Cleveland Museum of Art

The Call

Paul Gauguin

Date

1902

Medium

oil on fabric

Culture

France, late 19th-early 20th Century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Painted on a remote island in Polynesia a year before the artist's death, The Call belongs to a series of late works that explore the mysteries of life and death. Two women stand with bare feet, as if on sacred ground. One woman gestures to someone outside the picture, perhaps responding to a "call" from fate or destiny. Gauguin realized his ambition of painting from memory and the imagination through such mysterious, dreamlike images. Although known as one of the founders of modern art, Gauguin found inspiration in ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art. The woman with the pointing finger on the right side of this painting was taken from a figure on the Parthenon frieze.

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