Barbarian Tales

Barbarian Tales (Contes barbares) was completed in 1902 on the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, one of the last major figure compositions before Gauguin's death in May 1903. The redheaded figure in the background is widely identified as a distorted portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan, the Dutch painter who had been Gauguin's companion at Le Pouldu in 1889–90 — here transformed into a demonic, crouching presence. The two seated Polynesian women evoke spiritual contemplation, creating an allegory of innocence shadowed by corrupting European knowledge. The title's deliberate provocation inverts the colonial gaze, suggesting that it is European civilization, not Pacific culture, that harbors barbarism.

Gauguin structures the canvas with a shallow, frieze-like space. The figures are outlined with firm contour lines filled with flat areas of saturated colour, the ground a dense, jewel-toned pattern of tropical foliage. The faceting of skin tones into angular planes anticipates the approach Picasso would study in Gauguin's work a few years later.