The Call

Painted in 1902 in the Marquesas — Gauguin's final home — this canvas of figures responding to some summons or calling represents his continued engagement with Polynesian spiritual and communal life in his second-to-last year. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds this late work, demonstrating the sustained quality of Gauguin's production even as his health declined. The title 'The Call' suggests a spiritual or ritual dimension, consistent with his lifelong interest in representing Polynesian culture as animated by forces beyond Western rationalism.

The figures are placed in a tropical landscape with the assured compositional control of Gauguin's fully developed late style. Warm golden flesh tones and the rich greens and earth reds of the Marquesas landscape are combined with Gauguin's characteristic flat, deliberate brushwork. The figures' gestures convey response to the summons — turning, moving toward — without anatomical over-elaboration.