Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana)

1893

In this portrait, Gauguin depicts the 13-year-old Tahitian girl Tehamana in a missionary dress holding a Samoan fan. A ripe mango alludes to fertility. In the background, Gauguin combined various non-European emblems—glyphs derived from an Easter Island tablet and a female deity inspired by Polynesian and Hindu sources—to build a generic sense of foreignness, transforming Tehamana into the embodiment of his own imagination.

Public domain · CC0
Free to download and reuse. Image courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago.

Artist

Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)

Date

1893

Medium

Oil on jute canvas

Dimensions

75 × 53 cm (29 1/2 × 20 7/8 in.); Framed: 98.8 × 76.6 × 8.3 cm (38 7/8 × 30 1/8 × 3 1/4 in.)

Origin

France

Collection

Art Institute of Chicago

Credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Deering McCormick