Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influential practitioner of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. While only moderately successful during his lifetime, Gauguin has since been recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism.
Paintings by Paul Gauguin
When Will You Marry? (1892)
When Will You Marry? (French: Quand te maries-tu ?, Tahitian: Nafea faa ipoipo?) is an oil painting from 1892 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. On loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland for nearly a half-century, it was sold privately by the family of Rudolf Staechelin to Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, in February 2015 for close to US$210 million (£155 million), one of the highest prices ever paid for a work of art. The painting was on exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, until 28 June 2015.
Gauguin travelled to Tahiti for the first time in 1891. His hope was to find "an edenic paradise where he could create pure, 'primitive' art", rather than the primitivist faux works being turned out by painters in France. Upon arrival, he found that Tahiti was not as he imagined it: it had been colonised in the 18th century, and at least two-thirds of the indigenous people of the island had been killed by diseases brought by Europeans. "Primitive" culture had been wiped out. Despite this, he painted many pictures of native women: nude, dressed in traditional Tahitian clothes, and dressed in Western-style dresses, as is the rear figure in When Will You Marry?.
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1890)
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (French: D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ?) is an 1897–98 painting by French artist Paul Gauguin. The painting was created in Tahiti and is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. Viewed as a masterpiece by Gauguin, the painting is considered "a philosophical work comparable to the themes of the Gospels".
The painting is notable for its enigmatic subject and atmosphere. Some scholars have attributed these qualities to personal conflicts that Gauguin experienced while creating this artwork. It is an accentuation of Gauguin's trailblazing Post-Impressionistic style.
The Yellow Christ (1889)
The Yellow Christ (in French: Le Christ jaune) is a painting executed by Paul Gauguin in 1889 in Pont-Aven. Together with The Green Christ, it is considered to be one of the key works of Symbolism in symbolic mythological paintings of the older era as represented by Symbolism.
Gauguin first visited Pont-Aven in 1886. He returned to the village in early 1888 to stay until mid-October, when he left to join Vincent van Gogh in Arles, for little more than two months. Early in 1889, Gauguin was back to Pont-Aven to stay there until spring 1890. It was only for a short visit in summer 1889 to Paris to see the Exposition universelle and to arrange the Volpini Exhibition that Gauguin interrupted this sojourn. Soon after his return to Pont-Aven he painted The Yellow Christ.
Tahitian Women on the Beach (1890)
Tahitian Women on the Beach (French: Femmes de Tahiti) is an oil painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin. Depicting two Tahitian women, this piece is one of a series of works completed by Gauguin during his first stay on the Pacific island chain. Enamored by the environment and people of the islands and their separation from European cultural and aesthetic attitudes, Gauguin portrays two figures shrouded in the mystery and symbolism of Tahiti's paradise.
The painting is currently in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, located in Paris, France.
Vision After the Sermon (1888)
Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) is an oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, completed in 1888. It is now in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. It depicts a scene from the Bible in which Jacob wrestles an angel. It depicts this indirectly, through a vision that the women depicted see after a sermon in church. It was painted in Pont-Aven, Brittany, France.
In the early part of his career as a painter, Gauguin had painted primarily landscapes en plein air in the Impressionist manner. By 1888, he had become dissatisfied with Impressionism, which did not satisfy his enthusiasm for archaic and primitive forms or his interest in the mystical. In 1888, during a visit to the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, he met the young artist Émile Bernard, who had begun painting in a simplified style influenced by Japanese prints. Following Bernard's example but developing it further, Gauguin painted Vision After the Sermon, which marked his interest in interpreting religious subject matter in a highly personal way. He became recognized as the leader of a new style called Synthetism.
The Green Christ (1889)
The Green Christ (in French: Le Christ vert) is an oil-on-canvas painting executed by Paul Gauguin on November 20, 1889 in Pont-Aven, Brittany. It depicts a Breton woman at the foot of a calvary, or green-tinted sculpture of Christ's crucifixion. This image emphasizes both Breton culture and religious symbolism.
Gauguin created this work while living in Pont-Aven, Brittany. Topographically, the site depicted is the Atlantic coast at Le Pouldu. But the calvary depicted is an amalgam of several calvaries from different places; the cross is based upon that in the centre of Névez, a community close to Pont-Aven, located several miles from the coast, and the figure of Christ is based upon the calvarie at Briec, also at some distance from the sea. The Breton people, known for their strong Catholic faith and adherence to traditional customs, inspired Gauguin’s portrayal of their authentic spirituality in The Green Christ.
Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892)
Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. Gauguin said the title may refer to either the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her.
The subject of the painting is Gauguin's 13-year-old child-wife Teha'amana (called Tehura in his letters), who one night, according to Gauguin, was lying in fear when he arrived home late: "immobile, naked, lying face downward flat on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear [...] Might she not with my frightened face take me for one of the demons and specters, one of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights?" Gauguin was suffering from advanced venereal disease when he came to Tahiti, and he passed it on to Teha'amana, who was his first sexual partner on the island.
