Nativity (Ne Tamari No Atua)
Artist: Paul Gauguin
Year: 1896
Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was a French painter with a post-Impressionist style influenced by Picasso, Matisse, and more. His work often contained symbolism like primitive art. He was born in 1848 and was ahead of his time. His fame didn't come until after his death, which occurred in 1903.
1954 Commentary by John Rewald:
IN JULY, 1895, GAUGUIN RETURNED to Tahiti after an absence of almost two years. Outside of Papeete he had a small lodging built for himself—thus going once more into debt — and, during the summer of 1896, he proudly informed a friend that Tahiti was beautiful and that his new "wife" was named Pahura and was fourteen years old (the painter himself was then almost fifty). There can be little doubt that in the Nativity, painted that same year, the young mother is Pahura and that the child held by the woman behind her is Gauguin’s own.
If in We Greet Thee, Mary Gauguin transposed a biblical scene into a tropical setting, he seems in this Nativity to have reversed the process and turned a native scene into a biblical one. Indeed, were it not for the faint halos that surround the heads of the recumbent woman and of the child, the vague, green wings on the standing figure, and the cattle in the background, this painting might be considered a companion piece to The Spirit of the Dead Watches, a colorful and poetic interpretation of an aspect of South Sea life.
See more Artists.