Slideshow: Gauguin and Polynesia at Seattle Art Museum
All images courtesy Seattle Art Museum.
Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te Tiare (Tahitian Woman with a Flower), 1891, oil on canvas, 27 3/4 × 18 5/16 in.
Paul Gauguin, Faaturuma (Melancholic), 1891, oil on canvas, 37 × 26 7.8 in. Courtesy Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Though Gauguin is famously known for his seductive portraits of Tahitian women, his early paintings featured them in conservative western dress, looking forlorn. People "can remain hours and days sitting immobile and gazing sadly at the sky," Gauguin wrote to his wife.
Gauguin, Te raau rahi (The Large Tree), 1891, oil on fabric, 29 1/8 × 36 9/16 in. Courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Gauguin left Tahiti’s capital and ventured 45km away to the village of Mataiea, where he sought out authentic daily life.
Paul Gauguin, Parahi te Marae (The Sacred Mountain), 1892, oil on canvas, 26 × 35 in. Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.
When Gauguin didn’t find the paradise he was looking, he made it up, said Pam McClusky, curator of Art of Africa and Oceania at SAM. The yellow hillside could invoke yellow feathers, which are a sacred element in Polynesian culture.
Moal Kavakava (Cadaverous Male Figure), Easter Island, early- to mid-19th century; wood, bone, obsidian.
This handsome fellow with obsidian eyes is similar to the artwork Gauguin saw at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889—a collection of pieces that inspired his desire to see both the savagery and beauty of "the Promised Land."
Paul Gauguin, Arearea no Varua ino (Words of the Devil, or Reclining Tahitian Women) , 1894, oil on canvas, 23 5/8 × 38 9/16 in. Courtesy Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
Constantly plagued by wanderlust, Gauguin continued to paint Tahiti even when he was back in Paris from 1893–1895. It doesn’t help that he contracted syphilis and only sold nine of 47 works while he was home.
Paul Gauguin, Three Tahitians, 1899, oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 37 in. Courtesy National Gallery of Scotland.
Gauguin returned to Tahiti from 1895 to 1901, where he was both prolific—abandoning ethnographic portraits for lush, seductive paintings—and frustrated by syphilis, a lack of cash, and run-ins with local authorities.
Photo: Laura Dannen. Pota (Tiki Figure), late 18th to mid-19th century, stone, Marquesas Islands.
This tiki comes from the island of Hiva Oa, where Gauguin lived at the end of his life in the early 1900s. "It was the Tahiti of former times that I loved," he once said.
Photo: Laura Dannen.
En route to Tahiti for the second time, Gauguin passed through New Zealand, where he became engrossed with a collection of Maori carvings at the Auckland Museum. This piece (pictured) covered in fine spirals is one of the oldest on display (ca. 1865), but was sadly turned into a collection basket (note the key hole).
Photo: Laura Dannen.
Don’t forget to say hello to Pou (ca. 1840). This figure typically welcomes visitors to a Maori meeting house, and you’re expected to greet it when you pass by.
