Hoy no iremos al mercado

Gauguin painted this in 1892, during his first stay in Tahiti, and the row of seated women is posed like nothing in the South Seas. He had brought photographs of ancient Egyptian tomb paintings with him — figures he had studied in the British Museum, from the tomb of a scribe named Nebamun — and he lined his women up in that same flat, frieze-like way, shoulders square, faces in profile, hands held stiffly. The subject is far more ordinary than the solemn poses suggest: these are women of Papeete, several in the European dresses the missionaries had brought, sitting near the waterfront. The title means roughly 'we won't go to market today'. A few of them hold small cards in their laps, a detail that has long fed the reading of the scene as a gathering of local prostitutes.