Description

In this tropical paradise of the artist’s invention, a deity presides over figures walking and resting on an embankment. Rhythmically arranged in groups of two and three, the figures appear more as symbolic forms than as portraits of individuals. Pools of water in interlocking, abstract zones of acidic color surround the feet of a bather, who is flanked by two prone figures—or perhaps the same person seen from two angles.

Unlike his other Tahitian-inspired landscapes, this painting was produced in Paris shortly after Paul Gauguin’s first trip to the island. Drawn from fantasy and memory, the psychedelic composition is one of the most abstract and avant-garde works of the artist’s career.

Provenance

Bought from the artist’s studio exhibition by Edgar Degas (died 1917), Paris in December 1894, for 500 francs [Degas inventory no. 71, see London 1996 and New York 1997-98]; Degas Sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, March 26-27, 1918, lot 43, sold for 12,600 francs as Le Repos au bord de la mer (Tahiti) to Jos Hessel, Paris [according to New York 1997-98]. George Bernheim, Paris by 1924; shipped from Bernheim to the Art Institute in July 1924 [see Registrar receipt dated July 12, 1924, copy in curatorial file]; sold to Frederick Clay Bartlett, Chicago in 1925 [according to Brettell 1986]; given to the Art Institute, Chicago, 1926.