Faaturuma (Melancholic)

The subject for Faaturuma may be Tehamana, Gauguin’s vahine in Mataiea. The domestic setting, with the painting on the wall, Gauguin’s rocking chair which he brought from Papeete and the prominent ring suggest that this may be the nineteenth-century equivalent of a betrothal painting.

The subject of the pensive woman had a long pedigree in Western art, and Gauguin has grafted this onto a Tahitian model. The first figure paintings that he produced in Tahiti (including Vahine no to Tiare) suggest that he was disappointed at the lack of any remaining authentic Polynesian culture on which to draw for his work, and he attempted a fusion of Western conventions and Tahitian models. It was only after reading Moerenhout in 1892 that his work capitalized on the Tahitian myths and legends that Western colonization and missionaries had effectively destroyed.