We Shall Not Go to the Market Today

We Shall Not Go to the Market Today (Ta matete, 1892) at the Kunstmuseum Basel depicts a group of Tahitian women seated along a bench — their arrangement recalling the seated figure friezes of Egyptian tomb painting that Gauguin was studying through museum reproductions. He had visited the Egyptian collections at the Louvre before his departure for Tahiti and kept photographs of Egyptian wall paintings in his studio, and this composition is one of the most direct demonstrations of his willingness to use ancient non-Western art as a formal model rather than an influence to be absorbed and disguised. The title's market reference — we are not going to the market today — placed the hieratic figures within the everyday social world of Tahitian village life while the formal treatment elevated them to the timeless dignity of ancient iconography. The Kunstmuseum Basel's possession of this canvas alongside When Will You Marry? makes it uniquely well-placed to show the range of Gauguin's first-Tahitian-year achievement, from the domestically observed to the most formally abstract.

Gauguin depicts figures in conversation or rest, market activity implied by the title rather than shown. Background colour functions as mood indicator. Forms are simplified and outlines pronounced, consistent with the synthetist method applied systematically across his 1892 output.