Conversation (Les Parau Parau)

Conversation (Les Parau Parau), painted in 1891 and now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, depicts two Tahitian women in conversation in the landscape of Polynesia — the Tahitian title using a reduplication ('parau parau') that suggests idle chatter or continuous talking. Gauguin painted this during his first year in Tahiti, still orienting himself to the island's visual vocabulary and adapting his Synthetist style to tropical subjects. The intimate subject of women conversing allowed him to explore the compositional relationship between two figures in an outdoor setting without the elaborate symbolic apparatus of his more programmatic Tahitian works. The Hermitage acquired major Post-Impressionist works through the collection of Sergei Shchukin.

Oil on canvas with the flattened perspective and bold color areas of Gauguin's mature Synthetist style. The two figures' dark hair and warm brown skin are set against the vivid greens and blues of the Tahitian setting, the composition organized as much by color relationships as by spatial logic.