Riders on the Beach (I)

Riders on the Beach was painted in 1902 on the Marquesas Islands, where Gauguin had moved the previous year in search of an even more remote and 'primitive' environment than Tahiti had become under French colonial administration. The image of horseback riders on a beach at evening — figures moving laterally across the composition in a processional manner — draws on both direct Marquesan observation and Gauguin's memory of the Parthenon frieze photographs he kept pinned to his studio wall. The work is among his most resolved late compositions, the figures integrated into the landscape with monumental ease.

The figures and horses are rendered as warm, solid forms moving across the pale sand. The sea and sky provide a horizontal backdrop of blue-grey. The frieze-like lateral movement of the composition recalls Gauguin's consistent reference to archaic sculptural sources. The palette is muted and golden, with a quality of late afternoon light.