Te tamari no atua

Te tamari no atua (Son of God, 1896) at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich is Gauguin's most explicit attempt to transpose Christian iconography into a Polynesian setting. The Nativity scene — a reclining woman, an infant, attendant figures — is set in a Tahitian interior that replaces Bethlehem's stable with a domestic space of warm ochre and gold, and the Polynesian women in the background carry objects associated both with traditional Tahitian ceremony and with Christian nativity. Gauguin was fascinated by the parallels he perceived between primitive Christianity and the animist spirituality of pre-contact Polynesia, believing both represented forms of spiritual experience that had been corrupted by the rationalist modernity of European civilization. The Neue Pinakothek's strong collection of nineteenth-century French painting includes this unusual and ambitious canvas alongside Courbet, Delacroix, and the Impressionists, providing a context that emphasizes both Gauguin's roots in the French tradition and his departures from it.

The luminous yellow and gold of the bed is the dominant colour element, setting the scene in an otherworldly warmth. The background figures are rendered in the flat, outline-defined manner of Gauguin's mature Synthetism. The overall palette is richer and more intensely coloured than the early Tahitian works.