The Siesta

ca. 1892–94
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 822
The unaffected grace and communal ease of Tahitian women impressed Gauguin enormously. The artist worked on this painting over an extended period, incorporating numerous changes. The skirt of the woman in the foreground, for example, was originally bright red; there was a dog in the position now occupied by the basket at lower right; and the woman seated at the left edge of the porch was previously situated further to the left.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Siesta
  • Artist: Paul Gauguin (French, Paris 1848–1903 Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands)
  • Date: ca. 1892–94
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 35 x 45 3/4 in. (88.9 x 116.2 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1993, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002
  • Object Number: 1993.400.3
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

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Cover Image for 6406. The Siesta

6406. The Siesta

Gallery 822

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Gauguin took his first trip to Tahiti in the early 1890s. It’s not known if he made this picture just before his departure from that Polynesian Island in 1894, or immediately after his return to Paris.

Unlike many of Gauguin's other Tahitian paintings, The Siesta has no complex religious or mythological associations. Instead, it's a kind of Polynesian genre scene, representing a group of Tahitian women seeking refuge from the hot afternoon sun in the shade of a crudely constructed wooden porch. They are clothed in the so-called "missionary" dresses that were regularly imported from England.

As in all of Gauguin's mature paintings, radical formal simplifications lay at the very heart of his unique style. The figures consist primarily of flat areas of color bounded by clear continuous outlines. Only in the subtly mottled surface of the porch's wooden floor and in the sun-drenched landscape in the background does Gauguin allow his colors to mingle together in a more casual, less rigorously regimented manner.

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