Herrliches Land (Te Nave Nave Fenua)

Gauguin reached Tahiti in 1891, in flight from Europe and short of money, and this comes from that first stay. The standing woman is a Tahitian Eve. His young companion Tehamana modelled for her, and Gauguin bends the story of the garden into the tropics he had come looking for. She reaches toward a flower, and near her hand sits a small winged lizard, a red creature standing in for the serpent that tempted Eve. Gauguin knew the biblical scene his French audience carried in their heads, and he wanted them unsettled by seeing it retold with a Polynesian body in a Polynesian setting. The tall, narrow shape of the canvas presses her against the flat bands of flowers and land behind her.