Tahitianische Frauen am Strand

Gauguin sailed for Tahiti in 1891, hoping to leave European life behind and find something simpler and older to paint. He reached Papeete that June and soon moved out to the countryside. This is one of the first pictures from that stay. Two women sit close together on the sand, filling almost the whole canvas, painted in flat firm colors with dark outlines rather than the shimmer of Impressionism he had left behind in France. Look at what they wear. The woman on the left is in a traditional pareu, while the one on the right is buttoned into a high-necked missionary dress, the mark of the French colony and its churches. The paradise Gauguin came looking for was already half-dressed in European cloth.