A rich and jewel-like reverie, Tahiti, scène de rivière was executed during a defining period in Gauguin’s career. Painted during his first sojourn in Tahiti in 1891-93, the present composition exemplifies the imaginative and expressive body of work for which the artist is most celebrated.

Gauguin had been dreaming of an escape long before his arrival in Tahiti in June 1891. During the first decade of his life as a professional artist, he traveled to different destinations in search of a more authentic way of living which he felt could not be found in Paris. Accompanied by Charles Laval, he left for Panama in 1887, which served as a prelude to his later stay on the island of Martinique from June to November.

Closer to home, Brittany seemed a promising destination (see fig. 1). With its distinct customs, the region fulfilled many of his expectations, as would Arles, where he joined van Gogh during the summer of 1889. That year, The Exposition Universelle in Paris would provide even clearer indications that a destination on the other side of the world might offer what he was looking for. There he found colorful displays of dwellings and artifacts from the various French colonies, with Tahiti represented by two traditional huts located in the fair between the central Palace of Tunisia and huts from Annam and Tonkin. With this inspiration in mind, Gauguin set his sights on the French Poylnesian island.

In order to finance the voyage to Tahiti, a sale of thirty works by the artist was held on 23 February 1891. Gauguin summarized his motives in an interview with Jules Huret published in L'echo de Paris on the day of the sale: “I'm leaving so that I can be at peace and can rid myself of civilization's influence. I want to create only simple art. To do that, I need to immerse myself in virgin nature… with no other care than to portray, as would a child, the concepts in my brain using only primitive artistic materials, the only kind that are good and true” (quoted in Exh. Cat., Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris and Boston, Museum of Replica Handbags s, Gauguin Tahiti, 2003-04, p. 19).

Shortly after his arrival, already disillusioned by how French the capital town Papeete had become, Gauguin settled in a small village of Mataiea in the south of the island. He was eager to experience and capture a more authentic version of Polynesian life, one less impacted by the missionary and colonial influences. With its rich palette of lilacs, pinks, oranges, browns and greens, interspersed by deliberate hints of the canvas below, Tahiti, scène de rivière encapsulates what Gauguin wished to find when he set out for Tahiti: an seemingly earthly paradise, unburdened by modernized civilization and suspended in t.mes . In this dreamy, intimate scene depicting female bathers on a riverbank, the figurative and abstract elements lyrically blend together, while the distinction between the foreground and the background is obscured by overlapping swathes of color.

The undulating forms and tapestry-like effect of the present work is at play in another landscape from the same year, Femmes tahitiennes au bord de la rivière (see fig. 2). In both works, the harmonious coexistence of nature and the people in it present a continuation of the themes Gauguin explored in his landscapes several years prior in Pont-Aven.

During his first trip to Tahiti Gauguin devoted several compositions to depicting the local women at their tropical toilette (see fig. 3). In 1893 he even made this a vignette in his illustrated manuscript, Noa noa, and provided the following narrative: “On the road back, .... The vahines took the arm of their tanés again ... their broad bare feet stepped heavily in the dust along the way. When they came near the river of Fataua, everyone dispersed. Here and there some of the women, hidden by stones, squatted in the water, their skirts lifted to their waists, cleansing their hips soiled by the dust of the road, refreshing the joints that had become irritated by the walk and the heat. Thus restored they again took the road to Papeete” (Paul Gauguin, Noa noa, 1893). The relaxed pose of the figure in the foreground, her eyes shut and her body partially covered by a red pareo, is reminiscent of the reclined figure in Aha oe feii? (see fig. 4).

While fully dedicated to the depiction of Tahitian life in all its exotic splendor, Gauguin’s works from this period are equally a product of his exposure to the themes of classical art history and the work of contemporary artists who surrounded him during the early years of his artistic career. The figure in the center of the composition can be viewed as a nod to the crouching figure in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe, a ground-breaking work which had caused immense scandal at the t.mes of its first public display in 1863 and which, in defying the established conventions of academic painting, was paramount to the development of modern art in France (see fig. 5). This is a connection which Gauguin, convinced of the power and uniqueness of his art despite its limited critical reception during his lifet.mes , would be keen to establish as a way of writing himself into the history of modern art.

In turn, one of the bathers, pictured with her back to us in the right-hand side of the scene, strongly evokes the bathing figures in the works of Degas (see fig. 6). As someone who regularly exhibited with the Impressionists throughout the 1880s, Gauguin would have come across Degas’s works on numerous occasions. Upon seeing the series of Bathers exhibited by Degas in 1886, Gauguin is known to have commented on their unique expressivity and truthfulness in the following way: “Drawing had been lost, it needed to be rediscovered. When I look at these nudes, I am moved to shout - it has indeed been rediscovered” (P. Gauguin quoted in Exh. Cat., Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Degas, 1988, p. 368).

As the inscription at the lower left of the work indicates, Tahiti, scène de rivière was dedicated to his friend, M. de Marolles. According to the latest catalogue raisonné, this could refer to either M. Gaigneron de Marolles, a court judge in Papeete, or Dr. Vincent de Marolles, a member of the general counsel on matters of education in Tahiti.

Gauguin’s unique oeuvre and, in particular, the works executed during his t.mes in Tahiti, had a profound impact on subsequent generations of artists. They were instrumental to the development of numerous artistic movements that followed, including Fauvism, Expressionism, Surrealism and beyond. His legacy is still felt today, with contemporary artists such as Peter Doig acknowledging the importance of Gauguin’s work in their creative journeys: