Merahi Metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana)
Artist: Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
Date: 1893
Medium: Oil on jute canvas
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
Description
In this portrait, the 13-year-old Tahitian girl named Tehamana appears stoic, shoulders squared and gaze unflinching. She wears a missionary dress and wields a Samoan fan as white flowers tumble from her hair. The ripe mango beside her alludes to fertility. In the background, Gauguin combined various non-European emblems - glyphs derived from an Easter Island tablet and a female deity inspired by Polynesian and Hindu sources - to build a generic sense of foreigness and mystery, transforming Tehamana into the embodiment of his own desire.
