{
"data": {
"id": 127115,
"accession_number": "1949.439",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Head of a Tahitian Woman, 1891. Paul Gauguin (French, 1848\u20131903). Graphite with stumping and graphite wash on parchment; sheet: 30.5 x 24.4 cm (12 x 9 5/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection, 1949.439",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Head of a Tahitian Woman",
"creation_date": "1891",
"creation_date_earliest": 1891,
"creation_date_latest": 1891,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "graphite with stumping and graphite wash on parchment",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "imitation vellum",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - French",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 30.5 x 24.4 cm (12 x 9 5/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.305,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.244,
"width_inch": 9,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 338420,
"title": "Gauguin in Tahiti",
"description": "Gauguin in Tahiti. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (organizer) (April 1-May 14, 1950).",
"opening_date": "1950-04-01T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311898,
"title": "35th Anniversary Exhibition",
"description": "35th Anniversary Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 20-September 30, 1951).",
"opening_date": "1951-06-20T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 301184,
"title": "Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition",
"description": "Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959).",
"opening_date": "1958-03-03T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 702994,
"title": "Work of Paul Gauguin",
"description": "Work of Paul Gauguin. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (organizer) (February 12-March 29, 1959); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (April 22-May 3, 1959).",
"opening_date": "1959-02-12T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 518710,
"title": "19th Century Master Drawings",
"description": "19th Century Master Drawings. Newark Museum, Newark, NJ (organizer) (March 16-April 30, 1961).",
"opening_date": "1961-03-16T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 361385,
"title": "Nineteenth Century Master Drawings",
"description": "Nineteenth Century Master Drawings. Newark Museum, Newark, NJ (organizer) (March 16-April 30, 1961).",
"opening_date": "1961-03-16T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 304645,
"title": "Drawings",
"description": "Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963).",
"opening_date": "1963-01-11T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 361386,
"title": "19th and 20th Century Drawings",
"description": "19th and 20th Century Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 19-March 24, 1965).",
"opening_date": "1965-02-19T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 304726,
"title": "French Drawings",
"description": "French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1965-February 16, 1966).",
"opening_date": "1965-11-16T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 351191,
"title": "Drawings",
"description": "Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 11-October 21, 1968).",
"opening_date": "1968-06-11T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 361387,
"title": "Gauguin",
"description": "Gauguin. National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan (October 5-November 7, 1969).",
"opening_date": "1969-08-23T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 357309,
"title": "Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Early Nineteenth-Century Genre and French Prints and Drawings",
"description": "Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Early Nineteenth-Century Genre and French Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 31-August 19, 1979).",
"opening_date": "1979-05-31T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 361388,
"title": "Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture",
"description": "Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture. Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario M5T 1G4, Canada (organizer) (November 7, 1981-January 3, 1982).",
"opening_date": "1981-11-07T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 309655,
"title": "National Schools of Style",
"description": "National Schools of Style. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 14-September 18, 1983).",
"opening_date": "1983-06-14T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 361389,
"title": "Paul Gauguin",
"description": "Paul Gauguin. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (organizer) (March 6-May 17, 1987); Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan (June 12-28, 1987).",
"opening_date": "1987-03-06T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 441402,
"title": "The Art of Paul Gauguin",
"description": "The Art of Paul Gauguin. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (organizer) (May 1-July 31, 1988); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (September 17-December 11, 1988).",
"opening_date": "1988-05-01T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311467,
"title": "Directions in Drawing II: The Human Figure",
"description": "Directions in Drawing II: The Human Figure. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 5, 1991-January 12, 1992).",
"opening_date": "1991-11-05T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311635,
"title": "French Drawings from the Collection",
"description": "French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995).",
"opening_date": "1994-12-13T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 192019,
"title": "Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).",
"opening_date": "2000-08-27T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 204986,
"title": "Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014).",
"opening_date": "2014-03-09T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 324628,
"title": "Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023).",
"opening_date": "2023-01-19T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "A Loan Exhibition of Paul Gauguin for the Benefit of the New York Infirmary. Wildenstein, New York (April 3 - May 4, 1946).",
"opening_date": "1946-04-03T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Hugo Perls, Berlin, sold to De Hauke & Co., Inc., New York)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-1929",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(De Hauke & Co., Inc., sold to Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams, Cleveland, OH)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"De Hauke inv. no. 1373.
