Tahitian Women Bathing

Tahitian Women Bathing (1892) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art belongs to the first year of Gauguin's initial Tahitian stay, when his formal language for Polynesian subjects was reaching its first mature synthesis. By mid-1892 he had been on the island for a year, had learned enough Tahitian to communicate, had established his working arrangements in Mataiea, and was producing canvases at his most prolific rate. The bathing subject allowed him to place female figures in a natural setting without the artificiality of a posed studio arrangement, and the tropical river or pool provided the perfect combination of reflective water and lush vegetation that organized his Tahitian compositions. At the same moment in New York and Paris, the academic tradition of the nude bather in a landscape was being practiced in its most conventional forms; Gauguin's Tahitian bathers were completely outside this tradition, drawing on different cultural references and constructed through a radically different formal language. The Metropolitan's acquisition of this canvas through American collectors reflects the rapid appreciation of Gauguin's Polynesian work by the early twentieth century.

Water and figures are rendered with the same flat, bold colour masses as the surrounding landscape — no traditional distinction between figure and ground. The women's skin is rendered in warm ochres and browns that echo the earth tones of the banks. Deep reflective blues and greens in the water contrast the warm figure tones. Contours are firm and decisive throughout.