Eau mystérieuse

Eau mystérieuse (Mysterious Water) belongs to Gauguin's second Tahitian period, begun in 1895 after his disappointing Paris exhibition and his increasingly desperate financial situation. The canvas depicts Tahitian women near a forest pool or waterfall, suffused with an atmosphere of sacred mystery that Gauguin associated with the indigenous spiritual world he was reconstructing largely through his own imagination and secondary texts. By his second stay, Gauguin was increasingly isolated, ill with syphilis, and taking morphine; his paintings from this period often have a heavier, more brooding quality than the lighter canvases of his first visit.

Gauguin saturates the canvas with deep forest greens and purples, the water rendered as a reflective dark plane rather than transparent liquid. The figures are simplified into monumental forms with minimal internal modelling. Outlines are firm and decisive, isolating each shape against the dense foliage background.