The Call

The Call (1902) at the Cleveland Museum of Art belongs to the final year of Gauguin's active painting life on the Marquesas, when his physical condition was worsening but his formal language retained its full authority. By 1902 he was involved in a complex legal battle with the French colonial authorities over his encouragement of Marquesan children to skip school, a conflict that reflected his genuine if complicated opposition to the colonial destruction of indigenous culture. The title 'The Call' suggests a spiritual or ritual dimension, and the figures responding to some summons belong to the series of works in which he tried to document and construct a Marquesan spiritual life that he could see being destroyed around him. The Cleveland Museum of Art's strong Post-Impressionist collection, which includes the 1889 In the Waves alongside this late canvas, allows visitors to trace the full arc of Gauguin's formal development from his breakthrough Synthetist period through his final Marquesan production.

The figures are placed in a tropical landscape with the assured compositional control of Gauguin's fully developed late style. Warm golden flesh tones and the rich greens and earth reds of the Marquesas landscape are combined with Gauguin's characteristic flat, deliberate brushwork. The figures' gestures convey response to the summons — turning, moving toward — without anatomical over-elaboration.