Cleveland Museum of Art

Head of a Tahitian Woman

Paul GauguinLinkedCulture matchlcp-94636c6a62fb

Date: 1891
Medium: graphite with stumping and graphite wash on parchment
Culture: France, 19th century
Department: Drawings
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 127115

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

This drawing belongs to a group of highly finished portrait drawings of Tahitians made by Paul Gauguin shortly after his arrival in the South Seas. While getting used to this new place, Gauguin initially avoided painting, preferring first to familiarize himself with the landscape and people through observation and drawing. The meticulous quality of this graphite study suggests that it was made from life. The woman’s noble face and enigmatic expression allude to the spirituality and melancholy that Gauguin sought to conjure in his Polynesian work. In his writings, Gauguin often referred to his drawings as "documents"—records of motifs and ideas he could use later.

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Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection
Provenance: ?-1929: (Hugo Perls, Berlin, sold to De Hauke & Co., Inc., New York) | 1929: (De Hauke & Co., Inc., sold to Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams, Cleveland, OH) | 1929-1949: Mr. [1880–1966] and Mrs. [1879–1980] Lewis B. Williams, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH | 1949 -: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH