Two nude women with brown skin and long black hair stand with their backs to us at a riverbank in this stylized horizontal painting. The body of the woman to our left is angled to our left with her hands raised, presumably about to plunge into the teal-colored water. The woman to our right unwraps a cloth patterned with bright yellow flowers on a deep purple background from her waist. Between the women and farther away, a bare-chested man, also with brown skin, wears a tomato-red garment across his hips as he stands hip-deep in the water holding a long spear. The top of his head is cropped by the top edge of the painting. Along the left edge of the canvas, a gnarled tree is painted as a flat field of dark, charcoal gray, and it rises off the side and top of the composition. An area of the same color, perhaps a thick root or the trunk growing nearly horizontally, spans the width of the painting, separating the women from us. The area around the trunk to our left and right is painted with fields of evergreen and cool mint. Closer to us, along the front of the root, a field of rosy pink swirls with grape purple to suggest sand. This area is dotted with harvest-yellow and pumpkin-orange vines and stylized flowers. A bunch of vivid orange flowers with pine and spring-green leaves sits on the root near the trunk, to our left. Most of the painting, especially the landscape, is painted with areas of mostly flat color. In the bottom left corner, the artist has written the title of the painting in darkred paint: “Fatata te Miki.” In the lower right corner, he signed and dated the work with periwinkle blue: “P. Gauguin 92.”

Fatata te Miti (By the Sea)

Paul Gauguin

Two nude women with brown skin and long black hair stand with their backs to us at a riverbank in this stylized horizontal painting. The body of the woman to our left is angled to our left with her hands raised, presumably about to plunge into the teal-colored water. The woman to our right unwraps a cloth patterned with bright yellow flowers on a deep purple background from her waist. Between the women and farther away, a bare-chested man, also with brown skin, wears a tomato-red garment across his hips as he stands hip-deep in the water holding a long spear. The top of his head is cropped by the top edge of the painting. Along the left edge of the canvas, a gnarled tree is painted as a flat field of dark, charcoal gray, and it rises off the side and top of the composition. An area of the same color, perhaps a thick root or the trunk growing nearly horizontally, spans the width of the painting, separating the women from us. The area around the trunk to our left and right is painted with fields of evergreen and cool mint. Closer to us, along the front of the root, a field of rosy pink swirls with grape purple to suggest sand. This area is dotted with harvest-yellow and pumpkin-orange vines and stylized flowers. A bunch of vivid orange flowers with pine and spring-green leaves sits on the root near the trunk, to our left. Most of the painting, especially the landscape, is painted with areas of mostly flat color. In the bottom left corner, the artist has written the title of the painting in darkred paint: “Fatata te Miki.” In the lower right corner, he signed and dated the work with periwinkle blue: “P. Gauguin 92.”

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Paul Gauguin
Date
1892
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 67.9 x 91.5 cm (26 3/4 x 36 in.) framed: 92.4 x 114.9 x 10.1 cm (36 3/8 x 45 1/4 x 4 in.)
Department
CF
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Palette

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Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Chester Dale Collection

Art Genome Taxonomy

12 tags

Subject Matter

  • Human Figure Visual · 99%

    Three human figures are visible: two prominent foreground women and a smaller male figure in the water.

  • Nude Both · 99%

    The two foreground women are visibly nude, and the museum description explicitly identifies them as nude.

  • Figures in Nature Both · 98%

    The figures occupy a natural setting with a tree, vegetation, flowers, ground forms, and water; the museum describes the setting as a riverbank.

  • Landscapes and Waterscapes Both · 97%

    The composition combines land, vegetation, and a prominent body of water, consistent with the museum’s riverbank description and the title’s translation, “By the Sea.”

  • Water Both · 98%

    Blue-green water occupies much of the middle and right side of the painting, and the catalog describes the distant figure as standing hip-deep in it.

  • Flora Both · 98%

    Flowers, vines, leaves, and a large gnarled tree are prominent elements, and the museum description specifically notes the work’s flowers and vegetation.

  • Text Both · 94%

    The title is painted along the lower left edge, and the artist’s signature and date appear along the lower right edge.

Visual Qualities

  • Flatness Visual · 96%

    Large portions of the landscape are rendered as relatively unmodulated fields of color, with depth conveyed through overlapping zones rather than detailed modeling.

  • Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 97%

    The painting uses strongly saturated contrasts among teal, violet, orange, yellow, green, and warm brown skin tones.

  • Patterns Both · 95%

    The woman on the right wears or handles a dark purple cloth decorated with bright yellow floral motifs, clearly producing a patterned area within the composition.

Medium and Techniques

  • Oil Painting Both · 99%

    The museum records the work as oil on canvas, and the image visibly shows painted pigment arranged in opaque, layered passages.

Time Periods

  • 19th Century Art Metadata · 99%

    The museum dates the work to 1892, placing it within nineteenth-century art.

Source & rights

Paul Gauguin. Fatata te Miti (By the Sea). Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources

Catalog record ↗ Image source ↗ Image license ↗ Image-use terms ↗ Catalog metadata terms ↗

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