French post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin didn't let reality stop him from painting the primitive island culture he'd hoped to find in Tahiti — but didn't.
The paintings, wood carvings and ceramics he made in Tahiti are full of bare-breasted, native women — voluptuous, sensuous. Gauguin's 1899 painting Two Tahitian Women "could serve as a pinup in a tourist bureau," Morton says.
It's a glamorous vision, but a false one. The artist had hoped to find such exotic, half-clothed beauties — but did not.
The Polynesian women Paul Gauguin painted wore a lot more clothing than he wanted you to believe.
Transcript
"Tahiti was a French colony," Morton explains. "It had been thoroughly Christianized and colonized. The women were not walking around half-naked. ... They tended to be wearing ... Christian missionary gowns."
By the time Gauguin arrived in the late 1800s, Tahiti had been "thoroughly Christianized and colonized" by the French, says National Gallery curator Mary Morton. Women didn't walk around half-nude — but Gauguin painted them that way anyway. Above, an 1899 depiction of Two Tahitian Women.Gauguin depicts a Tahitian Garden of Eden in his 1892 painting Te Nave Nave Fenua, or, The Delightful Land. Gauguin paints a strong, stocky Eve — who, if you look carefully, has seven toes on her left foot.
Gauguin: Maker of Myth will be on view at the National Gallery of Art (Washington DC) through early June.
gauguins-nude-tahitians-give-the-wrong-impression---Podcast
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