Paradise Lost (?)

Dating to around 1890, this canvas from Yale University Art Gallery was painted during the fertile period of Gauguin's artistic evolution between his Breton years and his first Tahitian departure in 1891. The title Paradise Lost evokes the spiritual and civilisational disillusionment that drove him increasingly away from Europe—themes he would fully develop in Polynesia. By 1890 he was theorising primitivism explicitly in letters and conversations, seeking a pre-Christian, pre-industrial innocence he believed surviving in non-European cultures. The question mark in the recorded title may reflect later scholarly uncertainty about his intended subject.

The broad, flat colour application and simplified figuration show his Synthetist method fully evolved. Contour drawing defines forms against compressed, non-naturalistic backgrounds. Warm flesh tones against deep foliage greens create the decorative colour contrasts central to his late style.