Past Exhibition

Gauguin: Maker of Myth

Two nude women with brown skin and long black hair stand with their backs to us at a riverbank in this stylized horizontal painting. The body of the woman to our left is angled to our left with her hands raised, presumably about to plunge into the teal-colored water. The woman to our right unwraps a cloth patterned with bright yellow flowers on a deep purple background from her waist. Between the women and farther away, a bare-chested man, also with brown skin, wears a tomato-red garment across his hips as he stands hip-deep in the water holding a long spear. The top of his head is cropped by the top edge of the painting. Along the left edge of the canvas, a gnarled tree is painted as a flat field of dark, charcoal gray, and it rises off the side and top of the composition. An area of the same color, perhaps a thick root or the trunk growing nearly horizontally, spans the width of the painting, separating the women from us. The area around the trunk to our left and right is painted with fields of evergreen and cool mint. Closer to us, along the front of the root, a field of rosy pink swirls with grape purple to suggest sand. This area is dotted with harvest-yellow and pumpkin-orange vines and stylized flowers. A bunch of vivid orange flowers with pine and spring-green leaves sits on the root near the trunk, to our left. Most of the painting, especially the landscape, is painted with areas of mostly flat color. In the bottom left corner, the artist has written the title of the painting in darkred paint: “Fatata te Miki.” In the lower right corner, he signed and dated the work with periwinkle blue: “P. Gauguin 92.”
Paul Gauguin, Fatata te Miti (By the Sea), 1892, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.149

Details

  • Dates

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  • Locations

    East Building, Upper Level
Two nude women with brown skin and long black hair stand with their backs to us at a riverbank in this stylized horizontal painting. The body of the woman to our left is angled to our left with her hands raised, presumably about to plunge into the teal-colored water. The woman to our right unwraps a cloth patterned with bright yellow flowers on a deep purple background from her waist. Between the women and farther away, a bare-chested man, also with brown skin, wears a tomato-red garment across his hips as he stands hip-deep in the water holding a long spear. The top of his head is cropped by the top edge of the painting. Along the left edge of the canvas, a gnarled tree is painted as a flat field of dark, charcoal gray, and it rises off the side and top of the composition. An area of the same color, perhaps a thick root or the trunk growing nearly horizontally, spans the width of the painting, separating the women from us. The area around the trunk to our left and right is painted with fields of evergreen and cool mint. Closer to us, along the front of the root, a field of rosy pink swirls with grape purple to suggest sand. This area is dotted with harvest-yellow and pumpkin-orange vines and stylized flowers. A bunch of vivid orange flowers with pine and spring-green leaves sits on the root near the trunk, to our left. Most of the painting, especially the landscape, is painted with areas of mostly flat color. In the bottom left corner, the artist has written the title of the painting in darkred paint: “Fatata te Miki.” In the lower right corner, he signed and dated the work with periwinkle blue: “P. Gauguin 92.”
Paul Gauguin, Fatata te Miti (By the Sea), 1892, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.149

Overview: 108 works by French artist Paul Gauguin were shown in this exhibition, which brought together self-portraits, still lifes, and landscapes from every period of the artist's career to explore Gauguin's use of religious and mythological symbols. Oil paintings, pastels, prints, drawings, and sculptures from the collection of the National Gallery of Art and loans from public and private collections in Europe and the United States were included. The exhibition was organized by theme: Artist as Creator; Quest for Spirituality; Earthly Paradise/Paradise Lost; Re-creating the Past; Archetypal Females; and Religious Commonalities.

An audio tour narrated by National Gallery of Art Director Earl A. Powell III, with commentary by Mary Morton, curator of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, and others was available. Exhibition curator Belinda Thomson presented the lecture "Introduction to the Exhibition—Gauguin: Maker of Myth" on February 27. June Hargrove, professor of nineteenth-century European painting and sculpture, University of Maryland, College Park, spoke on "Calling the Earth to Witness: Paul Gauguin in the Marquesas" on May 15. Richard Brettell, Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetics, Interdisciplinary Program in Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas, spoke on "Gauguin's Selves: Visual Identities in the Age of Freud" on June 4. A film narrated by Willem Dafoe, with Alfred Molina as the voice of Gauguin, was produced by the National Gallery of Art and shown in East Building auditoriums during the exhibition. Concerts of French music in honor of the exhibition were presented by William Latchoumia on March 2 and by François Chaplin on March 20.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by Tate Modern, London, in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Belinda Thomson, independent art historian and honorary fellow, University of Edinburgh, was curator. Mary Morton, curator of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, was coordinator in Washington.

Sponsor: Bank of America was the global sponsor. The Marshall B. Coyne Foundation was a supporter through the Fund for the International Exchange of Art. Additional support was provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The film was made possible by the HRH Foundation.

Attendance: 176,006 (99 days)

Catalog: Gauguin: Maker of Myth, edited by Belinda Thomson. London: Tate Publishing, 2010.

Brochure: Gauguin: Maker of Myth, by Lynn Kellmanson Matheny. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2011.

Other Venues: Tate Modern, London, September 30, 2010–January 16, 2011

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