Due donne tahitiane

Gauguin painted this in 1899, during his second and final stretch in the South Pacific, by then sick, in debt, and far from the Paris art world he had walked away from. Two young Tahitian women stand close to the picture surface, one holding a shallow dish of blossoms, the other with a hand raised, their skin warm against a band of dark green. He was reaching past everyday life toward something deliberately timeless and statuesque, borrowing the calm frontal poses he admired in older art and setting them down in the tropics. The flowers echo the very common local names Gauguin gave many of his sitters. Long after his death the painting kept provoking strong reactions. In 2011, on loan in Washington, a visitor tried to pull it from the wall and struck it with her fist. A sheet of protective glazing took the blow and the panel came through unharmed.