Gauguin — Selected Works

Head of a Tahitian Woman

Paul Gauguin — 1891

This drawing belongs to a group of highly finished portrait drawings of Tahitians made by Paul Gauguin shortly after his arrival in the South Seas. While getting used to this new place, Gauguin initially avoided painting, preferring first to familiarize himself with the landscape and people through observation and drawing. The meticulous quality of this graphite study suggests that it was made from life. The woman’s noble face and enigmatic expression allude to the spirituality and melancholy that Gauguin sought to conjure in his Polynesian work.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

The Large Tree

Paul Gauguin — 1891

Disgusted with the materialism of European society, Gauguin abandoned his family and career as a stockbroker and departed for Tahiti in 1891. This canvas is among the first paintings he completed on the island. Its rich colors and stylized figures were intended to be both symbolic and mysterious, evoking private thoughts and emotions. “I obtain symphonies,” he wrote, “harmonies that represent nothing real in the absolute sense of the word.”

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

Arlésiennes (Mistral)

Paul Gauguin — 1888

During the winter of 1888, Paul Gauguin spent a troubled two months with Vincent van Gogh in the southern French city of Arles. He painted the enigmatic Arlésiennes (Mistral) during this stay. The painters’ time together was intended to be the beginning of an artist’s colony, but their relationship grew increasingly tense, and Van Gogh’s mental health deteriorated. Set directly across the street from the house they shared, the painting depicts four women somberly processing through a public garden. The space is tilted radically upward, and complex, three-dimensional forms are reduced to simple, flat shapes. For example, twin orange-yellow cones—probably protective hay coverings to shield plants from the frost—tower at the right like abstracted human figures. Wrapped in dark shawls, the two closest women cover their mouths against the frigid air. Their gestures are withdrawn and introspective, and their passage is seemingly blocked by a bright red fence and large green bush. Perhaps the composition’s oddest element is the appearance of a face within the bush. This face—an intentional inclusion by the artist—adds an uncanny, watchful presence to the scene. It exemplifies Gauguin’s exploration of what he believed to be the mysteries that suffuse everyday life. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

Nave Nave Fenua (Fragrant Isle)

Paul Gauguin — 1893

In 1891 Paul Gauguin traveled to Tahiti, seeking a more authentic style of art making than the conservatism he rejected in Western culture. After returning to Paris in 1893, he began working on Noa Noa, an illustrated book that explained and illustrated his experiences abroad. Although the project was never completed, this print is one of its illustrations. Gauguin depicted a lush landscape by chiseling roughly into a woodblock, a technique meant to suggest relief sculpture he viewed in Tahiti.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

In the Waves (Dans les Vagues)

Paul Gauguin — 1889

Painted at Pont-Aven in northwest France, this depiction of a nude figure throwing herself into the sea suggests a metaphor for a modern European woman forsaking civilization and abandoning herself to her natural, primitive instincts. The simplified lines and exaggerated colors, especially the contrasting green and orange, seem invented rather than observed from life. Exhibiting the painting at the Café Volpini in Paris in 1889, Gauguin established himself as a leader of the Symbolist movement in art.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

Woman in Front of a Still Life by Cezanne

Paul Gauguin — 1890

The seated woman here remains unidentified, but the still-life painting dominating the background is well known: Paul Cezanne’s Still Life with Fruit Dish (1879–80; Museum of Modern Art, New York). Gauguin’s version is nearly the same scale as the original. In certain aspects of the compo-sition, Gauguin emulated Cezanne’s style, like the way he flattened the picture plane so that the woman appears to tip forward out of her chair. Before becoming an artist, Gauguin was an art collector. Cezanne’s Still Life —one of five or six works by the artist in Gauguin’s collection—was a touchstone in his artistic education. It is possible that Cezanne referred to this work when he accused Gauguin of stealing his style, which he called his “petite sensation.” This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

Te raau rahi (The Big Tree)

Paul Gauguin — 1891

“Everything in the landscape blinded and dazzled me,” wrote Paul Gauguin of his first months in Tahiti. Here, he showcased the island’s variety of bountiful fruit trees, including a thick-trunked, violet hotu at left; spindly mango and coconut trees; and three short banana plants with lush, splayed leaves. In the foreground, a man uses a stick to crack a coconut and a family rests in the grass with a sleeping dog beside them. The painting’s coarsely woven canvas, made of a fibrous plant matter (jute), is visible through the paint layer. Cheaper and more readily available than traditional canvas, this support material lends the work a rugged, organic texture. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

