Interpretive Resource

In March 1891, three years after leaving van Gogh and the Yellow House, Gauguin secured funding from the French government’s Ministry of Public Education and Fine Arts "to go to Tahiti to study and ultimately paint this country’s costumes and landscape." Gauguin’s interest in exotic locales was longstanding; in 1886 he made his first journey to Brittany in the north of France and in 1887 to the island of Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean, with a similar purpose in mind. These quests were motivated by and fed into the "primitive" persona he cultivated; after his 1887 expedition he wrote to his wife Mette: "You must remember that I have a dual nature, [that of] the Indian and [that of] the sensitive civilized man." Gauguin’s justification for claiming this heritage stemmed from his having spent the first few years of his life in Peru, where his mother had relatives.

The Big Tree, painted during Gauguin’s first sojourn to Tahiti (from 1891 to 1893) fulfills the artist’s aim of capturing the local flora and fauna. At the same time, it demonstrates Gauguin’s artistic goal, to make the "primitive" or natural, the foundation of his art. Gauguin had devised a particular working method once he established himself in a new location. He later wrote: "In each locale I need a period of incubation, to learn each time the particular character of the plants, the trees—of the whole landscape." He characterized his initial studies, both drawn and painted, as "documents," which, he wrote to a friend, "will serve me for a long time, I hope, in France."

Painted in October or November 1891, The Big Tree depicts a genre scene of a local family engaged in its daily activities. From left to right, a father stoops to husk a coconut, a seated woman cares for a child, and the family dog curls up to sleep; in the background another woman tends to animals. Additional local details include the thatched huts in the distance and the red, blue, and yellow patterned clothing worn by the adults. Stemming from one of Gauguin’s "documents" that captured the native inhabitants at work, this painting reveals a seemingly objective view of everyday life in Tahiti. Fulfilling his mission to "paint [Tahiti’s] costumes and landscape," Gauguin chose not to focus on the individuals’ facial features but instead to depict Tahitian life at a glance. As if he were a documentary reporter, the local inhabitants are seemingly completely unaware of Gauguin’s presence.

In addition to signing the painting, Gauguin included its Tahitian title Te ra’au rahi, which translates as "the making of big Tahitian medicine." This implies that the painting’s lush vegetation is more than a picturesque backdrop for this peaceful scene. During his numerous observations of the inhabitants at work, Gauguin recorded the Tahitian practice of using "the nuts and leaves of the autura tree and the pods and flowers of the hotu tree for medicinal purposes."