Tahitian Women on the Beach

Paul Gauguin painted Tahitian Women on the Beach shortly after his arrival in Tahiti in 1891. Two women sit quietly by the water’s edge, one in a red pareu, their faces calm and unreadable, while the pale sea stretches behind them. The flattened forms, strong outlines, and jewel-like color announce the radical break Gauguin was making with European naturalism, and the painting became one of the founding images of the Symbolist movement.