1950s After Paul Gauguin "Nativity", First Edition Photogravure

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A stunning vintage First Edition photogravure, print, of painting "Nativity" by Paul Gauguin from a First Limited Edition art folio … Read more A stunning vintage First Edition photogravure, print, of painting "Nativity" by Paul Gauguin from a First Limited Edition art folio published in the 1950s. Signed in the print. Printed on one side. Hand tipped-in on a board of heavy paper. Information regarding the original artwork will be found by lifting the plate. Very detailed. Beautiful warm colors. Excellent condition - never framed.

Overall 14.5"W x 10.75"H
Image 10"W x 7.5"H

In July 1895, Gauguin returned to Tahiti after an absence of almost two years. Outside of Papeete he had a small lodging built for himself - thus going once more into debt - and, during the summer of 1896, he proudly informed a friend that Tahiti was beautiful and that his new "wife" named Pahura and was fourteen years old (the painter himself was then almost 50). There can be little doubt that the Nativity, painted that same year, the young mother is Pahura (who also on the plate "Where we are going?..") and that the child held by the woman behind her is Gauguin's own.

If in "Orana Maria" (the plate recently got sold) Gauguin transposed a biblical scene into a tropical setting, he seems in this Nativity to have reversed the process and turned a native scene into a biblical one. Indeed, were it not for the faint halos that surround the heads of the recumbent woman of the child, the vague, green wings on the standing figure, and the cattle in the background, this painting might be considered a companion piece to the Tahitian Nude (see at our shop), a colorful and poetic interpretation of an aspect of South Sea life. See less