Fruit on a Table with a Small Dog

1889 was a restless year for Gauguin. He had spent a difficult autumn with van Gogh in Arles, left before Christmas, and gone back to Brittany with almost no money and a growing wish to get out of Europe entirely. That summer, while Paris filled with crowds for the World's Fair and the brand-new Eiffel Tower, he and his friends hung their own paintings in a cafe nearby. Still lifes from these years show where his eye was going, the fruit set out in simplified shapes and flat blocks of colour, with a small dog worked into the arrangement.