Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana)
INV-6081
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)1893
Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana)
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903) →Post-Impressionism19th centurynineteenth centuryoil on canvasfrench
Date
1893
Medium
Oil on jute canvas
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.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Deering McCormick
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.
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