Te burao (The Hibiscus Tree)

Paul Gauguin — 1892

Completed early in Paul Gauguin’s first Tahitian sojourn, this landscape shows the artist grappling with representing an unfamiliar environment. Rather than documenting botanical species scientifically, Gauguin focused on the artistic potential of their variegated colors, textures, and forms. The human figure in the distance and the dog roaming through fallen branches activate the landscape and establish a sense of scale. This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana)

Paul Gauguin — 1893

In this portrait, the 13-year-old Tahitian girl named Tehamana appears stoic, shoulders squared and gaze unflinching. She wears a missionary dress and wields a Samoan fan as white flowers tumble from her hair. The ripe mango beside her alludes to fertility. In the background, Gauguin combined various non-European emblems—glyphs derived from an Easter Island tablet and a female deity inspired by Polynesian and Hindu sources—to build a generic sense of foreigness and mystery, transforming Tehamana into the embodiment of his own desire. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

Mahana no atua (Day of the God)

Paul Gauguin — 1894

In this tropical paradise of the artist’s invention, a deity presides over figures walking and resting on an embankment. Rhythmically arranged in groups of two and three, the figures appear more as symbolic forms than as portraits of individuals. Pools of water in interlocking, abstract zones of acidic color surround the feet of a bather, who is flanked by two prone figures—or perhaps the same person seen from two angles. Unlike his other Tahitian-inspired landscapes, this painting was produced in Paris shortly after Paul Gauguin’s first trip to the island. Drawn from fantasy and memory, the psychedelic composition is one of the most abstract and avant-garde works of the artist’s career. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

The Woman with Figs

Paul Gauguin — 1894

The Woman with Figs is one of only two etchings created by Gauguin and was made in collaboration with his friend Armand Séguin, whose address is inscribed in the upper left of the print. Inexperienced with the medium of etching, Gauguin likely drew the composition himself but relied on his friend to help him with the more technically complex aspects of the process such as laying the ground and biting the plate.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

No te aha oe riri (Why Are You Angry?)

Paul Gauguin — 1896

In this large-scale canvas, one of several Paul Gauguin sent back to France in 1897, women of varying ages appear to go about daily life within a colorful, stylized outdoor environment. Like much of the artist’s work, this painting combines observed detail with artistic fantasy to create a dreamlike scene whose narrative resists simple interpretation. The work’s deliberately provocative title enhances this effect, leaving us to wonder if the “you” refers to someone in the painting or to the viewer. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

Polynesian Woman with Children

Paul Gauguin — 1901

The three figures in this work have never been identified. Their familial pose and other details, such as the woman’s gold ring and the red mark on the girl’s hand, invite speculation as to their relationship to each other and to the artist. Technical analysis has revealed that Paul Gauguin reworked the position of the woman’s hands to align diagonally with those of the young girl standing behind her. Together, they form an upward axis reinforced by the cat, also a later addition. Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0

Collection: The Art Institute of Chicago · CC0 · Source image ↗

The Call

Paul Gauguin — 1902

Painted on a remote island in Polynesia a year before the artist's death, The Call belongs to a series of late works that explore the mysteries of life and death. Two women stand with bare feet, as if on sacred ground. One woman gestures to someone outside the picture, perhaps responding to a "call" from fate or destiny. Gauguin realized his ambition of painting from memory and the imagination through such mysterious, dreamlike images.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗

Noa Noa: The Devil Speaks (Mahna No Varua Ino) (recto)

Paul Gauguin — 1893

In 1893, Paul Gauguin returned to Paris from time spent in Tahiti. He began to conceive of a book that would describe his life outside Europe and provide context for the avant-garde works he created while away. This print is one of a series of ten intended to illustrate this book, which Gauguin titled Noa Noa . He carved each image roughly into a woodblock and printed them himself, giving the prints a rough quality that he hoped would enhance their subject matter. Because of this process, combined with the artist's practice of varying his inks and papers while working, prints such as this one are virtually unique.

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0 · Source image ↗