The Royal End

The Royal End (Upaupa schneklud, 1892) at the Getty Center in Los Angeles belongs to the unusual category of Gauguin's Tahitian works that take their title from a specific observed event — a dancer performing the upaupa, a traditional Polynesian dance that the missionary presence had been attempting to suppress as indecent. The inclusion of a named musician (Schneklud) in the title connects this canvas to the contemporary social life of Tahiti rather than to the timeless mythological themes of his most famous paintings. By 1892 Gauguin had spent a year observing the specific cultural life of the island, and his paintings oscillated between the directly observed domestic and social scene and the mythological or symbolic constructions that drew on his Polynesian research. The Getty Center's strong collection of Post-Impressionist work, assembled through the museum's substantial acquisition budget, holds this canvas alongside major works by Van Gogh and Cézanne that document the full range of the generation's achievement.

Gauguin solves collective figure scenes through a horizontal frieze arrangement in which figures are differentiated by colour and pose rather than spatial position. The overall colour temperature is warm and festive, deep oranges and reds set against cooler background blues.