Te tamari no atua

Te tamari no atua (Son of God) was painted during Gauguin's second Tahitian stay in 1896 and is his most explicit attempt to merge Polynesian imagery with Christian iconography. The composition transposes the Nativity scene to a Tahitian setting — a reclining woman on a bed serves as Mary, with an infant beside her — while the background includes Tahitian women who echo the figures of a Polynesian idol cult. Gauguin was systematically constructing a theology of 'primitive' spirituality that he believed pre-Christian Polynesia shared with the earliest Christianity, both untainted by European rational modernity.

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.