Day of the God (Mahana no Atua)

You might take this for something Gauguin painted on a beach in Tahiti. In fact he made it in Paris in 1894, back in Europe between his two stays in the South Pacific, working from memory and imagination rather than anything in front of him. At the centre stands a carved idol of Hina, a Tahitian moon goddess, with women bringing offerings on one side and dancers on the other. In the foreground three bathers curl into poses that many read as birth, life, and death, though Gauguin himself never explained them. The pool of pure, unmixed colour at their feet is among the boldest passages of paint he ever set down.