# Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana)

- By: Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
- Date: 1893
- Medium: Oil on jute canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 75 × 53 cm (29 1/2 × 20 7/8 in.); Framed: 98.8 × 76.6 × 8.3 cm (38 7/8 × 30 1/8 × 3 1/4 in.)
- Culture: France
- Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Deering McCormick
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/60812)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/48268fc7-2eb4-ded6-1293-e91f27b66478/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In this portrait, the 13-year-old Tahitian girl named Tehamana appears stoic, shoulders squared and gaze unflinching. She wears a missionary dress and wields a Samoan fan as white flowers tumble from her hair. The ripe mango beside her alludes to fertility. In the background, Gauguin combined various non-European emblems—glyphs derived from an Easter Island tablet and a female deity inspired by Polynesian and Hindu sources—to build a generic sense of foreigness and mystery, transforming Tehamana into the embodiment of his own desire.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0