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. Around the two heads the divine halo is faintly visible. 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. Dark violet path and emerald green foreground, with bananas at left.-I’m rather happy with it" (Gauguin 1892, translated in Stuckey 1988). Very somber mountainous background and flowering trees. 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. 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.
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