Getty Museum
Head of a Tahitian Woman
Creator
Paul GauguinFrench Artist · 1848–1903
All works by this person →> May the day come soon when I'll be myself in the woods of an ocean island! To live there in ecstasy, calmness and art.... There in Tahiti I shall be able to listen to the sweet murmuring music of my heart's beating in the silence of the beautiful tropical nights. > > --Paul Gauguin > > Writing to his wife in 1887, Paul Gauguin expressed his desire to seek an earthly paradise in the South Seas. H
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1892
- Medium
- Charcoal
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
While still in his native France, Paul Gauguin yearned to escape the civilized society he knew. Wishing to imbue his art with a sense of primitivism, he sought refuge in a country he thought untouched by modern practices. Gauguin found the inspiration he was looking for in Colonial French Tahiti, where he made this life-size drawing of a rather defiant looking teenage girl. In the drawing, he boldly articulated her head, face, and neck, while indicating her shoulders and collar with lighter lines. But the girl's Western dress suggests that Tahiti was not the exotic land Gauguin had imagined: missionaries had destroyed its pre-European culture. Using flat, decorative forms, Gauguin presented Tahitian women as mysterious, unknowable creatures.
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