Landscape on Martinique

Slavery was abolished in the French colonies in 1848, and 40 years on the roads of Martinique were still walked by porteuses, women who carried goods on their heads over long distances from the plantations because there was little other work to be had. One of them steps in from the left of this picture, almost as if entering a stage, and the museum points out that the orange-red path winding away behind her traces the sort of journey she was making. Laval had sailed to the island in 1887 with his friend Paul Gauguin, who gave up and went back to Paris that November. Laval stayed roughly six months longer and painted on alone, rejoining Gauguin in Brittany in July 1888. The Van Gogh Museum dates this canvas to those last island months, 1887 to 1888.