Ia Orana Maria

An angel with yellow wings points two Tahitian women toward a mother and child, both Tahitian too. Gauguin painted his Hail Mary soon after reaching Tahiti, and wrote to a friend that he was rather happy with it.

The story behind the painting

Gauguin painted Ia Orana Maria, Hail Mary, in 1891, during his first stay in Tahiti, where he looked for what he imagined to be an untouched world far from European modern life. In an 1892 letter to Daniel de Monfreid he described it himself: an angel with yellow wings showing Mary and Jesus, both Tahitians, to two Tahitian women wrapped in flowered pareus, a sombre mountain background, flowering trees, a dark violet path and an emerald green foreground. Why he made it is debated: his son Pola linked it to news of a child born in Paris, others to recovery from a grave illness or a gift for the mission church near his home in Mataiea.

What to look for

Start on the right with the Madonna and Child: a Tahitian mother carries her son over her shoulder. On the left in the background an angel floats in a pale lavender gown, with wings in yellow, blue and purple, and two women bring their hands together in prayer, a pose modelled on monks greeting the Buddha in reliefs at Borobudur in Java, of which Gauguin owned photographs. In front the women wear vivid red and blue pareus. A wooden altar holds red fei bananas, two breadfruits and a bowl of yellow bananas, among palms, hibiscus and a tiare with white flowers.

Meaning and intent

The painting reworks Christian images through Tahitian figures and landscape. It has been read as an Annunciation, with the angel pointing out mother and child in a setting that joins paradise and Eden, and also as an Adoration, the two women taking the place of shepherds paying homage. In both readings the palm branch the angel holds, a traditional sign of martyrdom and death, adds a quiet tension to the joyful scene. Scholars also disagree on the pose of Mary: one critic says carrying a child on the shoulder was unusual in Tahiti then, another cites a lithograph from New Zealand showing just that.

Legacy

It is the only openly Christian painting from Gauguin's first trip to Tahiti, and is counted among the earliest and most emblematic works of his Tahitian period. After its exhibition in Paris in 1893 it was one of the few works he managed to sell; the buyer was Michel Manzi, a collector and friend of Degas. A photograph of it soon appeared in Figaro Illustré, and Gauguin hand-coloured a copy for his Noa Noa manuscript. The art historian Richard Brettell called it a hymn to the diversity and richness of colour. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.