Landscape with Dog

In the first months of 1903 Gauguin was living in Atuona, the main village on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, and in open conflict with the local authorities. He had filled letters and complaints with attacks on the island's gendarme, and on 27 March the court fined him 500 francs and sentenced him to three months in prison for libel. He died on 8 May, before serving it. The Israel Museum counts this among only six works he finished in the last half year of his life. The view looks across the valley toward the mountains, and the building in the middle ground is the store of Ben Varney, an American trader whose shop stood opposite Gauguin's own house. In the foreground a black dog faces a hen with its chest puffed out, a standoff the museum reads as an echo of those quarrels.