Scene from Tahitian Life

By 1896 Gauguin had given up on Europe for the second time. He had sailed back to Tahiti the year before, sick and short of money, hoping the islands would still feel unspoiled, and painting them partly from memory and imagination when they did not. This is one of those Tahitian scenes, an ordinary evening among the islanders that he loads with a quiet, unexplained ceremony. What is strange, once you know it, is where the figures come from. Several of their poses are lifted from ancient art Gauguin had studied only in reproductions, the frieze of the Parthenon and Egyptian wall painting among them. He believed the world's old cultures shared one language of gesture, and he built his Pacific evening out of it.