Deathbed portrait of Aristide 'Atiti' Suhas, died 5 March 1892, 1.5 years old

This 1892 Kröller-Müller canvas is a deathbed portrait of Aristide Suhas, a Tahitian child who died at eighteen months during Gauguin's first Polynesian stay. The portrait of a dead child was an established nineteenth-century genre — infant mortality was high and deathbed portraits provided bereaved families with a last likeness — but Gauguin's version adds his characteristic symbolic weight. The child's pale body and closed eyes against the Tahitian setting creates an arresting juxtaposition of innocence and death. The Kröller-Müller Museum's strong Post-Impressionist collection gives this unusual work an important institutional context.

The child's form is painted with unusual delicacy for Gauguin — the pale flesh tones carefully modulated, the features rendered with tender attention. The surrounding setting is handled more broadly. The composition is intimate and concentrated, the small figure central and surrounded by the warm colors of Tahitian textiles and vegetation.