This work was painted in his studio in Punaauia during Gauguin's second trip to Tahiti. The inscription on the painting has been translated several ways: "Do not do it," meaning do not smoke (Bouge); Danielsson translated the name word-for-word from the Tahitian as "Do not work," since he thought Gauguin wanted to say that the Tahitians did nothing but dream as they considered the dream state to be one of bliss. The lefthand figure was repeated by Gauguin in several versions of the picture Are You Jealouà (cat. no. 19), while the poses of the Tahitians were also repeated in the painting The Gold of Their Bodies. It may well be that Gauguin borrowed the poses of individual figures from the friezes of the Buddhist temple of Borobudur, of which he had photographs. Cooper thought that the figure with a cigarette in its hands and in a white apron belonged to a man.

A comparison of the enclosed world of an interior with the boundless expanse of nature visible through an open door in the background can be found in another of Gauguin's works, The Dream, painted in 1897 in Punaauia. A similar landscape is shown through the door opening in the painting called Te Faaturuma, which includes the same dog, shown in profile at the threshold, and the same Tahitian in a hat inside. The name of the latter painting is translated as "Silence" or "Meditation" and refers to the figure of a Tahitian woman shown deep in thought on the floor of her hut. Te Faaturuma and The Dream help one to understand the meaning of the Moscow picture.

Inscribed, signed, and dated, bottom left: Eiaha Ohipa3ƒ4R Gauguin 96

Pushkin Museum, inv. no. 3267

Provenance:

Gauguin sent the picture to Paris in order to include it in the Brussels Exhibition in 1897 (valued at 600 francs);

from 1906, Vollard Gallery. Paris: it was bought by S. Shchukin in the Vollard Gallery or in the Drouot Gallery. Paris;

1918-1923. First Museum of Modern Western Painting. Moscow;

1923-1948. Museum of Modern Western Art, Moscow;

since 1948. Pushkin Museum, Moscow.