Two Tahitian Women in a Landscape

Paul Gauguin · c. 1892

Medium

Monotype matrix in watercolor and gouache, with brush and green ink, over traces of graphite, on cream Japanese paper, laid down on tan wove paper (partially removed)

Original size

32.2 × 23.8 cm (12 11/16 × 9 3/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Post-Impressionism

Two Tahitian Women in a Landscape holds the quiet, sun-warmed stillness that defined Gauguin's most celebrated period — his first years in Tahiti, where he arrived in 1891 seeking a world untouched by European convention. Gauguin made this work using a monotype matrix layered with watercolor, gouache, and green ink on delicate Japanese paper, a process that gives the figures their soft, almost dreamlike quality. Rather than painting from life in a traditional sense, he worked from memory, imagination, and careful study of his Tahitian surroundings, building compositions that feel both grounded and mythic. The muted earth tones and lush greens place the women firmly within the landscape rather than above it, reflecting his belief that his subjects and their environment were inseparable. The work now belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago, one of several institutions that hold Gauguin's Tahitian-period pieces as central to their post-Impressionist collections — a testament to how widely this body of work transformed Western art. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the warmth and weight of the original onto canvas, preserving the subtle interplay of colour and form that makes this image so enduring.