(b. 1848, Paris, d. 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, French Polynesia)
Idyll in Tahiti
1901
Oil on canvas, 75 x 95 cm
Private collection
Gauguin's spell in the South Sea Islands corresponded to a search for a mythical Eden, in which he endeavoured to recover a sense of the holy that had been destroyed by the Western world, a primitive naivety dominated by the antitheses of life and death.