Tahitian Woman with a Flower

Tahitian Woman with a Flower (Vahine no te tiare, 1891) at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen is among the first of Gauguin's Tahitian portraits — a direct, frontal image of a Tahitian woman with a white tiare flower in her hair, painted in the opening months of his first stay on the island. The tiare — the fragrant white gardenia of Tahiti — was one of the most characteristic markers of Polynesian feminine beauty, worn behind the ear as an indication of romantic availability or personal adornment. Gauguin's early Tahitian portraits are more directly observational than his later hieratic compositions, and this canvas has the freshness of first encounter — the specific woman, the specific flower, the specific quality of observation. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek holds this work alongside other Gauguins spanning his career, and the presence of a major early Tahitian portrait in Copenhagen reflects the sustained Danish collecting interest in his work that his personal connection to Denmark through his wife had stimulated.

The figure is presented against a flattened background in which the decorative patterning of the wall or cloth behind her is given equal visual weight to the figure itself. The woman's face is modeled with a directness that preserves something of the observed portrait while the overall composition pushes toward the synthetist flattening that would dominate his later work.