Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000306Head of a Tahitian Woman
by Paul Gauguin
About the Artwork
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’s noble face and enigmatic expression allude to the spirituality and melancholy that Gauguin sought to conjure in his Polynesian work.
Provenance
?-1929: (Hugo Perls, Berlin, sold to De Hauke & Co., Inc., New York) 1929: (De Hauke & Co., Inc., sold to Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams, Cleveland, OH) 1929-1949: Mr. [1880–1966] and Mrs. [1879–1980] Lewis B. Williams, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH 1949 -: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Gauguin in Tahiti. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (organizer) (April 1-May 14, 1950). 35th Anniversary Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 20-September 30, 1951). Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959). 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). 19th Century Master Drawings. Newark Museum, Newark, NJ (organizer) (March 16-April 30, 1961). Nineteenth Century Master Drawings. Newark Museum, Newark, NJ (organizer) (March 16-April 30, 1961). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963). 19th and 20th Century Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 19-March 24, 1965). French Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1965-February 16, 1966). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 11-October 21, 1968). Gauguin. National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan (October 5-November 7, 1969). 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). Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture. Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario M5T 1G4, Canada (organizer) (November 7, 1981-January 3, 1982). National Schools of Style. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 14-September 18, 1983). 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). 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). Directions in Drawing II: The Human Figure. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 5, 1991-January 12, 1992). French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995). 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). 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). Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
- Date
- 1891
- Medium
- graphite with stumping and graphite wash on parchment
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 30.5 x 24.4 cm (12 x 9 5/8 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis B. Williams Collection
- Accession no.
- 1949.439
More by Paul Gauguin in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00000306
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