We Shall Not Go to Market Today

About this work

Gauguin painted Ta matete in Tahiti in 1892. The women sit in a row on a bench, in profile, their hands frozen in stiff gestures — and those poses did not come from Tahiti: Gauguin took them from the wall paintings of an ancient Egyptian tomb, a photograph of which he carried with him. The painting is today in Basel.

The red, yellow and white dresses sit against tree trunks and a green ground, and every outline is a row of dark stones. In mosaic that row becomes even more a relief on a wall.