Young Tahitian Woman

Gauguin's first months in Tahiti in 1891 were spent in Papeete, the capital of the French colony, before he moved out to the countryside. The woman here was one of his neighbours there, and the picture has never quite settled on a name for her. It has been called Young Tahitian Woman, and also Young Creole, and descriptions of her have used the word mixed-race as well. She wears a broad yellow straw hat and a red top with a high collar. The painting is small, only 36 centimetres high, and it is done on coarse hessian, whose open weave shows through the thin paint across her face. Its first owner was a man called Jénot, the young French naval lieutenant who had helped Gauguin settle in when he arrived. It came to Troyes in 1976 with the collection given by Pierre and Denise Lévy.