Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Eve
Paul Gauguin French
Not on view
The original femme fatale of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Eve was a source of fascination for artists of Gauguin’s generation. Produced the year prior to his first voyage to Tahiti, this lush ceramic nude is an entirely make-believe idol, embodying the exotic fantasy of eternal youth and beauty that the artist dreamed of encountering in such an earthly paradise. Standing atop a cloissoné-style incised base depicting tropical floral imagery, Eve appears to metamorphose into—or emerge from—the blue- and ivory-hued foliage of the hollow tree trunk behind her. Streaks of golden glaze across her hair, groin, and torso suggest the sexual potency of Eve, the progenitor of life and death, humanity and sin.
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