Women and a White Horse

Painted in 1903 — one of Gauguin's last works before his death in May of that year — this scene of Polynesian women with a white horse carries the mythic, archetypal quality of his finest late works. The white horse had appeared in his Tahitian paintings as a symbol of purity and spiritual power, and here in his final Marquesan work it retains that significance. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston holds this canvas as a late masterpiece, demonstrating that Gauguin's colour and compositional instincts remained entirely alive to the end of his life.

The white horse provides a luminous central form against the deep, jewel-like colours of the tropical setting. Its whiteness — rendered in blues, greens, and pink-whites — creates a focal radiance. The figures are painted with the spare, assured line of Gauguin's late style. Deep, saturated greens and earth reds frame the composition in the rich colour harmony that characterises his final Marquesan period.