Four young women with medium brown skin sit or stand on a pumpkin-orange ground in this horizontal painting. The women are divided into pairs by a broad, gold, undulating brushstroke running down the middle of the ground they occupy. They are mostly nude, and three have long black hair while one has flame-red hair. To our left, the woman with red hair stands facing us, wearing a glittering, silver necklace as she gazes off to our right. She presses a white patch, perhaps the end of a loincloth, to her upper leg with both hands. Seated next to her is a woman with most of her body turned away from us. She leans over onto her left arm and turns her head over that shoulder to look down and off to our right. Both women to our right are seated close to each other, their shoulders overlapping. One woman wears a white cloth around the hip we can see, and the other wears knee-length breeches. They both look toward us. Beyond the women is what appears to be a stream running diagonally from the lower left to end in a small pool in the middle right. It transitions from muted oranges and green to smoky blue and gray. Opposite us, more orange ground is lined with dense groves of dark green trees that wind into the distance. A woman wearing a coral-colored hood and blue robe holds the arm of a child, and a black dog crouches at their feet. They stand near a slightly larger-than-life-sized topaz-blue statue of a standing woman with her elbows bent and arms raised. The sky beyond the trees is streaked and swirled with bright orange, yellow, and blue. The artist signed and dated the painting, along with the title, in the lower left corner, “Paul Gauguin 98 TE PAPE NAVE NAVE.”

Te Pape Nave Nave (Delectable Waters)

Paul Gauguin

Four young women with medium brown skin sit or stand on a pumpkin-orange ground in this horizontal painting. The women are divided into pairs by a broad, gold, undulating brushstroke running down the middle of the ground they occupy. They are mostly nude, and three have long black hair while one has flame-red hair. To our left, the woman with red hair stands facing us, wearing a glittering, silver necklace as she gazes off to our right. She presses a white patch, perhaps the end of a loincloth, to her upper leg with both hands. Seated next to her is a woman with most of her body turned away from us. She leans over onto her left arm and turns her head over that shoulder to look down and off to our right. Both women to our right are seated close to each other, their shoulders overlapping. One woman wears a white cloth around the hip we can see, and the other wears knee-length breeches. They both look toward us. Beyond the women is what appears to be a stream running diagonally from the lower left to end in a small pool in the middle right. It transitions from muted oranges and green to smoky blue and gray. Opposite us, more orange ground is lined with dense groves of dark green trees that wind into the distance. A woman wearing a coral-colored hood and blue robe holds the arm of a child, and a black dog crouches at their feet. They stand near a slightly larger-than-life-sized topaz-blue statue of a standing woman with her elbows bent and arms raised. The sky beyond the trees is streaked and swirled with bright orange, yellow, and blue. The artist signed and dated the painting, along with the title, in the lower left corner, “Paul Gauguin 98 TE PAPE NAVE NAVE.”

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Paul Gauguin
Date
1898
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 74 × 95.3 cm (29 1/8 × 37 1/2 in.) framed: 90.8 × 111.4 × 7.62 cm (35 3/4 × 43 7/8 × 3 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
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Art Genome Taxonomy

8 tags

Subject Matter

  • Nude Both · 99%

    The catalog describes four young women who are mostly nude, and the image clearly shows nude or partially draped female figures in the foreground.

  • Human Figure Both · 99%

    Four human figures dominate the foreground, with additional human figures visible in the middle distance.

  • Figures in Nature Both · 97%

    The foreground figures are situated outdoors among trees, earth, and water.

  • Landscapes and Waterscapes Both · 97%

    The image and catalog description identify a broad natural setting with dense vegetation and a stream ending in a pool.

  • Water Both · 94%

    A stream or pool is a prominent compositional element in the middle and background, as confirmed by the catalog description.

Visual Qualities

  • Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 93%

    Strong orange-red, blue, green, yellow, and coral passages create a saturated, emphatic palette across the ground, vegetation, figures, and sky.

Medium and Techniques

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 99%

    The National Gallery of Art catalogs the work as oil on canvas.

Time Periods

  • 19th Century Art Metadata · 99%

    The catalog dates the work to 1898, placing it in the nineteenth century.

Source & rights

Paul Gauguin. Te Pape Nave Nave (Delectable Waters). 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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