Painting Paul Gauguin - Woman holding a fruit

One of Paul Gaugen's most recognisable paintings, The Woman Holding the Fetus, is also known by title "Eu haere ia oe?" ("Where are you going?"), written in 1893, during his first visit to Tahiti.

Paul Gauguin (Paul Gauguin; 1848-1903) linked his own art to the distant island of Tahiti. He found his ideal of beauty in the image of a young Tahitian with broad shoulders, a strong torso and a peculiar facial contours with prominent plump lips, wide wings of the nose and striking almond-shaped eyes. To convey a peculiar world where man and nature live in harmony, Gauguin departed from many of the traditions of European painting. He rejected aerial perspective, light and shade modelling. Decorativeness and monumentalism are the main characteristics of his artistic manner.

Creation of the French self-taught artist became revolutionary for its time. For the first time "barbaric" images were presented to the European public instead of the ancient ideal. The culture of uncivilized peoples, long considered savage and primitive, suddenly became of interest to a wide audience.

Following Gauguin, artists began to try on this exotic style, which later grew into a separate direction in art - neoprimitivism. True, not only the new subject, but also its unusual embodiment amazed contemporaries: red sky, green water, blue trees.

In Gauguin's works, the observation of real life and everyday life of the peoples of Oceania is gradually intertwined with local myths. The Tahitian woman holding a mango fruit is painted in a beautiful, sophisticated golden brown tone. Gauguin's first Tahitian wife, Tehoura, may have served as the model. The landscape, like the figure, is interpreted in a very generalised way in the painting. Patches of gold, red, pink and green make the canvas look like a decorative colourful carpet.

The original was purchased by the well-known Russian merchant and patron of the arts Ivan Abramovich Morozov (1871-1921) and taken to Russia to enrich his fine private collection. Until 1948, the painting was part of the Morozov's collection, but from 1948 it was nationalised and is now part of the State Hermitage collection.

The second version of the painting is in the collection of the Stuttgart State Museum, but the subject matter is somewhat different.

HISTORY OF THE COPY

The Stuttgart State Museum had only one, original version of the painting, The Woman Holding the Fetus (which was not very popular), and commissioned a copy of their later version from the State Hermitage Museum.

Artists-restorers of the State Hermitage painted a free copy of the painting by Paul Gauguin, repeating the technique of creation (oil on canvas), with good accuracy of subject and colour scheme. The copy is 51 x 41 cm, while the original is much bigger - 92.5 x 73.5 cm.

That is how the copy of "The Woman Holding the Fetus" came into being. But historically, the copy of the painting has spent most of its life in a private collection in Ukraine.

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