Landscape from Tahiti with Nine Figures
1898
Oil on canvas, 93 x 73 cm

Gauguin returned to Tahiti after a brief sojourn in France from 1894 to 1896. During the following two years he painted a series of landscapes with figures, in which the compositions range from the highly stylised, non-naturalistic interpretation of nature, as seen in the monumental "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going To?" (1897; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), to more legible transcriptions, as in the painting shown here. However, given the distinct outlining of figures and landscape elements, the use of flat colour infill the absence of any aerial or linear perspective and the appending of the inscription SÀFaiara?, derived from the Tahitian verb SÀto wake up?, the intention is to read the work as a symbol of regeneration. This may explain the presence of the woman on the right seemingly eating some fruit, the couple embracing on the far left, and the dark area in the foreground, which may denote a spring. The present landscape is painted on a roughly woven and apparently un-primed piece of canvas, probably sackcloth. It may well be a work described by Gauguin?s friend and unofficial art agent, Daniel de Monfreid, in a letter of November 1888. It was not, however, included in the exhibition of eight Tahitian works shown at the Galerie Vollard, Paris in that year.
TB-M

Location: On loan