The King's Wife

A woman reclines on green, trees in bloom behind her, a dog on guard and two doves cooing. Gauguin believed he had never made colour sound so solemn.

The story behind the painting

The King's Wife, also called The Queen, Woman with Mango Fruits, Woman under a Mango Tree, or Te arii vahine, the Tahitian title painted at the lower right, was made on Tahiti in early 1896. In April that year Gauguin wrote to his friend Daniel Monfreud that he had just finished a painting he considered much more successful than the one before. He sent it to Monfreud, though he wondered aloud whether there was any point when so many other paintings were unsold and caused an outcry; this one, he wrote, would cause an even louder one.

What to look for

Gauguin himself described the picture in that letter: a naked queen lies on a green carpet, a servant picks fruit, and two old men near a larger tree discuss the tree of knowledge, with the sea coast in the depths. The trees are in bloom, a dog keeps watch, and on the right two doves are cooing. The canvas is wide, 97 by 130 centimetres according to Wikidata, giving room for the reclining figure to stretch across it. Gauguin was proudest of the colour, writing that he had never created anything with such a strong, solemn sonority.

Meaning and intent

The painting was heavily influenced by Edouard Manet's Olympia. Gauguin had made a copy of Olympia and took a reproduction of it with him to Tahiti, so the famous reclining nude of Paris travelled with him into his work in the Pacific. Gauguin's own words, a queen, a servant, elders speaking of the tree of knowledge, suggest he meant the scene to carry the weight of an old story about knowledge and paradise, told in the setting of the island where he lived. Visitors can let his letter guide the eye from figure to tree to coast.

Legacy

Monfreud kept the painting until August 1903, when it was bought by Gustave Fayet. Gauguin had died in April 1903, but the news had not yet reached Monfreud, who wrote to tell him the painting had sold; the letter came back unopened, marked deceased. It is a quietly moving moment in the picture's history. Fayet, Gauguin and Monfreud all considered it one of the artist's best works. Today it belongs to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.