Paul Gauguin
French, 1848­1903
Day of the Gods (Mahana no Atua)
1894
Oil on canvas
68.3 x 91.5 cm
Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.198

Gauguin left his home in France to live and work in the Polynesian island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Although small in size, this painting appears monumental, and recalls great religious frescos. However, this work of memory and imagination was painted on a trip back to Paris.

The painting is divided into three zones. A sculpture of a god looms in the background landscape. The three female figures at the edge of the pool are in a middle zone, while the mysterious lower zone represents a sacred pool that reflects “the essence of form, color.”