"
],
"date": "1929",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Mr. [1880\u20131966] and Mrs. [1879\u20131980] Lewis B. Williams, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1929-1949",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1949 -",
"sortorder": 4
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "In his writings, Gauguin often referred to his drawings as \"documents\"\u2014records of motifs and ideas he could use later.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This drawing belongs to a group of highly finished portrait drawings of Tahitians made by Paul Gauguin shortly after his arrival in the South Seas. While getting used to this new place, Gauguin initially avoided painting, preferring first to familiarize himself with the landscape and people through observation and drawing. The meticulous quality of this graphite study suggests that it was made from life. The woman\u2019s noble face and enigmatic expression allude to the spirituality and melancholy that Gauguin sought to conjure in his Polynesian work.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60780768"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1949.439-head-of-a-tahitian-w"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Morice, Charles. Paul Gauguin. Paris: H. Floury, 1919.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 149",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Rewald, John. Gauguin. New York: Hyperion Press, 1938.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 155",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "A Loan Exhibition of Paul Gauguin For the Benefit of the New York Infirmary. Exh. Cat. New York: Wildenstein, 1946.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 53",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"Rare Drawings in Gauguin Exhibition.\" The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 39, no. 15 (April 15, 1950): 74.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 74",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Francis, Henry S. \"A Drawing by Gauguin.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 37, no. 8 (1950): 178-179.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp. 178-179; Reproduced: p. 174",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25141656"
},
{
"citation": "Rewald, John. Gauguin Drawings. New York: Yoseloff, 1958.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 93",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Brooks, Van Wyck, trans. Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 23",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 606",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1958/page/n113"
},
{
"citation": "Rousseau, Theodore, Jr. Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture. Exh. Cat. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, in association with the Lakeside Press, 1959.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 65, no. 82",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Nineteenth Century Master Drawings. Exh. Cat. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1961.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 52",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 181",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n205"
},
{
"citation": "Gauguin. Exh. Cat. Seibu: Grand Magazin Seibu, 1969.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 52",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 181",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n205"
},
{
"citation": "Pickvance, Ronald. The Drawings of Paul Gauguin. London: Hamlyn, 1970.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 34; Reproduced: plate 70",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Martini, Alberto. Paul Gauguin. Milano: Fratelli Fabbri Editori, 1977.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 3",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Wadley, Nicholas. Gauguin. London: Phaidon, 1978.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 56",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 223",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n243"
},
{
"citation": "McFee, June King, and Rogena M. Degge. Art, Culture, and Environment: A Catalyst for Teaching. New York: Kendall Hunt, 1980.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 274",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Wilkinson, Alan G. Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture. Exh. Cat. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 59, no. 18",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Prather, Marla, and Charles F. Stuckey, ed. Gauguin: A Retrospective. New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1987.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 174",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Paul Gauguin. Exh. Cat. Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 1987.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 92",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Barskai\ufe20a\ufe21, A. G., and M. A. Bessonova. Paul Gauguin in Soviet Museums. Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1988.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 67",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Huyghe, Ren\u00e9. Gauguin. New York: Crown, 1988.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 61",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cachin, Franc\u0327oise. Gauguin. Paris: Flammarion, 1988.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 146",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Brettell, Richard, Fran\u00e7oise Cachin, Claire Fr\u00e8ches-Thory, and Charles F. Stuckey. Gauguin. Exh. Cat. Paris: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 1989.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp. 212, 224, no. 118; Reproduced: p. 224",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cachin, Franc\u0327oise. Gauguin: \"Ce malgre\u0301 moi de sauvage.\" Paris: Gallimard, 1989.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 191; Reproduced: p. 73",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Clement, Russell T. Paul Gauguin: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 189",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Thomson, Belinda, ed. Gauguin by Himself. London: Bulfinch Press, 1993.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 307; Reproduced: p. 168",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Amishai-Maisels, Ziva, Marina Bessonova, Albert Kostenevic, and Maria Grazia Messina. Paul Gauguin e l'avanguardia Russa. Firenze: Artificio, 1995.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 68",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.5, pp. 142-43, p. 291; Reproduced: p. 143",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cable, Patrick Shaw. \"From North Africa to the Black Sea: Nineteenth-Century French Orientalist Drawings.\" Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 7 (2002): 104-25.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 118",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/20079721"
},
{
"citation": "Salsbury, Britany. Nineteenth-Century French Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Lewes, UK, Cleveland, Ohio: GILES; Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 162-165, no. 31",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1949.439",
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"creditline": "Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
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"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 127115,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1776,
"description": "Paul Gauguin (French, 1848\u20131903)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Gauguin spent the first seven years of his life with his mother and great uncle in Peru. In 1855 his mother took him back to France where he attended boarding school. He joined the merchant marine when he was seventeen and began traveling around South America. When Gauguin's mother died in 1868, Gustave Arosa, an art collector and photographer, became his legal guardian. Arosa's collection included works by Corot (q.v.), Courbet (q.v.), Delacroix (q.v.), and the Barbizon painters, and it was he who would encourage Gauguin to start painting. In 1872 Arosa found a job for Gauguin at a brokerage firm, giving him financial security. The following year he married a Danish woman, Mette Gad. Gauguin had already started painting and sculpting in his spare time and first exhibited at the Salon in 1876 with a landscape.1 He was asked by Pissarro (q.v.) and Degas (q.v.) to participate in the fourth impressionist exhibition in 1879, where from then on he would exhibit regularly. Durand-Ruel began purchasing his paintings, and in turn Gauguin started to collect the works of his colleagues, such as Manet (q.v.) and Renoir (q.v.) and, in particular, C\u00e9zanne (q.v.) and Pissarro. He went to Pontoise in 1882, where he painted with C\u00e9zanne and Pissarro, who along with Degas continued to influence him at this period. In 1883 Gauguin decided to become a full-time artist. In 1884 he moved with his wife and children to Rouen and then to Copenhagen, but he failed to earn a comfortable living. He returned to Paris in 1886 and met ceramicist Ernest Chaplet (1835-1909), who introduced him to his m\u00e9tier. Gauguin distanced himself from impressionism and in 1888 worked in Pont-Aven with \u00c9mile Bernard (1868-1941), who had been experimenting with creating compositions using flat areas of color and dark outlines (cloissonism). Gauguin also studied Japanese prints and Indonesian art. The impact of these influences is evident in Gauguin's Vision after the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1888, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), so far removed from his earlier impressionist style. Succumbing to van Gogh's (q.v.) many requests, Gauguin agreed to travel to Arles and paint with the artist; their characters, however, proved incompatible. Theo van Gogh, who worked for Boussod Valadon & Cie, would in the meantime sell Gauguin's work. For the next two years, Gauguin traveled often around Brittany. In search of a more pure and unspoiled culture, he auctioned off his paintings in 1891 in order to finance a journey to Tahiti. Upon his arrival, he was disappointed to find many expatriates and developed areas, yet he was still able to capture in his works an uncultivated spirit. He not only made paintings but also created bold woodcuts and sculptures and was an avid writer. Gauguin returned to France in 1893, where he was given a solo exhibition by Durand-Ruel that was not particularly successful. He decided to leave Europe again in 1895, moving to Tahiti and later to Hivaoa, a more remote island in the Marquesas. Because he abandoned naturalistic colors and used formal distortions in order to achieve expressive compositions, Gauguin's work became an inspiration for many subsequent artists. 1. Possibly Wildenstein 1964, no. 12.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1848",
"death_year": "1903",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1949-11-09T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1891,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1891",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": true,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:33:03.874000"
}
}