Paul Gauguin left Tahiti for the remote Pacific island of Atuana in the Marquesas in 1901. Already in ill health from advanced venereal disease, he was to die two years later on Atuana. The year 1900, his last full year in Tahiti, had been all but fruitless, with not a single canvas having been completed during that time. Painted in 1901, Tahitian Woman with Children has always been thought to represent a Tahitian woman and children rather than natives of the Marquesas Islands. There is no proof of this notion, and it is equally possible to relate the costumes of the figures — the only accurate indicator of place — with those painted by Gauguin in the Marquesas in 1902. Wherever it was painted, this portrait has a deeply melancholic, haunting quality. It is saturated with blue — from the greenish blue of the abstract background to the deep blue of the woman’s dress. While she appears too old to be the mother of the beautiful baby she is holding, her gentle, kind expression and the easy naturalness with which she and the children relate to one another indicate an intimate bond.

As is the case with many paintings Gauguin did in the South Seas, Tahitian Woman with Children is layered with Christian meaning. The infant could easily be associated with the Christ Child, and the dark spot on the young girl’s left hand could refer to Christ’s stigmata. From his first exposure to the moving, elemental religious art of Brittany, Gauguin had filled his art with Christian references, which were restimulated in the context of the earthly "paradise" of the South Pacific. One wonders, given the traditional association of the figures depicted here with Tahitians, whether the woman, with her prominent wedding ring, is Gauguin’s Tahitian wife Pahua and whether the children are his illegitimate offspring. There is no evidence to support such a claim, yet it is not improbable. We know from his letters to his European family and friends that Gauguin felt guilty about his abandonment of his five children with his Danish wife, Mette. Since this is the only portrait he produced in 1901, it is probable that he painted it for personal reasons. Perhaps, Gauguin wanted to take the image of his Tahitian family with him, as he went even further into exile.