The Painting: From Tahiti, Paul Gauguin wrote to his friend Daniel de Monfreid back in Paris on March 11, 1892, that he had completed one painting, aside from what he called "studies." He then described The Met’s picture: "a size 50 canvas [a standard-size canvas that Gauguin had brought with him on his first trip to Tahiti]. An angel with yellow wings reveals Mary and Jesus, Tahitians just the same, to two Tahitian women—nudes dressed in pareus, a sort of cotton cloth printed with flowers that can be draped as one likes from the waist. Very somber mountainous background and flowering trees. Dark violet path and emerald green foreground, with bananas at left.—I’m rather happy with it" (Gauguin 1892, translated in Stuckey 1988).

Brought back to Paris from his first trip to Tahiti, the picture was exhibited in November 1893 in a show of the artist’s recent work at the Durand-Ruel gallery, where one could have read the following description by Gauguin’s friend, the writer and poet Charles Morice, in the exhibition catalogue:

"Two young women, two Tahitian women, their countenances marked by naïve piety, contemplate this apparition with the sincere innocence that life itself will never touch, never deflower: a woman—another woman—of a slightly superhuman stature, yet carrying on her shoulder a child who, with a tender gesture, rests his head on the head of his mother. Around the two heads the divine halo is faintly visible. Behind the worshiping female spectators with clasped hands, an angel stands among the flowers, rich and calm, a flower himself:

Ia orana Maria: Ave Maria.

And the sun and the flora, all around, pray as well, powerfully, softly, odorously (noa-noa), subtle as the smile of the Virgin herself—a smile in which religion and pleasure coexist, the majesty and the mischievousness of goddess and woman, such as these natural souls could conceive them" (Morice 1893, translated in Prather and Stuckey 1987).

It was as if one had stumbled upon a technicolor new world dominated by a Tahitian goddess clearly intended to double as the Christian Mary, but, instead of reverent Christian followers in Western garb, this red floral-bedecked Mary is accompanied by two women in blue floral and white pareus and a lavender-robed feathered angel at left who seems to float among the flowers. The plentiful crop of wild red and yellow bananas and breadfruit appears in the foreground with palm trees behind them (for identity of fruits, see Stuckey 1988). The artist later added the cartouche in capital letters in the foreground of his rough jute canvas "Ia Orana Maria," announcing Mary’s arrival in the native tongue of this land, so exotic to European eyes. The words, which translate as "We Greet Thee Maria" and remain a standard greeting in Tahiti today, were also the start of the Tahitian version of the "Hail Mary" prayer, introduced to Tahiti (which became a French colony in 1880) by Christian missionaries.

The visitors to Durand-Ruel’s gallery in 1893 were utterly astonished by this vision of Western religion in a tropical clime painted in the tertiary colors of lavender, mauve, indigo, and golden orange. For example, to critic Thadée Natanson, Gauguin seemed to have gone native in a "country of dreams" (Natanson 1893, reprinted in translation in Prather and Stuckey 1987). Most critics praised the painting as a modern masterpiece; one described it as a Tahitian Bastien-Lepage, likely an allusion to the academic painter’s Joan of Arc (The Met, 89.21.1), where saints similarly hover in midair at left of the canvas (L'Escarmouche 1893). Ia Orana Maria was the most popular of the forty-one paintings at Durand-Ruel’s in 1893 (Stuckey 1988). Still, the show overall received mixed reviews and only eleven canvases were sold (Johnson 2014), among them The Met’s picture, to Degas’s friend, the collector Michel Manzi.

The implication of Gauguin’s 1892 letter to Monfreid (see above) was that this was the first major painting that he produced in Tahiti. The artist included a sketch of the picture in the same letter (see fig. 1 above). He also made drawings and prints from the same subject (see Related Works below).

Just two years before, Gauguin had been in Brittany painting a Crucifixion, suffused with an unnatural yellow and replete with pious Breton supplicants in their traditional provincial headdresses and aprons (fig. 2); The Met’s picture was the only explicitly Christian painting from his first trip to Tahiti (Stuckey 1988). Just as in his Breton Crucifixion, Gauguin recast a religious scene in local dress, this time a Western Adoration scene in Tahitian clothing and setting.

After his six years of travel as a merchant marine from 1865 to 1871, the artist had tested out getaways from the French capital, from Brittany to Martinique, but his departure for his first trip to Tahiti in 1891 was the beginning of an entirely new kind of escape. While Gauguin first went to Tahiti under the auspices of the French government, which sponsored his mission there, he quickly fell under the spell of the Polynesian way of life, even if the Tahiti he encountered was not quite the raw land he had hoped to find (see Varnedoe 1984 and Danielsson 1965). His turn toward a Christian theme in Ia Orana Maria has been seen as related either to his recovery from a period of sickness or to a possible presentation piece for the missionary church near his new home in Mataiea (see Field 1977, Danielsson 1975, and Stuckey 1988). After his homecoming to France in 1893, he would return to Tahiti later to stay from 1895 to 1901, and then on to the Marquesas from 1901 until his death there in 1903, never to return to his wife and five children, who had retreated to Mette Gauguin’s native Denmark.

Sources: Sources for the subject and figural poses in Ia Orana Maria crossed several international borders. In 1889, the same year that Gauguin had painted the Yellow Christ (fig. 2) in Brittany, he visited the Universal Exposition (or World’s Fair) in Paris. The exhibit of the Javanese dancers was very popular, especially among such artist-friends of Gauguin’s as Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot (Druick and Zegers 1991, p. 137 n. 36). Gauguin observed the dancers and was intrigued by particular arm and hand gestures (fig. 3). The sight of such static posing within the dances would long remain in his mind, even when contemplating the arrangement of the adoring women at left in The Met’s picture, one of whom holds a hipshot pose, seemingly mid-dance.

Even before seeing the Javanese dancers, though, Gauguin had acquired photographs of medieval sculptural reliefs from the temple of Borobudur in Java (figs. 4, 5) that he would take with him to Tahiti as a part of a collection of photographs of art from different periods and cultures that became his own personal musée imaginaire (imaginary museum, or museum without walls, to use André Malraux’s term). Bernard Dorival (1951) was the first to connect various figures in these photographs to those in Gauguin’s paintings. Poses in as many as forty of Gauguin’s Polynesian paintings have been traced to the Borobudur photographs (Childs 2013, pp. 97, 263–64 n. 28). The pose of the two adoring women in The Met’s picture is based directly on that of the devoted female followers with hands clasped in prayer at left in the top register of the Borobudur reliefs (fig. 4).

In keeping with the ethnological thinking of Gauguin’s time, he seems to have understood the medieval Javanese depicted in the reliefs as the ancestors of the Tahitians of 1891; Varnedoe (1984) stressed that the use of these poses may have been motivated by an attempt at recapturing such lost ethnological links. At the same time, there seems to have been something about Gauguin’s contemporary Tahitians that reminded him of the seemingly timeless, fixed poses found in the Borobudur reliefs. Bengt Danielsson (1965), Swedish anthropologist and crewmember of the Kon-Tiki raft expedition to French Polynesia (1947), noted that the painter’s advice to young artists was to "’Let everything you do carry the imprint of repose and tranquility . . . . Every figure should be static.’" Danielsson continued, "In Tahiti, Gauguin for the first time found people who embodied his stylistic ideal, for indeed the Tahitians have an astonishing ability to sit motionless for hours at a stretch, staring straight into the air at nothing. While many of the poses in Gauguin’s pictures seem by Western standards contrived and unnatural [e.g. the pareu-clad figures at the rear left of The Met’s picture], they are in fact very realistic, and hardly a day goes by in Tahiti [that I do not] ‘recognize’ scenes from Gauguin’s paintings." In fact, Gauguin had been attracted to such static poses even earlier in Brittany and Martinique.

Teilhet-Fisk (1983) noted Gauguin’s early confusion not only about what the artist understood to be the common stock of medieval and contemporary Javanese, Cambodians, and Tahitians, but even about the manner in which Tahitians carried their children, which Teilhet-Fisk states was never on their shoulder, as in the present picture. The image of the child carried on its mother’s shoulder actually seems to have come from another photograph that Gauguin bought in Port-Said, Egypt, and took with him to Tahiti (discussed and reproduced in Küster 1999). Much like the same subject in Léon Bonnat’s An Egyptian Peasant Woman and Her Child (The Met, 87.15.97), the photograph served as a model for the pose of Mary and child, bringing yet a fourth culture into the mix of Ia Orana Maria. Ever activating his creative spark, Gauguin invented new works—whether composed of animate beings or inanimate objects—, deriving compositional devices from a myriad of ancient and contemporary sources.

Cultural Hybridity: Perhaps even more of a creative forager than Pablo Picasso or Robert Rauschenberg, Gauguin formed an art based in multiple cultures from what he had at hand in his studio in Tahiti, placed, with other impressions, into the blender of his own imagination. Abigail Solomon-Godeau (1992) has discussed Gauguin’s techniques of appropriation from other cultures as a bricolage (construction or creation from a diverse range of available things); still other commentators, such as his contemporary Pissarro (2002), saw his blending of cultures into a new hybrid whole as "poaching on someone’s ground" or "pillaging the savages of Oceania." Elizabeth Childs (2001) has referred to the photographs of images that Gauguin took with him to Tahiti, ranging from Borobudur to paintings by Rembrandt and Manet, as his "surrogate art community." From this community, he appropriated themes, poses, backgrounds, and more, again and again. The Met’s painting is but the first in a long string of such hybrid images Gauguin produced in Tahiti using photographic sources. Although Gauguin established a tendency toward bricolage even before his first trip to Tahiti, the hybridity of Ia Orana Maria, encompassing Western, Polynesian, Egyptian, and Asian cultures, is remarkable and ambitious. Filled with ideas of himself as a "larger-than-life persona" (Ives 2002, p. 14) and dressing the part at the Durand-Ruel opening in a dramatic cape and self-carved walking stick (The Met, 67.187.45a, b), Gauguin tried to sell the painting to the French state for the Musée du Luxembourg but was rebuffed.

Embracing Tahiti: When Gauguin was leaving France for his first voyage to Tahiti, he told a journalist that he was headed there to make "very simple art . . . to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain, and to do this with nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true" (quoted by Huret 1891; translated in Varnedoe 1984). The notion of living among "savages" directly opposed the cosmopolitan life of Paris; it would entail forging a new and foreign life. To his wife, Mette, Gauguin wrote from Brittany of what he hoped to find in Tahiti: "May the day come (and perhaps soon) when I’ll run away to the woods of an island in Oceania, to live there in ecstasy, calmness and art. Surrounded by a new family [the artist went to Tahiti without his family], and far from the European struggle for money. There in Tahiti I shall be able to listen to the sweet murmuring music of my heart’s beating in the silence of beautiful tropical nights. I shall be in amorous harmony with the mysterious beings of my environment. Free at last, without money trouble, I’ll be able to love, to sing, to die" (Malingue 1946, my translation). While Gauguin quickly found his goals for everyday living to be unrealistic, he held fast to his ideal of Tahiti as a mythic, otherworldly place, conjuring his vision in such canvases as Ia Orana Maria.

Related Works: Several drawings and prints of the figure of the mother with the child on her shoulder exist. A related charcoal, red chalk, and white pastel drawing (1893–95, 61.145.2) and a zincograph (1894–95, 62.501.1) that was published in L’Epreuve in March 1895 are in The Met’s collection. Gauguin pasted a black-and-white reproduction of Ia Orana Maria into the Louvre "Noa Noa" manuscript (RF 7259, 1) and colored it with watercolor. In Faa Iheihe (fig. 6) and the woodcut Change of Residence (fig. 7), among several others, he reused the pose of the adoring women seen at left in The Met’s picture. Starr Figura (2014) discussed his appropriation and multiple reuse of elements of the painting in works on paper.

Jane R. Becker 2017

Citations:

Elizabeth C. Childs, "The Colonial Lens: Gauguin, Primitivism, and Photography in the Fin de siècle," in Lynda Jessup, ed., Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 54.

Elizabeth Childs, Vanishing Paradise: Art and Exoticism in Colonial Tahiti, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2013.

Douglas W. Druick and Peter Zegers, "Le kampong et la pagoda: Gauguin à l’exposition universelle de 1889," in Gauguin: Actes du colloque Gauguin Musée d’Orsay 11–13 janvier 1989, Paris, Documentation française, 1991.

Jules Huret, "Paul Gauguin: Devant ses tableaux," L’Echo de Paris, February 23, 1891, p. 2.

Maurice Malingue, ed. Lettres de Gauguin à sa femme et à ses amis, Paris, Editions Bernard Grasset, 1946, pp. 157, 184.

Camille Pissarro, Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, Boston, MFA Publications, 2002, p. 221.

For all other citations, see References.

Inscription: Signed, dated, and inscribed: (lower right) P Gauguin 91; (lower left) IA ORANA MARIA (Hail Mary)

Michel Manzi, Paris (1893–1915; bought for Fr 2,000 from the Durand-Ruel exhibition, November 1893–d. 1915; his estate, 1915–19; his estate sale, Galerie Manzi et Joyant, Paris, March 13–14, 1919, no. 56, ill., for Fr 58,000 to Knoedler); [Knoedler, New York, 1919; stock no. 14697; sold in July for $20,000 to Lewisohn]; Adolph Lewisohn, New York (1919–d. 1938); his son, Sam A. Lewisohn, New York (1938–d. 1951)

Paris. Durand-Ruel. "Exposition d'oeuvres récentes de Paul Gauguin," November 1893, no. 1 (as "Ia Orana Maria [Ave Maria]").

New York. M. Knoedler & Co. December 1919? [see Field 1919].

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition," May 8–August 1920, unnumbered cat. (p. 10, as "Ia Orana Maria," lent by Adolph Lewisohn).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings," May 3–September 15, 1921, no. 47 (lent by Adolph Lewisohn).

New York. Union League Club. "Exhibition of 'Modern' Pictures Representing Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Expressionist, and Cubist Painters," April 8–10, 1924, no. 16.

New York. Durand-Ruel. "Loan Exhibition of French Masterpieces of the Late XIX Century," March 20–April 10, 1928, no. 8 (as "Ia orana Maria," lent by Mr. Adolph Lewisohn).

New York. M. Knoedler & Co. "A Century of French Painting," November 12–December 8, 1928, no. 29.

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Summer Exhibition: Retrospective," June 15–September 28, 1930, no. 39 (lent by Adolph Lewisohn, New York).

London. Royal Academy of Arts. "French Art: 1200–1900," January 4–March 12, 1932, no. 540 [commemorative catalogue, no. 382].

Art Institute of Chicago. "A Century of Progress," June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 366 (as "We Greet You, Mary" ["Ia Orana Maria"]).

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Modern Works of Art," November 20, 1934–January 20, 1935, no. 12 (as "We Greet You, Mary [Ia Orana Maria]," lent by the Adolph Lewisohn collection).

Toledo Museum of Art. "Cézanne, Gauguin," June–August 1935, unnumbered cat. (lent by Mr. Adolph Lewisohn).

New York. Wildenstein & Co., Inc. "Paul Gauguin: 1848–1903," March 20–April 18, 1936, no. 17 (as "'We Greet Thee, Mary' Ia Orana Maria," lent by the Adolph Lewisohn Collection, New York City).

Cleveland Museum of Art. "Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition," June 26–October 4, 1936, no. 276 (lent by The Adolph Lewisohn Collection, New York).

Paris. Palais National des Arts. "Chefs d'œuvre de l'art français," July–September 1937, no. 326 (lent by Collection Adolphe Lewisohn, New-York) [no. 46 in Huyghe 1937].

Brooklyn Museum. "Gauguin Prints and Drawings," June 17–October 2, 1938, no catalogue (see installation photograph in curatorial file).

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Art in Our Time," May 10–September 30, 1939, no. 67 (as "We Greet You, Mary [Ia Orana Maria]," lent by the Lewisohn collection, New York).

New York. World's Fair. "Masterpieces of Art: European & American Paintings, 1500–1900," May–October 1940, no. 355 (lent by the Lewisohn collection, New York).

New York. Wildenstein & Co., Inc. "A Loan Exhibition of Paul Gauguin," April 3–May 4, 1946, no. 19 (as "Ave Maria—'Ia Orana Maria'," lent by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Lewisohn).

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Paintings from New York Private Collections," July 2–September 22, 1946, unnumbered cat. (as "We Greet You, Mary [Ia Orana Maria])," lent by Mr. and Mrs. Sam A. Lewisohn).

Paris. Orangerie des Tuileries. "Gauguin: Exposition du centenaire," 1949, no. 25 (lent by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Lewisohn, New-York).

New York. Paul Rosenberg. "The 19th Century Heritage," March 7–April 1, 1950, no. 8 (as "Ia Orana Maria [Ave Maria]," lent by Mr. and Mrs. Sam A. Lewisohn).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Lewisohn Collection," November 2–December 2, 1951, no. 34 (Bequest of Samuel A. Lewisohn to The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Paris. Musée National d'Art Moderne. "L'oeuvre du XXe siècle: peintures - sculptures," May–June 1952, no. 31.

New York. Wildenstein & Co., Inc. "Loan Exhibition: Gauguin," April 5–May 5, 1956, no. 22.

Art Institute of Chicago. "Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture," February 12–March 29, 1959, no. 28 (as "I Hail Thee, Mary [Ia Orana Maria])".

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture," April 23–May 31, 1959, no. 28.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 14, 1970–June 1, 1971, no. 384.

Washington. National Gallery of Art. "The Art of Paul Gauguin," May 1–July 31, 1988, no. 135 (as "Ia orana Maria").

Art Institute of Chicago. "The Art of Paul Gauguin," September 17–December 11, 1988, no. 135.

Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "The Art of Paul Gauguin," January 10–April 20, 1989, no. 135.

Moscow. State Pushkin Museum. "Gauguin," May 20–July 20, 1989, no. 22.

Leningrad [St. Petersburg]. State Hermitage Museum. "Gauguin," July 30–October 4, 1989, no. 22.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections," June 18–October 20, 2002, no. 55.

Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "Gauguin Tahiti," September 30, 2003–January 19, 2004, no. 74.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Gauguin Tahiti," February 29–June 20, 2004, no. 74.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920," February 4–May 6, 2007, no. 106.

Berlin. Neue Nationalgalerie. "Französische Meisterwerke des 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 1–October 7, 2007, unnumbered cat.

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT.

Paul Gauguin. Letter to de Monfreid. March 11, 1892 [published in "Lettres de Gauguin à Daniel de Monfreid," A. Joly-Segalen, ed., 1950, p. 54], describes this work, implying that it is the first finished painting that he has completed in Tahiti, as distinct from sketches and studies, adding that he is rather happy with it; includes a sketch of the work in a horizontal format (ill. between pp. 80 and 81).

Alfred Jarry. Ia Orana Maria. 1893/94 [published in exh. cat. "Gauguin et le groupe de Pont-Aven," Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, 1950, pp. 25, 61].

Charles Morice. Exposition d'oeuvres récentes de Paul Gauguin. Exh. cat., Durand-Ruel. Paris, November 1893, pp. 14–15.

"Opinions d'artiste." L'escarmouche (November 19, 1893), p. 3 [see Stuckey 1988, p. 246], calls it a Tahitian Bastien-Lepage.

Thadée Natanson. "Expositions: Oeuvres récentes de Paul Gauguin." La revue blanche 5 (December 1893), p. 420, describes the painting at Gauguin's 1893 exhibition at the Galeries Durand-Ruel in Paris.

Louis Cardon. "L'Exposition Paul Gauguin chez Duran-Ruel [sic]." L'Evénement 22 (November 10, 1893), p. 2, as "Ave Maria"; recommends seeing the painting, which he describes as "d'une coloration intense et délicate, d'une grande profondeur de sentiment—œuvre devant laquelle aucun peintre, aucun érudit en l'art d'amalgamer les tons ne saurait rester indifférent. Il y a chez M. Gauguin un tempérament extraordinaire de coloriste; sa palette recelle des pierres précieuses; elle évoque des émaux, des majoliques; son dessin est d'une ampleur rarement égalée." (of an intense and delicate coloration, of a great depth of sentiment, a work before which no painter, no scholar in the art of amalgamating tones could rest indifferent. There is in Mr. Gauguin an extraordinary temperament as a colorist; his palette conceals precious stones; it evokes enamels, majolicas; his drawing is of a rarely equalled magnitude.).

Armand Dayot. "La vie artistique." Figaro illustré 5 (1894), ill. p. III, as "Ave Maria, Souvenirs de Taiti".

Achille Delaroche. "D'un point de vue esthétique: A propos du peintre Paul Gauguin." L'Ermitage 5 (January 1894), p. 38, calls it a "vitrail lumineux de riches fleurs végétales et humaines . . . . Flore surnaturelle qui prie et chair qui fleurit, sur le seuil Indécis du conscient et de l'nconscient " (luminous stained-glass window of flowering plant and human riches . . . . Supernatural flora that prays and flesh that flowers, on the uncertain threshold of the conscious and the unconscious); discusses its use of color to illuminate the interior force of nature.

Paul Gauguin. Letter. ?February 1895, unpaginated [see Ref. Autograph Letters and Documents 1965, which includes a reproduction of the first page], remarks that a reproduction of it appeared in "Le figaro illustré" [apparently recently].

Paul Gauguin. Letter to Georges-Daniel de Monfreid. June 1899 [published in "Lettres de Gauguin à Daniel de Monfreid," A. Segalen, ed., 1950, p. 145], mentions that he would like to have "Ia Orana Maria" shown at Vollard's gallery in 1900—at the same time as the exhibition of the Symbolists, Pointillists, and Rose Croix—if Manzi would agree to lend it.

Paul Gauguin. Letter to Georges-Daniel de Monfreid. April 1900 [published in "Lettres de Gauguin à Daniel de Monfreid," A. Joly-Segalen, ed., 1950, p. 158], mentions that he would like to have it exhibited at Vollard's gallery during the Exposition Universelle—one of several good older pictures to be shown with his recent work.

Paul Gauguin. Letter to Ambrose Vollard. September 1900 [reprinted in "Letters to Ambroise Vollard & André Fontainas," ed. John Rewald, San Francisco, 1943, p. 39], remarks that he sold it to Manzi for 2,000 francs.

Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice. "Noa Noa". Paris, 19[??], p. 19.

Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice. "Noa Noa: Point de vue." La plume: Littéraire, artistique, philosophique (1901), pp. 297–98.

[François] Thiébault-Sisson. "Au jour le jour: Paul Gauguin." Le temps 43 (September 2, 1903), p. 2.

H[enri]. Castets. "Nécrologie: Gauguin." Revue universelle: Recueil documentaire universel et illustré 3 (October 15, 1903), p. 536, as "Ave Maria".

Jean de Rotonchamp. Paul Gauguin, 1848–1903. Paris, 1906, pp. 107–8, 118–19, states that Gauguin titled it "Ta orana, Maria, Je vous salue, Marie, ou l'Ave Maria"; notes its location as in the Manzi collection and lists it among those exhibited at Durand-Ruel in 1893.

Charles Morice. Paul Gauguin. first ed. [new ed. 1920]. Paris, 1919, p. 171 n. 1, pp. 183, 201.

Hamilton Easter Field. "Art New and Old in Current Shows." Arts & Decoration 12 (December 15, 1919), p. 109.

Egmont Arens. "The Savagery of Gauguin: A Review of Several Current Books." Playboy no. 6 (1919), p. 4, ill. p. 5, as in the collection of Adolph Lewisohn.

"French, English, and American Paintings." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15 (September 1920), p. 208.

Pola Gauguin. "Paul Gauguin." Kunst og Kultur 9 (1921), p. 248.

Achille Delaroche. "Concerning the Painter Paul Gauguin, from an Aesthetic Point of View." Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals. New York, 1921, p. 41.

Charles Chassé. Gauguin et le groupe de Pont-Aven. Paris, 1921, pp. 50–52, remarks on the resemblance of the head of the Virgin to one by de Haan.

A Committee of Citizens and Supporters of the Museum. Protest against the Present Exhibition of Degenerate "Modernistic" Works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [New York], September 1921 [reprinted in Ref. Rewald 1989], include it in a list of paintings that are "simply pathological in conception, drawing, perspective and color".

Royal Cortissoz. "Modern Unrest in French Art: Some Leading Types Shown At the Metropolitan." New York Tribune (May 8, 1921), p. 7.

John Gould Fletcher. Paul Gauguin: His Life and Art. New York, 1921, pp. 108, 129.

Stephen Bourgeois. "A Notable Group of French Modernists." Arts & Decoration (November 1922), pp. 25, 74, ill.

Gustave Kahn. "Paul Gauguin." L'art et les artistes 12 (October 1925–February 1926), p. 61.

Louis Réau. L'art français aux Etats-Unis. Paris, 1926, p. 147, as in the Adolphe Lewisohn collection.

Maurice Denis. Journal entry. October 3, 1927 [published in Maurice Denis, "Journal," vol. 3, 1959, p. 83], mentions "le grand Gauguin, Orana, celui que j'ai restauré" in the Lewisohn collection during a visit to New York.

Stephan Bourgeois. The Adolph Lewisohn Collection of Modern French Paintings and Sculptures. New York, 1928, pp. 160–61, ill.

Stephan Bourgeois. "The Passion of Art Collecting: Notes on the Adolph Lewisohn Collection." Art News (April 14, 1928), pp. 64, 67, ill.

Edith von Térey. "Die Sammlung Adolph Lewisohn, New York." Kunst und Künstler 27 (August 1929), p. 418, ill. p. 424.

A. Alexandre. Paul Gauguin, sa vie et le sens de son oeuvre. Paris, 1930, pp. 133, 135–40, 157, 161, 263–64, ill.

R. H. Wile[n]ski. French Painting. Boston, 1931, pp. 289, 294, pl. 120.

Stephan Bourgeois and Waldemar George. "The French Paintings of the XIXth and XXth Centuries in the Adolph and Samuel Lewisohn Collection." Formes nos. 28–29 (1932), pp. 301–302.

André Dezarrois. "Chroniques: L'art français à Londres." Revue de l'art ancien et moderne 61 (January–May 1932), p. 103.

James Johnson Sweeney. "Exhibition of French Art, Burlington House." Creative Art 10 (May 1932), pp. 350, 353.

A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Lent from American Collections. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 1933, p. 52, no. 366, discusses related works including drawings and prints of the figure of the mother with the child on her shoulder.

"The Century of Progress Exhibition of the Fine Arts." Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 27 (April–May 1933), p. 67.

Daniel Catton Rich. "The Exhibition of French Art 'Art Institute of Chicago'." Formes no. 33 (1933), p. 383.

"Whole Century of French Painting Presented in the Progress Exhibit." Art Digest 7 (May 15, 1933), p. 23, as "Tahitian Mary" lent from Adolph Lewisohn collection, New York.

Alfred H. Barr Jr., ed. Modern Works of Art. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1934, pp. 12, 23, no. 12, pl. 12.

Charles Kunstler. Gauguin: Peintre maudit. Paris, 1934, p. 170, mentions a lithograph after it.

Beril Becker. Paul Gauguin: The Calm Madman. New York, 1935, pp. 195–96.

Paul Gauguin, 1848–1903. Exh. cat., Wildenstein & Co., Inc. New York, 1936, pp. 29, 46, no. 17, ill.

Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition. Exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, 1936, pp. 107–8, no. 276, ill.

Sam A. Lewisohn. Painters and Personality: A Collector's View of Modern Art. [New York], 1937, pp. 61–63, ill.

Pola Gauguin. My Father Paul Gauguin. first American ed. [Norwegian ed. (?)]. New York, 1937, pp. 171–72, suggests that this picture was inspired by Gauguin hearing the news of the birth of his child to his former mistress in Paris.

Introduction by René Huyghe. Cent trente chefs-d'œuvre de l'art français du moyen age au XXe siècle. Paris, 1937, pl. 111.

Charles Sterling in Chefs d'œuvre de l'art français. Exh. cat., Palais National des Arts. Paris, 1937, p. 162, no. 326.

Martin Tow. Tainted Paradise: A Study of the Life and Art of Paul Gauguin. New York, 1937, pp. 107, 153.

René Huyghe. La peinture française: XVIIIme et XIXme siècles (figures et portraits). Paris, 1937, unpaginated, no. 46, ill. (detail).

Sam A. Lewisohn. "Personalities Past and Present." Art News, section I (The 1939 Annual), 37 (February 25, 1939), pp. 70, 154, ill. (installation photo of Lewisohn's home).

Mary H. Piexotto. "Famous Art Collections: The Lewisohn Collection." Studio 117 (March 1939), pp. 95, 101, ill.

Art in our Time. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1939, unpaginated, no. 67, ill., calls the subject "a poetic translation into Tahitian terms of the traditional 'Adoration of the Shepherds'".

R. H. Wilenski. Modern French Painters. New York, [1940], p. 131.

Walter Pach in Masterpieces of Art: Catalogue of European and American Paintings, 1500–1900. Exh. cat., World's Fair. New York, 1940, pp. 242, 244, no. 355, ill.

Regina Shoolman and Charles E. Slatkin. The Enjoyment of Art in America. Philadelphia, 1942, p. 561.

Maurice Malingue. Gauguin. Monaco, 1943, pp. 30, 89, ill.

Henry La Farge. "John La Farge and the South Sea Idyll." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7 (1944), p. 38, identifies the Madonna as Tahitian and the angel as Maori.

Hans Graber. Paul Gauguin nach eigenen und fremden Zeugnissen. Basel, 1946, pp. 351–52, 377, ill. between pp. 284 and 285.

Raymond Cogniat. Gauguin. Paris, 1947, p. 33, pl. 63.

Maurice Malingue. Gauguin: Le peintre et son oeuvre. Paris, 1948, unnumbered colorpl., as "Ia Ohana Maria 'Je vous salue, Marie'".

Henri Perruchot. Gauguin: Sa vie ardente et misérable. Paris, 1948, pp. 188, 190–91, ill. opp. p. 97, comments on its spiritual qualities and contrasts it to "The Yellow Christ" (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo) made while Gauguin was still in Britanny.

Jean Leymarie. "Musée de l'Orangerie: Exposition Gauguin." Musées de France (June 1949), p. 110, notes that Arsène Alexandre calls it a "portique de l'oeuvre tahitienne," but does not cite a source.

Frank Elgar. Gauguin. Paris, 1949, unpaginated, no. 16, pl. 16.

Denys Sutton. "The Paul Gauguin Exhibition." Burlington Magazine 91, no. 559 (October 1949), p. 284 n. 9.

Alexander Watt. "The Centenary Exhibition of the Work of Gauguin." Apollo 50 (October 1949), p. 98.

Lee van Dovksi [Herbert Lewandowski]. Paul Gauguin oder die Flucht vor der Zivilisation. Delphi, 1950, pp. 281, 347, no. 245, pl. 22, as "Ja orana Maria ("Ich grüße dich, Maria!").

Georg Schmidt. Gauguin. Bern, 1950, p. 28, ill. p. 49.

Bernard Dorival. "Sources of the Art of Gauguin from Java, Egypt and Ancient Greece." Burlington Magazine 93 (April 1951), pp. 118–19, fig. 16, describes how Gauguin used various elements from the decoration of the Javanese temple of Borobudur in this picture; illustrates a photograph of the temple from Gauguin's collection (fig. 15).

Henri Dorra. "Ia Orana Maria." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10 (May 1952), pp. 254–60, ill.

Henri Dorra. "The First Eves in Gauguin's Eden." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 41 (March 1953), p. 189, fig. 2.

Henri Dorra. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures: Paul Gauguin, 1848–1903. Album MG, New York, 1953, unpaginated, fig. 16 (color), calls it "the first work of importance that [Gauguin] executed in the island".

Bernard Dorival, ed. Carnet de Tahiti.. By Paul Gauguin. facsimile of Gauguin's Carnet de Tahiti. Paris, 1954, pp. 17, 26, 29, 36, 58 n. 3, p. 60 n. 3, p. 61 n. 2, p. 62 n. 1 to p. 39, remarks that although the work is dated 1891, it can be inferred that he completed it shortly before writing his letter to Monfreid of March 11, 1892 [see Ref. Gauguin 1892].

John Rewald. Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). New York, 1954, unpaginated, colorpl. 14.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 40.

John Rewald. Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin. 1st ed. New York, 1956, pp. 502, 506, 509, 514, ill. [3rd, rev. ed., 1978, pp. 466, 474, ill. p. 467], states that Gauguin probably obtained a photograph of Borobudur that inspired the poses at the Paris World's Fair of 1889.

B. H. Friedman. "Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions." Burlington Magazine 98 (June 1956), p. 212.

Robert J. Goldwater. Paul Gauguin. 1st ed. [concise ed. 1983]. New York, [1957], p. 100, colorpl. missing.

A. Hyatt Mayor. "The Gifts that Made the Museum." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (November 1957), p. 106.

John Rewald. Gauguin Drawings. New York, 1958, p. 30, illustrates a charcoal drawing of the same year and title, dedicated to Count [Antoine] de La Rochefoucauld, editor of the periodical "Le coeur"; also illustrates two undated prints showing the Virgin and Child reversed.

Claus Virch and Samuel J. Wagstaff Jr. in Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 1959, pp. 8, 19, 38–39, no. 28, colorpl. 28, suggest Italian primitive art, which Gauguin admired greatly, as the source for both the subject and composition; note that the still life of bananas and bowl appear in "The Repast" (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

Alfred Frankfurter. "Midas on Parnassus." Art News Annual 28 (1959), p. 43, calls it one of Gauguin's "two or three acknowledged masterpieces"; gives sale prices.

John Canaday. Mainstreams of Modern Art. New York, 1959, pp. 382–83, fig. 458, discusses the picture's synthetic nature.

John Canaday. Metropolitan Seminars in Art: Great Periods in Painting, Portfolio K: Painting in Transition: Precursors of Modern Art. New York, 1960, p. 24.

René Huyghe et al., ed. Gauguin. Paris, 1961, pp. 34, 87, 90, 122, 234, ill., comment that the influence of Japanese art should also be acknowledged.

Henri Perruchot. La vie de Gauguin. [Paris], 1961, pp. 252–53, 271, 275, remarks that Léonce Bénédite, curator of the Luxembourg, refused Gauguin's offer of it as a gift.

John Rewald. Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gauguin. New York, 1962, pp. 502, 506, 509, ill., suggests that Gauguin's lover Tehura is represented in this picture.

Georges Wildenstein. Gauguin. Vol. 1, French ed. [English ed. 1965]. Paris, 1964, p. 167, no. 428, ill.

Georges Boudaille. Gauguin. New York, 1964, pp. 121, 179–80, 190, 194, 207, ill. in color.

Bengt Danielsson. Gauguin in the South Seas. London, 1965, pp. 90–91, 142, 144–45, 190, states that the phrase "Ia Orana Maria" is Tahitian for "Ave Maria" and suggests that a visit to the Catholic church in Mataiea might have inspired the painting.

Patrick O'Reilly. Catalogue du Musée Gauguin, Papeari, Tahiti. Paris, 1965, p. 61 under nos. 210–11.

Patrick O'Reilly. Catalogue du Musée Gauguin, Papeari, Tahiti. Paris, 1966, p. 61, no. 210, as "Ia Orana Maria. Je vous salue Marie".

William M. Kane. "Gauguin's 'Le Cheval Blanc': Sources and Syncretic Meanings." Burlington Magazine 108 (July 1966), p. 357.

Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, XIX–XX Centuries. New York, 1967, pp. 170–74, ill, extensively catalogue the picture and link it to the artist's attempt to revive Christian themes; remark that the figures of the Virgin and Child appear again, with some variations, in a watercolor, a charcoal drawing, two monotypes, and zinc engravings.

Paul C. Nicholls. Gauguin. New York, 1967, pp. 13, 25, no. 34, ill. in color.

Bengt Danielsson. "Gauguin's Tahitian Titles." Burlington Magazine 109 (April 1967), p. 231 n. 20, notes that Gauguin often would have heard the Tahitian version of the "Ave Maria" prayer after which he gave the painting its title in the Catholic Church in Mataiea.

Margaretta M. Salinger. "Windows Open to Nature." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27 (Summer 1968), unpaginated, ill.

Alexander O. Vietor. Letter. 1968, unpaginated, observes that "Ia Orana" also translates, in more general terms, as "good morning" or just a greeting.

Bengt Danielsson. "The Exotic Sources of Gauguin's Art." Expedition 11 (Summer 1969), pp. 22–23, ill., suggests that the subject came from hearing the Tahitian version of the prayer "Ave Maria".

Patrik Reuterswärd, et al. Gauguin i Söderhavet [Gauguin in the South Sea Islands]. Exh. cat., Etnografiska Museet and Nationalmuseum. Stockholm, 1970, pp. 47, 55.

Edith A. Standen in Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. New York, [1970], p. 89, ill. (color).

John Russell. Gauguin. Paris, 1970, pp. 36–37, no. 14, colorpl. 14, remarks that in Tahiti Gauguin wished to "re-do Puvis from Nature" with both a frieze-like construction and an abundance of strong color.

Wayne Andersen and Barbara Klein. Gauguin's Paradise Lost. New York, 1971, pp. 187–88, 190–94, 232, pl. 109, as "We Greet Thee, Mary".

Alan Bowness. Gauguin. New York, 1971, pp. 11–12, colorpl. 32, suggests that it was painted around Christmas in 1891.

G. M. Sugana. L'opera completa di Gauguin. 2nd ed. [1st ed., 1969; Engl. ed, 1973]. Milan, 1972, p. 102, no. 263, ill.

D. de Hoop Scheffer. "Ia Orana Maria (Ik groet U, Maria)." Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum (December 1972), pp. 171–76, ill.

Linnea Stonesifer Dietrich. "A Study of Symbolism in the Tahitian Painting of Paul Gauguin: 1891–1893." PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1973, pp. 13, 67, 95–99, 103, 203–4, 207, credits Gauguin's interest in the Maori religion for his preoccupation with the origins and purposes of life, as demonstrated in this canvas; suggests that the blending of themes from Tahitian and Christian life here indicate his readiness to make analogies between the two cultures; calls it a transitional work, between the Breton years and the first Tahitian period, as well as his first attempt with familiar iconography in an unfamiliar setting.

Ziva Amishai-Maisels. "Gauguin's 'Philosophical Eve'." Burlington Magazine 115 (June 1973), p. 374.

Lydie Huyghe in René Huyghe. La Relève du réel: la peinture française au XIXe siècle: impressionnisme, symbolisme. Paris, 1974, pp. 350–51, 443, ill.

Pierre Leprohon. Paul Gauguin. Paris, 1975, pp. 210, 330, 338, 346.

Bengt Danielsson. Gauguin à Tahiti et aux îles Marquises. Papeete, 1975, p. 91.

George Szabó. The Robert Lehman Collection. New York, 1975, p. 99, compares it to "Tahitian Women Bathing" (1892, The Met 1975.1.179).

Richard S. Field. Paul Gauguin: The Paintings of the First Voyage to Tahiti. PhD diss., Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. New York, 1977, pp. 54, 57–74, 78, 301, 306, 315, 360, no. 17, analyzes in detail its composition, color, and symbolism, and through comparisons with earlier and later works; calls it a culminating work, as it unites several developments of 1891; notes that it appears, one of three size 50 canvases, as no. 24 on a list, dated April or May 1892, on 2r and 3r in the "Carnet de Tahiti" of Gauguin.

Maurice Sérullaz in Phaidon Encyclopedia of Impressionism. Oxford, 1978, p. 100.

Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski. Paul Gauguin in the Context of Symbolism. PhD diss., Princeton University. New York, 1978, pp. 187 n. 2, pp. 276, 358 n. 2.

Ziva Amishai-Maisels. "Gauguin's Early Tahitian Idols." Art Bulletin (June 1978), p. 331 n. 4.

Mary Lynn Zink. "Gauguin's 'Poèmes barbares' and the Tahitian Chant of Creation." Art Journal 38 (Fall 1978), p. 21 n. 17, remarks that as this angel announces the divine presence of the Virgin and Child, so the angel of "Poèmes barbares" announces "Ta'aroa's divine presence as it is evoked in the Tahitian Chant of Creation".

Susan Wise. Paul Gauguin: His Life and his Paintings. Chicago, 1980, p. 13, colorpl. 15.

Wendy Slatkin. "Maternity and Sexuality in the 1890s." Woman's Art Journal 1 (Spring–Summer 1980), pp. 14, 18 n. 6, states that the women in the background are making motions of prayer, comparing their gestures to those in "The Offering" (1902, W 624, Bührle Collection, Zurich).

Elda Fezzi. Gauguin: Every Painting, II. New York, 1980, pp. 30, 32, no. 427, ill. (overall and color detail).

Audrey Leigh Hill. "The Re-evaluation of Gauguin as an Artist: 1889 to 1980." Master's thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 1981, p. 103.

Jürgen Harten in Bilder sind nicht verboten: Kunstwerke seit der Mitte des 19.Jahrhunderts mit ausgewählten Kultgeräten aus dem Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Exh. cat., Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf, 1982, p. 236, ill. p. 167.

Robert Goldwater. Paul Gauguin. concise ed. [lst ed. 1957]. New York, 1983, p. 74, ill. opp. p. 74 (color), remarks that Gauguin portrays this "Adoration of the Shepherds" as he supposed it must appear to the Tahitians, as he had portrayed the religious visions of the Breton peasants.

Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk. Paradise Reviewed: An Interpretation of Gauguin's Polynesian Symbolism. no. 31, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983, pp. 1, 48, 171, 185 n. 34, dates it December 1891.

Mary Lynn Zink Vance. "Gauguin's Polynesian Pantheon as a Visual Language." PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1983, pp. 29, 134, 348, 386, no. 5, pl. 5, remarks that by the time Gauguin arrived, the old religious myths and rituals had been eradicated and the native Tahitians were more familiar with biblical texts, prayers, and hymns, and that this painting alludes to their Christian beliefs; notes the use of "Christian" wings on the angel; draws a parallel between this presentation of the Christian deity and that of the Tahitian Taaroa.

Robert Rosenblum in Robert Rosenblum and H. W. Janson. 19th-Century Art. New York, 1984, pp. 426, 453, colorpl. 77, suggests that the foreground fruits may evoke not only the gifts of the Magi, but also the Tahitian offerings made to the idols of the Maori religion, whose legends Gauguin was studying at that time.

Kirk Varnedoe. "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Ed. William Rubin. New York, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 178, 187, 189, 191, ill. (color and black and white).

Ziva Amishai-Maisels. Gauguin's Religious Themes. PhD diss., Hebrew University. New York, 1985, pp. 1, 56–57, 190, 288–98, 304–5, 307, 316, 325, 327 nn. 9, 11, 16, p. 328 nn. 19, 21–23, 26–27, p. 334 n. 78, p. 329 n. 37, pp. 358, 383, 485, fig. 126, notes that the pose of the left-hand worshipper is repeated in "Young Christian Girl" of 1894 (McRoberts collection, England) and that she wears a costume with Tahitian influences.

Nicholas Wadley, ed. Noa Noa: Gauguin's Tahiti. Oxford, 1985, pp. 86–87, reproduces an engraved reproduction of it that Gauguin partly retouched with watercolor and pasted onto page 125 of the Louvre manuscript of 1893/97 of "Noa Noa".

Philippe Verdier. "Un manuscrit de Gauguin: L'esprit moderne et le catholicisme." Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 46/47 (1985/86), pp. 287, 297 n. 73, states that the bowl of fruit is placed on a fata, or altar, as if offerings to the Gods.

Robert Goldwater. Primitivism in Modern Art. enlarged ed. [1st ed., 1938, revised ed. 1967]. Cambridge, Mass., 1986, pp. 75–76, ill.

John Rewald. "Paul Gauguin—Letters to Ambroise Vollard and André Fontainas." Studies in Post-Impressionism. Ed. Irene Gordon and Frances Weitzenhoffer. New York, 1986, p. 194, reprints Gauguin 1900.

Yann le Pichon. Sur les traces de Gauguin. Paris, 1986, p. 156, ill. p. 157 (color).

Gary Tinterow et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 8, Modern Europe. New York, 1987, pp. 5, 11, 76–78, colorpl. 54, remark on the numerous elements that form this "true modern synthesis," a term Gauguin himself used to explain his method.

Michel Hoog. Paul Gauguin: Life and Work. New York, 1987, pp. 158–59, 163, 166, 198, 209, 306 n. 10, colorpl. 109, calls it a Tahitian version of Mother and Child or a Sacra Conversazione with donor figures; mentions the possible influence of Memling, whose work Gauguin saw at the Louvre and in Belgium.

Maurice Malingue. La vie prodigieuse de Gauguin. Paris, 1987, pp. 112, 177, 183, 195.

Yann le Pichon. Gauguin: Life, Art, Inspiration. New York, 1987, pp. 156–57, colorpl. 293, remarks on Gauguin's debt to Fra Angelico for the pale pink and blue angel, and to Botticelli's "Primavera" for both the expression on the Mary and the lush vegetation.

Marla Prather and Charles F. Stuckey, ed. Gauguin: A Retrospective. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1987, pp. 180, 185, 218, 225, 229, colorpl. 57, translate and reprint numerous letters by Gauguin, as well as exhibition reviews and articles that mention and describe this painting.

Belinda Thomson. Gauguin. London, 1987, pp. 141, 145–47, 167, 171, 182, ill. (color and black and white).

Charles F. Stuckey in The Art of Paul Gauguin. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1988, pp. 215, 220–21, 233, 236, 242–46, 291, 384, 410, no. 135, ill. in color, ponders its dating, despite being dated "91," due to possible repainting, suggesting that the original horizontal composition was painted over and became a vertical work; remarks on the reuse of certain clothes in other paintings; notes that it was painted on a size 50 canvas, used by Gauguin only on his first trip to Tahiti; identifies the elements of the still life; states that the theory that it was painted in response to the birth of Gauguin's illegitimate son in Paris was initiated by his son Pola and suggests instead that it celebrates his recovery from a nearly fatal illness or that he hoped to present it to the Catholic missionary church near Mataiea.

Françoise Cachin. Gauguin. Paris, 1988, pp. 155, 160–61, 164, 169, pl. 167, comments that it is Gauguin's last work with a Christian theme.

Isabelle Cahn in Gauguin: La Bibliothèque des expositions. Paris, 1988, pp. 60–61, no. 33, ill. (color), proposes the subject is the Adoration of the Shepherds rather than the Annunciation, due to the presence of the Child.

Frédérique de Gravelaine. Paul Gauguin: la vie, la technique, l'oeuvre peint. Lausanne, 1988, pp. 58, 104–5 (ill. in color).

Colta Ives. "French Prints in the Era of Impressionism and Symbolism." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 46 (Summer 1988), p. 30, ill. in color, calls it a "Maori-Christian Adoration" and remarks on the reuse of the poses of the Virgin's attendants in a woodcut, "Nave Nave Fenua" of 1893–94 (MMA 36.6.5).

Elizabeth Mongan, Eberhard W. Kornfeld, and Harold Joachim. Paul Gauguin: Catalogue raisonné of his Prints. Bern, 1988, p. 131, illustrate a zincograph of the same subject made in Paris during the winter of 1894–95.

Richard S. Field. "Paul Gauguin: An Exhibition." Print Collector's Newsletter 19 (September–October 1988), p. 135.

John Rewald with the research assistance of Frances Weitzenhoffer. Cézanne and America: Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics, 1891–1921. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, Princeton, 1989, pp. 325, 330.

Günter Metken. Gauguin in Tahiti: Die erste Reise, Gemälde 1891–1893. Munich, 1989, unpaginated, colorpl. 8.

Pierre Daix. Paul Gauguin. [Paris], 1989, pp. 234–35, 239, 253, 257, 400 n. 21.

Pascale Bertrand. "Exposition Gauguin." Beaux-arts no. 64 (January 1989), pp. 42–43, ill. (color).

Françoise Cachin. Gauguin: "Ce malgré moi de sauvage". Paris, 1989, pp. 75–76, 94, ill. (color), remarks that Mataiea, the area of Tahiti where Gauguin lived, was exclusively Catholic and that the artist was presumably exposed to the first words of the "Hail Mary" —"Ia Orana Maria" — in Tahitian at their church, making the theme likely; remarks that the predominant colors are yellow, red, and blue.

Hans H. Hofstätter. "Christliche Thematik im Werk von Paul Gauguin." Das Münster 42 (1989), p. 304, ill.

U. Stake. Gauguin. Exh. cat.Moscow, 1989, pp. 149, 167–71, 195, ill. (color, overall and detail).

Lesley Stevenson. Gauguin. London, 1990, pp. 126–27, 155, ill. in color, calls "Te Tamari no Atua" of 1896 (W541; Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich), also painted during Gauguin's first trip to Tahiti, "the conceptual companion of our painting".

Gary Tinterow. "Miracle au Met." Connaissance des arts no. 472 (June 1991), p. 39.

Pierre-Francis Schneeberger. Gauguin – Tahiti. Paris, 1991, pp. 24, 36, 40, 91, colorpl. 4.

Michel Hoog. Gauguin: Actes du colloque Gauguin. Paris, 1991, p. 152.

Fereshteh Daftari. The Influence of Persian Art on Gauguin, Matisse, and Kandinsky. PhD diss., Columbia University. New York, 1991, pp. 101–4, no. 49, ill., comments on the influence of Persian miniatures, noting that the Persian manuscript "History of the Prophets" (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) was exhibited in 1878, during Gauguin's time in Paris.

Bernard Denvir, ed. Paul Gauguin, The Search for Paradise: Letters from Brittany and the South Seas.. By Paul Gauguin. London, 1992, pp. 66–67, ill. (color).

Belinda Thomson, ed. Gauguin by Himself. Boston, 1993, pp. 171, 268, colorpl. 166.

Ingo F. Walther. Paul Gauguin, 1848–1903: The Primitive Sophisticate. Cologne, 1993, pp. 38–39, 42, ill. in color.

Fr. Daniel Nassaney O.M.I. Ia Orana Maria, a painting of Paul Gauguin. March 25, 1993.

Karyn Elizabeth Esielonis. "Gauguin's Tahiti: The Politics of Exoticism." PhD diss., Harvard University, 1993, pp. 38–39, 41, 52, 56–57, 60–63, 94–96, 98, 100, 103, 212–17, 219, 225, fig. 15, maps the wide-ranging critical reception that the picture provoked from critics across the political spectrum at its first exhibition.

Carol Christensen. "The Painting Materials and Technique of Paul Gauguin." Studies in the History of Art 41 (1993), p. 93, includes the painting among those that have been found to have a wax surface coating that is probably original.

Gill Perry. "Primitivism and the 'Modern'." Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. New Haven, 1993, pp. 7–8, 30, 32, colorpl. 4.

Caroline Boyle-Turner in Le cercle de Gauguin en Bretagne: L'impressionisme s'installe devant le motif et fait ce qu'il voit. . . . Exh. cat., Musée de Pont-Aven. [Pont-Aven], 1994, pp. 12, 14.

Pierre-Yves Desaive, Jean-Patrick Duchesne, and Pierre Henrion in Gauguin: Les XX et la libre Esthétique. Ed. Françoise Dumont. Exh. cat., Musée d'art moderne et d'art contemporaine. Liège, 1994, p. 40, ill.

Impressionist and Modern Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, Part I. Sotheby's, London. June 28, 1994, p. 53, publishes the "only traced monotype rendition" of this painting's Virgin and Child.

Asya Kantor-Gukovskaya in Paul Gauguin, Mysterious Affinities. English ed. (Russian ed. 1995). Bournemouth, 1995, p. 61.

Claudia Beltramo and Ceppi Zevi, ed. Paul Gauguin e l'avanguardia russa. Exh. cat.Florence, 1995, pp. 108, 177 n. 4, ill.

David Sweetman. Paul Gauguin: A Complete Life. London, 1995, pp. 304–6, 309, 315, 318, 361–62, 392, 436.

Albert Kostenevich. Hidden Treasures Revealed: Impressionist Masterpieces and Other Important French Paintings Preserved by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Exh. cat.New York, 1995, p. 224.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 491, ill. p. 490.

Michael Kimmelman. "At the Met with Roy Lichtenstein: Disciple of Color and Line, Master of Irony." New York Times (March 31, 1995), p. C27.

Eckhard Hollmann. Paul Gauguin: Images from the South Seas. New York, 1996, pp. 34–35, 52, 62, ill. (color and black and white), suggests that the illustration of this painting that Gauguin included in "Noa Noa" was probably from the French newspaper "Le Mercure".

John House in Der Traum vom Glück: Die Kunst des Historismus in Europa. Ed. Hermann Fillitz. Exh. cat.Vienna, 1996, pp. 150, 157, colorpl. 1.

Anna Maria Damigella. Paul Gauguin, La vita e l'opera. Milan, 1997, pp. 25, 168, 170–71, ill. in color.

Isabelle Cahn, Albert Kostenewitsch, and Angela Schneider in Paul Gauguin: Das verlorene Paradies. Exh. cat., Museum Folkwang, Essen. Cologne, 1998, pp. 83, 85 n. 26, pp. 97, 243–44, ill.

Naomi Margolis Maurer. The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: The Thought and Art of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Madison, N.J., 1998, pp. 145–46, 166, 293, ill. (color).

Paul Gauguin, Tahiti. Ed. Christoph Becker. Exh. cat., Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Stuttgart, 1998, pp. 41, 82 n.45, p. 136.

Belinda Thomson. "Exhibition review: Stuttgart. Paul Gauguin." Burlington Magazine 140 (May 1998), p. 350.

Wladyslawa Jaworska. "'Christ in the Garden of Olive-Trees' by Gauguin: The Sacred or the Profane?" Artibus et Historiae 37 (1998), p. 98, fig. 22 (color).

Elizabeth C. Childs in Dorothy Kosinski. The Artist and the Camera. Exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Dallas, 1999, p. 124, mentions the poses of the female attendants at left, their sources in the Borobudur relief, and their repetition in "The Annunciation (Te Faruru)" (1892, Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield), "We Greet Thee, Mary (Ia Orana Maria)" (ca. 1894, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), "Faa Iheihe" (1898, Tate Modern, London), and "Change of Residence" (ca. 1899, Art Institute of Chicago).

Bärbel Küster. "Eine Fotografie im Gepäck Gauguins auf der Reise nach Tahiti." Kunstchronik 52 (May 1999), pp. 181–85, fig. 3, introduces a photograph tentatively attributed to Hippolyte Arnoux (Alain Fleig collection, Paris), an official Suez Canal photographer, as a source for the image of the Tahitian Mary and child; states that Gauguin bought such photographs in Port-Said, Egypt, and brought them with him to Tahiti.

Henri Dorra in Paul Gauguin, von der Bretagne nach Tahiti: Ein Aufbruch zur Moderne. Exh. cat., Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz. Tulln, 2000, pp. 138–39, ill.

Rebecca A. Rabinow. "Modern Art Comes to the Metropolitan: The 1921 Exhibition of 'Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings'." Apollo 152 (October 2000), pp. 5, 7, 10, fig. 5 (color).

Colta Ives in Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2002, pp. 6, 8, 83–84, 221, no. 55, ill. (color) and fig. 5.

Margaret Werth. The Joy of Life: The Idyllic in French Art, circa 1900. Berkeley, 2002, p. 45, fig. 20, dates it about 1891–92.

