Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Polynesian Woman with Children
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
1901
- Medium
- Oil on linen canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 97 × 74 cm (38 3/16 × 29 1/8 in.); Framed: 111.2 × 88.3 × 5.8 cm (43 3/4 × 34 3/4 × 2 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The three figures in this work have never been identified. Their familial pose and other details, such as the woman’s gold ring and the red mark on the girl’s hand, invite speculation as to their relationship to each other and to the artist. Technical analysis has revealed that Paul Gauguin reworked the position of the woman’s hands to align diagonally with those of the young girl standing behind her. Together, they form an upward axis reinforced by the cat, also a later addition.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
