Landscape at the Bois d’Amour at Pont-Aven

Formally called Landscape at the Bois d’Amour at Pont-Aven (1888), it was known to the Nabis as The Talisman, and it is considered the first Nabi painting. Although by the summer of 1889 Sérusier’s enthusiasm for Gauguin’s work had begun to subside, he joined Gauguin at Pont-Aven…

…painted the first Nabi work, Landscape at the Bois d’Amour at Pont-Aven (1888; also called The Talisman), a small, near-abstract landscape composed of patches of simplified, nonnaturalistic colour.

Landscape at the Bois d’Amour at Pont-Aven, or The Talisman (1888), painted by Paul Sérusier under the direct guidance of Gauguin, became the talisman of the young disciples. Gauguin had instructed Sérusier not only to paint the landscape from memory but to be certain to…

…direction a little sketch titled Bois d’amour that appeared more independent of appearances and bolder in its synthesis of pattern than anything that had been seen before; it became known in Paris as “The Talisman.” The liberation of Synthetism, as the new style was called, indeed worked like a charm,…