Les Nabis

"Paul Sérusier's story was exciting. From his summer vacation in Brittany [Summer 1888], where he had briefly encountered Paul Gauguin, he had brought back a small landscape painted under Gauguin's direction. Gauguin had asked him, (as Sérusier told his friends later in Paris): 'How do you see these trees? They are yellow. Well then, put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue? So render it with pure-ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermilion.'"

"Paul Sérusier explained to his friends [Oct. 1888 - to Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard] that, according to Paul Gauguin: the impression of nature must be wedded to the aesthetic sentiment which chooses, arranges, simplifies and synthesizes. The painter ought not to rest until he has given birth to the child of his imagination.. ..begotten in a union of his mind with reality. Gauguin insisted on a logical construction of composition, on a harmonious apportionment of light and dark colors, the simplification of forms and proportions, so as to endow the outline's of forms with a powerful and eloquent expression.. ..He also insisted upon luminous and pure colors."