Tahitian girl

Painted during Gauguin's second stay in Tahiti, this 1898 figure of a Tahitian girl belongs to the mature phase of his Pacific career when his iconography had become more complex and his color more deliberately symbolic. By 1898 he was in dire financial straits, suffering from illness, and had recently completed 'Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?'—his vast philosophical canvas. This smaller figure study, now in the National Museum of Serbia, may have been among the works he painted for sale to European collectors through Vollard.

The figure is rendered with the bold, flat color areas and synthetist outlines characteristic of Gauguin's mature style, the Tahitian girl's form simplified into large decorative zones of warm color. The background is treated with equal chromatic deliberateness, the greens and yellows of the tropical setting functioning as active color presences rather than neutral settings.