House among Trees, Pont-Aven

In the summer of 1888 the Breton village of Pont-Aven was full of painters, and the wood just outside it was where most of them went to work. That is what you are looking at, the Bois d'Amour, a stand of trees along the river. Bernard was 20 that summer and painting a few steps from Paul Gauguin, whose company he had come back to Brittany for. His handling here is unusual for oil. He thinned the paint so far that the canvas shows through as if under a watercolour, saving thicker, more solid colour for the small pines and the leaves. The picture is 92 centimetres across, a wide surface to leave that transparent.