NARRATOR:
In this picture, Paul Gauguin’s deceptively simple composition and style evoke the seeming innocence of the Tahitian people. He uses color to dramatize his subjects, setting off their dark faces against the vibrant green background. The decorative flowers and dark lines add to the sinuous rhythms of the picture.
The woman and boy gaze out at us impassively. They wear "missionary" dress imported from England, and the woman is seated in a Victorian wicker chair. Gauguin, who had gone to Tahiti to escape the influences of Western civilization, lamented the loss of their traditional ways:
GAUGUIN [ACTOR]:
“Soon the Marquesan people will be incapable of climbing a coconut tree, of going up the mountain after the wild bananas that are so nourishing to [them]. The child is kept in school, deprived of physical exercise his body always clad for sake of decency.”
NARRATOR:
In 1883, Gauguin had abandoned his career as a stockbroker to devote himself to painting. Drawn to native cultures in warmer climes, he left his family and sailed to Tahiti in 1891. That year he wrote:
GAUGUIN [ACTOR]:
“I desire to immerse myself in virgin nature, to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain, and do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true."
NARRATOR:
In Tahiti, Gauguin endured abject poverty and a series of illnesses. The French public showed little interest in his work. This painting was in the last shipment to his dealer in Paris, before he died in 1903 at age 56.
Tahitian Woman and Boy
1899
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903)
On View
Gauguin sailed for Tahiti in 1891. A former stockbroker and primarily self-taught artist, he left behind both his family and what he regarded as the bourgeois constraints of modern French society, but what he found in the South Seas was not the primitive paradise he’d hoped for. Tahiti was already a French colony; the wicker chair and the high-necked gown shown in this portrait testify to the presence of European merchants and missionaries. Despite his initial disappointment and his rapidly declining health Gauguin’s years in Tahiti were the most important of his career. Drawing inspiration from his tropical surroundings and a cast of island models (the female sitter for this portrait may have been his teenaged consort, Pau’ura), Gauguin forged a new vision for modern art: sensuous, mysterious, radiantly, riotously colorful.
Details
- Artist Name: Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903)
- Title: Tahitian Woman and Boy
- Date: 1899
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 37-1/4 x 24-3/8 in. (94.6 x 61.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation, Gift of Mr. Norton Simon
- Accession Number: M.1976.08.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
[Ambroise Vollard, Paris].
Moll, Vienna.
Mrs. Austin Mardon, Ardross Castle, Scotland, 1923 (sale, London, Sotheby's, 24-25 November 1964, lot 32, to);
[Hammer Galleries, New York, sold 1965 to];
Norton Simon, Los Angeles, gift 1976 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Moll, Vienna.
Mrs. Austin Mardon, Ardross Castle, Scotland, 1923 (sale, London, Sotheby's, 24-25 November 1964, lot 32, to);
[Hammer Galleries, New York, sold 1965 to];
Norton Simon, Los Angeles, gift 1976 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Loan Exhibition of Masterpieces of French Art of the 19th Century in Aid of the Lord Mayor's Appeal for the Hospitals
- Manchester, Thomas Agnew and Sons, 1923 to 1923
40th Anniversary Loan Exhibition, 1928-1968
- New York, Hammer Galleries, 1968-11-07 to 1968-12-07
The Nabis
- Norton Simon Museum, 1992-09-24 to 1993-07-18
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and The Norton Simon Foundation_1
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1973-05-03 to 1976-06-15
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
- Feron, J., New York Times,
- Steadman, David W., The Connoisseur, pl. C pp. 223, 225
- Meier-Graefe, Julius, Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Modernen Kunst, 1904, p. 141
- de Rotonchamp, Jean, Paul Gauguin, 1848-1903, 1925, no. 7 p. 221
- Wildenstein, Georges, Gauguin, 1964, no. 578
- Sugana, Gabriele M., Tout l'oeuvre peint de Gauguin, 1972, no. 400 pp. 110, 112
- Gauguin: A Retrospective, 1987, p. 343
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 169
- Eisenman, Stephen F., Gauguin's Skirt, 1997, pp. 74, 76-77, 228, ill. 77, 228
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 262 p. 277
- Homburg, Cornelia and Christopher Riopelle, Gauguin: Portraits, 2019, 76 p. 139
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