"Agony in the Garden", painted by Paul Gauguin in 1889 is 28 ½ x 36 inches and painted with oil on canvas. The painting hung in the Norton Art Gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1991. My research indicates that after 1888 "Gauguin's whole work is a protest against the soul-destroying materialism of bourgeois civilization." No analysis of this particular painting was found.
The painting consists of a greenish blue landscape with five full trees in the distant background and one naked tree trunk in the center of the painting. In the far left corner is a lone figure of a man leaning on what appears to be a rock. He is clothed in brownish green with a faint orange overlay and his hair and beard are a vivid orange.
The painting is an Abstraction - a combination of external stimuli and individual interpretation. The work comes from the real world but artist is open to interpretation.
Gauguin's use of color in "Agony of the Garden" is typical of his early attempts at primitive art. Christ's orange hair and beard are an example of Gauguin's use of pure color separated by black outline in a select area of the painting. He places the Christ figure with vibrant orange hair off to the side, drawing the viewer’s eye to the figure and away from the dark greens and blues of the background. The Christ figure is placed in the painting leaning slightly to the left, as are the realistic, green trees in the far background, suggesting the naturalness of Christ's placement in the world.
In contrast are the dark figures partially hidden off to the right and the very dark, bare tree trunk in the center of the painting. These items stand straight up and down, emphasizing the sense of foreboding and sadness. In the Christ figures hand is what appears to be a parchment of some kind, painted in a lighter shade of blue than the rest of the painting. The hand holding the parchment is drooping, and has a loose hold on the paper, suggesting that it may fall from his hand at any moment. This could possibly be a sign of the hopelessness that Christ felt. The figure's entire body is stooped and appears weary and resigned to the sinister fate sneaking up behind it.
The dark and twisted tree in the center of the painting seems to emerge directly from the back of the Christ figure, insinuating that it is a part of Him, a burden that He must bear, perhaps symbolizing the crucifix. The use of the dark tree and two figures is incredibly similar to Gauguin's famous Tahitian painting "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?" In that painting Gauguin also used a lone, dark tree with two sinister figures dressed in dark hues.
It has been suggested that the tree in the Tahitian painting symbolizes the tree of knowledge. Perhaps this is true for both paintings. The anguish caused by knowledge taken from the tree, now bare, is depicted in the overall melancholy of the artwork.
Gauguin's brush strokes are applied at contrasting angles. The figure of Christ is painted in angles that are straight, as is the lone tree behind Him. Most other brush strokes are applied at an angle, slanting right, towards the figure. The paint is applied flat, as it is in almost all of Gauguin's work.
Paul Gauguin believed that primitive art should start from the spirit and make use of nature instead of the other way around. He used simple colors to intensify the images and he did not pay much heed to linear or aerial perspective. "Agony in the Garden" is an example of one of his earlier attempts at primitivism, which he learned from Emile Bernard. Gauguin's use of the dominant colors of nature and his disregard for perspective are evident in this painting but not as prevalent as in some of his later works.
As the years passed Gauguin began using more color and his paintings became less aggressive and melancholy. "Agony in the Garden" is a deeply moving painting suggesting not only Christ's hopelessness but also Gauguin's disappointment with conventional society.
