On Vincent’s recommendation, Theo went to visit Gauguin at his studio in Paris in December 1887. He had brought back some new paintings from Martinique.

The brothers were impressed. They thought Gauguin’s work was very modern, with its flat decorative planes, strange colours and high horizons.

As an art dealer, Theo must have recognised immediately how audacious Gauguin’s Martinique pictures were. They were different in many ways from the art common at the time.

In early 1888 Theo showed paintings and ceramics by Gauguin at Boussot on Boulevard Montmartre, where he was the manager.

Paul Gauguin and Charles Laval had known each other since summer 1886, when they were staying in the village of Pont-Aven in Brittany, France. They went there in search of an authentic, unspoilt world.

Just after they returned to Paris the two friends started thinking about a new place to work, somewhere idyllic, far from modern city life. In April 1887 they left for Panama from where they would travel to the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Martinique was a French colony in 1887. The French had introduced sugar cane plantations to the island, where they had enslaved Africans working for them.

Slavery officially came to an end in Martinique in 1848, but in practice many were forced to continue working for low wages as plantation labourers and porteuses (carriers).

Besides painting the natural environment of Martinique Gauguin and Laval also focused on the island’s black inhabitants, attracted by their picturesque appearance. They were particularly drawn to the women carrying things on their heads and washing clothes by the river.

In the two artists’ sketches and paintings the women appear to be dancing and singing as they work, as if life in Martinique were one long holiday.

They were sticking to the European tradition of depicting the colonies as an exotic idyll, which is how they saw it. The harsh reality remained hidden.

In early 1888 Gauguin returned from Martinique ill. He went to Pont-Aven on the northern coast of France.

Laval later joined him there.

Like Gauguin and Laval Vincent believed that painters should go to warm places to advance art. With this in mind, at the start of 1888, he left Paris for Arles in the South of France.

Vincent discussed his plan to establish a ‘Studio of the South’ in his correspondence with Gauguin. Theo promised Gauguin a financial arrangement if he would join this artists’ community.

In September 1888 Gauguin suggested that Laval and their friend Émile Bernard go with him to Arles. The three artists corresponded with Van Gogh by letter, sketches and actual paintings.

Gauguin was eventually the only artist to make it to Arles, he arrived on 23 October 1888.

While they worked together, he encouraged Vincent to work ‘from his imagination’. Vincent admired the mysterious, poetic nature of Gauguin’s work. He also enthusiastically set to work using dark contours, flat decorative colours and a high horizon.

Gauguin did not share Vincent’s hopes for the Studio of the South. He avoided the subject and often referred to his own desire to return to exotic places. Vincent therefore came up with the idea of a ‘Studio of the Tropics’.

Gauguin was only too keen to put this plan into action - without Vincent. He left Arles after a blazing row on 23 December 1888.

Martinique would long continue to influence the work of Gauguin and Laval. They had discovered new subjects there, and developed an innovative style.

After they returned to Pont-Aven in Brittany, they continued to simplify the form and line in their work.

The Paris World’s Fair of 1889 -two years after Martinique- had a lot of impact on Gauguin’s work. The exotic objects in the colonial pavilions, in particular, brought back memories for him. They inspired him to work in the decorative arts.

Gauguin incorporated his impressions of Martinique into ceramics and wood carvings. He believed these art forms were ‘more primitive’ and better suited to ‘exotic’ subjects.

To Gauguin there was no different between fine art and decorative arts.

It was not until after Vincent’s death in 1890 that Gauguin actually put his plan to establish a Studio of the Tropics into action. When Theo died in 1891 he also lost his main representative in France.

Gauguin left alone for Tahiti in April -in search, once more, of an unspoilt culture.