Sister of Charity is one of Gauguin’s final paintings, completed in the Marquesas Islands in 1902. With dark outlines and sketchy brushwork, the artist depicts an ambiguous gathering of five Marquesan figures gathered around a nun. The nun’s dark-blue and white habit appears in stark contrast to the warm ochre tones of the rest of the painting. An uncertain exchange seems to occur between the nun and the figure of the man in the foreground – he gestures to himself, but she is not meeting his gaze. In the background, two women wear missionary dresses, while a bare-chested woman appears to make a flower chain, her hands echoing those of the nun who holds rosary beads. Ultimately, Gauguin leaves us to contemplate a series of contrasts: warm and cold, clothed and not, Marquesan and colonist.
In Papeete, Gauguin had published articles and satirical illustrations, channelling his anger at colonial authorities. To avoid persecution he escaped to Hiva Oa, the second-largest island of the Marquesas Islands, arriving at the village of Atuona in September 1901. At first he regularly attended mass, gaining favour with the local priest and, in turn, buying land from the Catholic Church. Here, with help from his neighbour Tioka, Gauguin built a two-story home and studio, which he named the Maison de jouir or House of pleasure. Although Gauguin’s attacks on the Catholic clergy were largely confined to his writings, he encouraged Marquesan parents not to send their young daughters to the convent school.
After nine months on Hiva Oa, Gauguin’s syphilis flared, his health worsened and with no doctors on the island, he relied on morphine and alcohol to sleep. Increasingly confined to bed, the artist devoted himself to writing Avant et après, an account of his life before and after moving to the Pacific.
When Gauguin died of heart failure in Atuona on 8 May 1903, his painting Breton village in the snow was found on the easel in his studio, unsigned and undated. This work was likely painted during his brief return to Pont-Aven in Brittany in 1894, and it is thought that Gauguin kept the canvas close, during his final years of life, as a comforting reminder of France and the excitement of his artistic community that he founded. The smokestacks of factories in the distance may symbolise the encroaching industrial modern world on his Eden.
On behalf of the National Gallery of Australia, I hope you have enjoyed your visit to Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao.
