Paul Gauguin

Moline, Paris
Gustave Fayet, Béziers (acquired from the above in 1903)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Marc Gerstein, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Fans, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978, p. 343, no. 28
Marc Gerstein, 'Paul Gauguin's Arearea' in Bulletin of the Fine Arts Museum, Houston, 1981, no. 10, illustrated
Jean-Pierre Zingg, Les éventails de Paul Gauguin, Paris, 1996, pl. XXIV,  catalogued p. 94; illustrated in colour p. 97

The phrase Soyez amoureuses, vous serez heureuses (Be in love and you will be happy) was an important maxim for Gauguin throughout his career. It had already been used by the artist in a wood carving executed in 1890 while he was in Marie Henry's hostel in Le Pouldu (fig. 1). In 1895, a year after the present work was executed, the artist included the same words in a woodcut (see: Gauguin. Tahiti: l'atelier des tropiques (exhibition catalogue), Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2004, no. 162). At the end of his life, Gauguin again used the phrase in a 1902 wood relief (collection Musée d'Orsay, Paris) that decorated the lintel of his Maison de Jouir (House of Pleasure) in Tahiti, so it would be seen by all who entered his home (F. Cachin, Gauguin, Paris, 1988, pp. 260-1).

In the present work, Gauguin portrays a Tahitian woman seated in a tropical setting, her arms raised as if in prayer or devotion before either her environment or more likely to Gauguin's phrase 'Soyez amoureuses, vous serez heureuses'.

FIG. 1, Paul Gauguin, Soyez amoureuses, vous serez heureuses, 1899, polychromed wood, Boston Museum of Fine Arts