Tahitian Women on the Beach

In 1891, Gauguin went to Tahiti, an island he imagined to be a primitive paradise. The artist wanted ‘to live there in ecstasy, calm and art’. His financial difficulties, his aesthetic concerns, and this very Baudelairian ‘invitation au voyage’ drove him to that distant land to escape ‘the European struggle for money’ - to be ‘free at last’. The painter regarded this painting as significant enough to produce a variant of it in 1892 – Parau Api – now exhibited in the Staatliche Kunstammlungen Dresden.