Gauguin arrived in Tahiti in June 1891 and painted Women of Tahiti during his first months on the island. Seen against simplified bands of dark ocean, green lagoon and creamy yellow sand, two sunlit figures sit side-by-side, contained within the bounds of the canvas. The women appear physically close to the viewer, yet their gaze does not meet ours. Instead, their downcast and averted eyes lend an introspective or melancholic mood to the scene.
Although they are depicted at rest, there is a sense of quiet tension in the women’s hunched and foreshortened postures, as well as their contrasting attire and their seemingly ambiguous relationship to the artist, the viewer and each other. The woman on the left is dressed in a floral pareo, or wraparound skirt, with a single white flower tucked behind her ear. Her bare arm creates a strong vertical in the composition, supporting her weight, while drawing attention to the more conservative style of her companion’s long-sleeved pink dress. The women’s clothing speaks to a collision of cultures and the impact of colonisation, religion and trade on Tahitian society. Before Christian missionaries introduced cotton textiles, clothing in Tahiti was traditionally made of tapa or barkcloth. Gauguin paints the woman on the right holding weaving materials, likely local pandanus leaves, suggesting an aspect of cultural continuity.
Almost a century after the first Christian missionaries arrived, Tahiti was not what Gauguin expected, despite his hope that there could still exist a utopia of unspoiled nature. In late June 1891, the month of his arrival, Gauguin wrote to his wife Mette: ‘Our missionaries had already introduced a good deal of protestant hypocrisy, and wiped out some of the poetry, not to mention the pox which has attacked the whole race.’
In looking beyond his immediate reality, Gauguin embeds his work with poetic, symbolic qualities, aiming to capture a sense of the universal truth of the human condition. He also signalled new directions for art after Impressionism.
