Merahi metua no Tehamana

Common card · No. 294889

Merahi metua no Tehamana ('Tehamana Has Many Parents' or 'The Ancestors of Tehamana') is an 1893 painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin, currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting is a portrait of Paul Gauguin's wife Tehaʼamana during his first visit to Tahiti in 1891–1893. The marriage, which was arranged and completed in the course of a single afternoon, has long stirred controversy because Gauguin claimed Tehaʼamana was just thirteen years old at the time. A sculpture, Head of a Tahitian Woman, is also known to be a portrait of Tehaʼamana. She is assumed to have posed for numerous other paintings of the time, including the celebrated Spirit of the Dead Watching and Vahine no te vi.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Paul Gauguin, Public domain