and harmonized forms.