Upa Upa (la danse du feu)

Gauguin landed at Papeete on 9 June 1891 expecting something untouched, and found a colonial port where the French lived much as they did at home. Three days later the last king of Tahiti, Pomare V, died, and Gauguin watched the funeral. He wrote afterwards that the old Tahiti had gone into the ground with him. He painted this in the months that followed. The upa upa was a night dance that missionaries and the colonial administration had spent decades trying to suppress, and he has put it at a distance, across a dark field, the dancers reduced to black shapes around a bonfire. The sky behind them is still the blue and green of dusk rather than full night.