Susan Alyson Stein in Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2002, pp. 160, 165–66, 168, 170, 230, figs. 62, 64 (installation photos).

Charlotte Hale in Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2002, pp. 189, 193, 195, 232 n. 55, p. 233 n. 79, notes that the cartouche for the inscription was added over the still life at the bottom of the painting.

Marjorie Shelley in Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2002, p. 234 n. 38.

Charles F. Stuckey. "New York: Gauguin." Burlington Magazine 144 (September 2002), p. 581.

Jean-Yves Tréhin. Gauguin, Tahiti et la photographie. Ed. Christian Gleizal. [Punaauia, Tahiti], 2003, pp. 98–99, ill. (color), dates it 1891 or 1892.

Paule Laudon. Tahiti—Gauguin: Mythe et vérités. Paris, 2003, pp. 60, 102, ill. p. 59 (color), dates it 1891–92.

Roger Benjamin. Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880–1930. Berkeley, 2003, pp. 92–93, fig. 40.

Elizabeth C. Childs. "L'invitation au paradis: Gauguin face à la photographie." Paul Gauguin: Héritage et confrontations. Papeete, 2003, p. 129.

George T. M. Shackelford in George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory. Gauguin Tahiti. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Boston, 2004, p. 198.

Claire Frèches-Thory in George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory. Gauguin Tahiti. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Boston, 2004, pp. 25, 28, 32, 315 n. 93.

Isabelle Cahn in George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory. Gauguin Tahiti. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Boston, 2004, pp. 105, 289, 359, no. 74, ill. p. 288 (color), dates it about 1891–92.

Barbara Stern Shapiro in George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory. Gauguin Tahiti. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Boston, 2004, p. 131.

Isabelle Cahn and Gloria Groom in George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory. Gauguin Tahiti. Exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Boston, 2004, p. 348.

Martine Regnault. Paul Gauguin: La trace écrite. Dijon, 2005, p. 111.

Katharine Baetjer in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Chefs-d'œuvre de la peinture européenne. Exh. cat., Fondation Pierre Gianadda. Martigny, 2006, p. 22, fig. 13 [Catalan ed., Barcelona, 2006, p. 19, fig. 13].

Douglas W. Druick in Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. Ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2006, pp. 363–64 n. 3.

Richard R. Brettell and Stephen F. Eisenman. Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum. Ed. Sara Campbell. Vol. 1, New Haven, 2006, p. 485.

June Hargrove. "'Woman with a Fan': Paul Gauguin's Heavenly Vairaumati—a Parable of Immortality." Art Bulletin 88 (2006), pp. 563, 566 n. 90.

Marco Di Capua in Paul Gauguin: Artist of Myth and Dream. Ed. Stephen F. Eisenman. Exh. cat., Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome. Milan, 2007, p. 87, fig. 7 (color).

Gary Tinterow in The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New York, 2007, p. 11.

Susan Alyson Stein in The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New York, 2007, pp. 144–45, 213–15, no. 106, ill. (overall and detail, color and black and white).

Susan Alyson Stein in Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, pp. 164–65, 249–50, no. 153, ill. (overall and detail, color and black and white).

Eric Alliez with the collaboration of Jean-Clet Martin. L'oeil-cerveau: nouvelles histoires de la peinture moderne. Paris, 2007, pp. 317–19, 344, 473 [English ed., "The Brain-Eye: New Histories of Modern Painting," London, 2016, pp. 265–67, 281], notes that the eye stops discerning foreground from background in this picture.

Henri Dorra. The Symbolism of Paul Gauguin: Erotica, Exotica, and the Great Dilemmas of Humanity. Berkeley, 2007, pp. 156, 167, 173–75, 311 n. 22, fig. 75 (color), dates it 1891–92; states that it was extensively recomposed in 1892; interprets it as an example of a "gentle moral humanitarianism . . . as well as a melding of two religious traditions intended to bring out their common philosophy, in keeping with the principles of Theosophy".

Belinda Thomson in Gauguin: Maker of Myth. Ed. Belinda Thomson. Exh. cat., Tate Modern. London, 2010, p. 135, fig. 61 (color).

Christine Peltre in De Delacroix à Kandinsky: L'Orientalisme en Europe. Ed. Davy Depelchin and Roger Diederen. Exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Brussels, 2010, p. 162.

Linda Goddard. Aesthetic Rivalries: Word and Image in France, 1880–1926. Oxford, 2012, p. 82, fig. 15 (color), calls the artist's use of the Borobudur source a "veiled reference" to what would have been seen at the time as "an esoteric source" and an example of Gauguin providing "clues with which to attract his audience, but frustrat[ing] their solution".

Gauguin: Voyage into the Myth and After. Ed. Sounjou See Yu Yeon Kim. Exh. cat., Seoul Museum of Art. Seoul, 2013, pp. 166–67, fig. 52 (color).

Caroline Mathieu. "'Je veux aller chez les sauvages': Gauguin en Polynésie." Gauguin: Voyage into the Myth and After. Ed. Dr. Sounjou Seo and Yu Yeon Kim. Exh. cat., Seoul Museum of Art. Seoul, 2013, p. 219.

Flavie Durand-Ruel Mouraux. "Exposer, exposer, exposer . . . La première exposition monographique de Paul Gauguin: A la galerie Durand-Ruel à Paris, novembre 1893." Gauguin: Voyage into the Myth and After. Ed. Dr. Sounjou Seo and Yu Yeon Kim. Exh. cat., Seoul Museum of Art. Seoul, 2013, p. 225, notes that the angel hovering in the left background recalls the angel in "Vision after the Sermon" (1888, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh).

Starr Figura. Gauguin: Metamorphoses. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 2014, pp. 17–19, fig. 2 (color), notes that in Gauguin's process of copying and translating, both from photographs into paintings such as The Met's and from such paintings into prints, he fused seemingly unrelated content, often Christian archetypal and Polynesian cultural references.

Lotte Johnson in Starr Figura. Gauguin: Metamorphoses. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 2014, pp. 152, 235, compares it to the zincograph and watercolor monotypes Gauguin made after the two figures at right.

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 449, no. 405, ill. pp. 408, 449 (color).

Dario Gamboni in Gauguin Paintings, Sculpture, and Graphic Works at the Art Institute of Chicago. Ed. Gloria Groom and Genevieve Westerby. Chicago, 2016, para. 6, under nos. 61–63, fig. 7 (color) [https://publications.artic.edu/gauguin/reader/gauguinart/section/139805], dates it ca. 1891/92; notes its description in Charles Morice’s “Point de vue”, the introductory chapter of “Noa Noa”, and states, following an unpublished manuscript by Peter Zegers (undated, Department of Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago), that Gauguin may have intended the related watercolor “Ia orana Maria (Hail Mary)” (1894/95, location unknown) to be the frontispiece to this chapter.

Claire Bernardi in Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist. Ed. Gloria Groom. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2017, p. 57.

Allison Perelman in Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist. Ed. Gloria Groom. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2017, p. 70 n. 12.

June E. Hargrove in Gauguin's Challenge: New Perspectives After Postmodernism. Ed. Norma Broude. New York, 2018, p. 205, notes that Gauguin's wrath regarding the French state's unenthusiastic reception of the Caillebotte bequest was exacerbated by its concurrent rejection of this painting for the Musée du Luxembourg.

Elizabeth C. Childs in Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey. Ed. Christina Hellmich and Line Clausen Pedersen. Exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. San Francisco, 2018, p. 148, fig. 40 (color).

Christian Jamet. Gauguin: Les chemins de la spiritualité. Paris, 2020, pp. 34, 191, 195, figs. 16, 130 (color, overall and detail), discusses its Christian iconography.

Fernando Oliva and Laura Cosendey in Paul Gauguin: The Other and I. Ed. Adriano Pedrosa et al. Exh. cat., Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. São Paulo, 2023, pp. 32, 34, 47 n. 8, fig. 15 (color).

Sue Prideaux. Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. London, 2024, pp. 24, 217–18, 268, remarks that after the painting was shipped back to France for an exhibition, it was regarded as blasphemous for more than half a century.

This work may not be lent.