Gauguin's Tahiti
Gauguin sailed for Tahiti in 1891 looking for a simpler life than Paris could give him, and painted the islands in flat, glowing colour until his death in the Marquesas in 1903.
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About the series
He arrived in Papeete expecting an untouched paradise and found a French colony, so he moved out to the countryside and painted what he partly saw and partly imagined: women on the beach, a market, a white horse drinking at a stream, with Tahitian titles written into the corner of the canvas. He went back to France in 1893, returned to Tahiti in 1895 and spent his last two years on Hiva Oa.
His largest painting from the islands, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, painted in 1897 and nearly four metres wide, is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Ia Orana Maria, his Tahitian Madonna and child, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Ta Matete, a row of women seated on a bench, is in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
The colours are strong enough to hold a room on their own: deep greens, pinks and oranges. One large canvas usually works better than several small ones together.
