Harbour Scene, Dieppe 1883

Paul Gauguin created this oil on canvas painting, "Harbour Scene, Dieppe," sometime during his career. Notice the dynamic interplay of light and shadow across the canvas. Gauguin masterfully uses thick, gestural brushstrokes to construct the scene, giving a tactile quality to the architecture and boats. The composition is divided horizontally, with the sky and the sea taking up most of the space. A semiotic approach reveals the harbor as a cultural signifier, a point of exchange and transition. The buildings and boats, rendered with a flattened perspective, challenge traditional notions of depth. In fact, the solidity of the buildings is destabilized through Gauguin's application of color, which renders their forms impressionistic. Gauguin's use of color is expressive rather than descriptive, particularly in the water, where greens and blues meld into one another. This method distances itself from a literal representation. Instead, it conveys an emotional response to the scene, and invites us to consider how the materiality of paint can destabilize our understanding of place.