The Painter of Sunflowers (1888)
The Painter of Sunflowers (in French: Le Peintre de Tournesols) is a portrait of Vincent van Gogh by Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh is depicted sitting before an easel, presumably painting his "Sunflower" series. The work, which is a piece from Gauguin's "Arles Period", was created in Arles, France, in December, 1888. The painting is in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The portrait was painted when Gauguin lived with Van Gogh in Arles. Van Gogh had asked Gauguin to stay with him and form an art colony that he referred to as "The Studio of the South". After much urging and extensive correspondences, Gauguin agreed to move to Arles in October, 1888. Gauguin was financially supported by Van Gogh's brother, Theo Van Gogh, who paid Gauguin a stipend of 150 francs in return for completing one painting a month.
Aha Oe Feii? (1892)
Aha Oe Feii? or Are You Jealous? (French: Eh quoi ! Tu es jalouse ?) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Paul Gauguin from 1892, based on a real-life episode during his stay on Tahiti which he later described in the diary Noa Noa: "On the shore two sisters are lying after bathing, in the graceful poses of resting animals; they speak of yesterday's love and tomorrow's conquests. The recollection causes them to quarrel, "What? Are you jealous?" Gauguin titled the painting in Tahitian language, Aha Oe Feii?, in the lower left corner of the canvas.
The painting evokes a sense of Pacific paradise in which sexual relations are playful and harmless. According to Professor Peter Toohey, "this jealousy is not the product of a threat to an exclusive sexual relationship or jilted love affair – it is the result of one of the sisters having enjoyed more sex than the other the night before". In a letter to his friend from 1892, Gauguin wrote about the painting: "I think this is the best of what I've made so far".
Ia Orana Maria (1891)
Ia Orana Maria (Hail Mary) is an 1891 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Created shortly after the artist’s arrival in Tahiti, it is considered one of the earliest and most emblematic works of his Tahitian period. In the composition, two Polynesian women greet a Tahitian mother and child, whom Gauguin deliberately reimagines within the Christian framework of the Madonna and Child while situating them in a distinctly local setting. The painting marks Gauguin’s first major attempt to fuse Western religious iconography with what he perceived as the spiritual and visual qualities of Tahitian life, embodying many stylistic themes that would define Gauguin's work in the Pacific.
Paul Gauguin painted la Orana Maria in 1891 during his first stay in Tahiti, where he sought what he imagined to be an untouched, “primitive” world in contrast to European modernity. The painting reinterprets the Christian Madonna and Child through Polynesian figures and landscape, an approach Gauguin himself described in an 1892 letter to Daniel de Monfreid. Writing from Tahiti, he explained:I have…made a size 50 canvas. An angel with yellow wings points out Mary and Jesus, both Tahitians, to two Tahitian women, nudes wrapped in pareus, a sort of cotton cloth printed with flowers that can be draped as one likes from the waist. [There is] a very somber, mountainous background and flowering trees, [also] a dark violet path and an emerald green foreground, with bananas on the left,—I’m rather happy with it. Although Gauguin explored themes of Catholic theology in his art during his second stay in the South Seas, la Orana Maria is the only explicitly Christian painting from his first trip to Tahiti. There are several theories regarding what motivated Gauguin to create la Orana Maria. According to one account attributed to his son Pola, the painting commemorates news that Gauguin’s mistress in Paris had given birth to his illegitimate son. Other interpretations suggest that the work marks Gauguin’s recovery from a nearly fatal illness or that he intended to present the painting to the Catholic missionary church near his new home in Mataiea.
Two Tahitian Women (1899)
Two Tahitian Women is an 1899 painting by Paul Gauguin. It depicts two topless women, one holding mango blossoms, on the Pacific Island of Tahiti. The painting is part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and was donated to the museum by William Church Osborn in 1949.
Although Tahiti is depicted as an innocent paradise, the two women in the painting confront the viewer in a way similar to that in Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) or Olympia (1863), and follow an artistic tradition of comparing woman's breasts to flowers or fruit. The women in the painting also appear in two other works by Gauguin, Faa Iheihe (Tahitian Pastoral) (1898) and Rupe, Rupe (1899).
Oviri (1894)
Oviri (Tahitian for savage or wild) is an 1894 ceramic sculpture by the French artist Paul Gauguin. In Tahitian mythology, Oviri was the goddess of mourning and is shown with long pale hair and wild eyes, smothering a wolf with her feet while clutching a cub in her arms. Art historians have presented multiple interpretations—usually that Gauguin intended it as an epithet to reinforce his self-image as a "civilised savage". Tahitian goddesses of her era had passed from folk memory by 1894, yet Gauguin romanticises the island's past as he reaches towards more ancient sources, including an Assyrian relief of a "master of animals" type and Majapahit mummies. Other possible influences include preserved skulls from the Marquesas Islands, figures found at Borobudur, and a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in central Java.
Gauguin made three casts, each in partially glazed stoneware, and while several copies exist in plaster or bronze, the original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay. His sales of the casts were not successful, and at a low financial and personal ebb he asked for one to be placed on his grave. There are only three other surviving comments of his on the figure: he described the figure as a strange and cruel enigma on an 1895 presentation mount of two impressions of a woodcut of Oviri for Stéphane Mallarmé; he referred to it as La Tueuse ("The Murderess") in an 1897 letter to Ambroise Vollard; and he appended an inscription referencing Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphîta in a c. 1899 drawing. Oviri was exhibited at the 1906 Salon d'Automne (no. 57) where it influenced Pablo Picasso, who based one of the figures in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon on it.