January 11: On This Day in World History
Art historians believe that Gauguin's encounter with exotic sensuality in Tahiti, so evident in his painting, was by far the most important aspect of his sojourn there.
1892: 13-year old bride for painter Gauguin
French impressionist painter Paul Gaugin marries a 13-year-old Tahitian girl at the age of 44. Gaugin, who abandoned his Danish wife and four children in Capenhagen in 1886, arrived in Tahiti in 1891 and started a series of paintings of the islanders and their religious myths.
The painter was riding in the hills when he was invited to eat with a group of villagers – and was offered a wife! Finding the girl in question quite charming, Gauguin asked “Would you like to live always in my hut?” “Yes.” she answered and the couple then rode off together – by the time they had reached home, Gauguin had fallen in love with her. In accordance with local traditions, if the girl was not happy after eight days, she would leave the painter.
Gauguin later wrote a travelogue (first published 1901) titled Noa Noa, originally conceived as commentary on his paintings and describing his experiences in Tahiti. Modern critics have suggested that the contents of the book were in part fantasized and plagiarised. In it he revealed that he had at this time taken a thirteen-year-old girl as native wife or vahine (the Tahitian word for ‘woman’), a marriage contracted in the course of a single afternoon.
This was Teha’amana, called Tehura in the travelogue, who was pregnant by him by the end of summer 1892. Teha’amana was the subject of several of Gauguin’s paintings, including Merahi metua no Tehamana and the celebrated Spirit of the Dead Watching, as well as a notable woodcarving Tehura now in the Musée d’Orsay.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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