Te burao (The Hibiscus Tree)

1892

Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)

Completed early in Paul Gauguin’s first Tahitian sojourn, this landscape shows the artist grappling with representing an unfamiliar environment. Rather than documenting botanical species scientifically, Gauguin focused on the artistic potential of their variegated colors, textures, and forms. The human figure in the distance and the dog roaming through fallen branches activate the landscape and establish a sense of scale.

This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection.

Status: On View, Gallery 247
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Paul Gauguin
Title: Te burao (The Hibiscus Tree)
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1892
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower right: Te Burao P. Gauguin 92
Dimensions: 68 × 90.7 cm (26 3/4 × 35 11/16 in.); Framed: 86.4 × 109.3 × 8.9 cm (34 × 43 × 3 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Joseph Winterbotham Collection
Reference Number: 1923.308
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/8360/manifest.json

“An Exhibition of Modern French Paintings,” Bulletin of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts 10, 8 (November 1921), p. 59 (ill.).
“El Greco Painting, $9,000: ‘St. John the Baptist’ leads Auction of the de Zayas Collection,” New York Times (March 24, 1923), p. 13.
“Home and Foreign Art Notes,” New York Times (April 29, 1923), p. X10.
Eleanor Jewett, “Architectural Exhibit Opening at the Institute,” Chicago Daily Tribune (April 29, 1923), p. D6.
J. MacD., “Gauguin’s ‘Te Burao’,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 17, 5 (May 1923), pp. 51–52.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1925), pp. 71 (ill.), 137, no. 624.
R. M. Fischkin, “A Late Gauguin,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 21, 6 (1927), pp. 74–75.
R. M. Fischkin, “Gauguin Given to Art Institute,” Art News 25, 40 (1927), p. 7.
Reginald H. Wilenski, French Painting (Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint, Inc., 1931), p. 289; reprinted (Boston, Hale, Cushman & Flint, Inc., 1936); (New York: Dover Publications, 1973).
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), pp. 72 (ill.), 154.
“Chicago Show to Present French Modern Masters,” Art News 31, 34 (May 1933), p. 4.
Paul Gauguin, Lettres de Gauguin à Daniel de Monfreid (Paris: George Falaize, 1950), p. 211.
John Rewald, Post Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956), p. 510 (ill.); revised editions (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1962); (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1978); translated (Cologne: Du Mont, 1987).
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), p. 170.
Georges Wildenstein, Gauguin (Paris: Les Beaux-Arts, 1964), pp. 196–97, no. 486 (ill.).
Bengt Danielsson, “Gauguin’s Tahitian Titles,” Burlington Magazine 109, 769 (1967), p. 232.
G. M. Sugana, L’opera completa di Gauguin (Milan: Rizzoli, 1972), pp. 104–05, no. 306 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, The Joseph Winterbotham Collection: A Living Tradition (Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 1986), pp. 10, 18 (ill.), 57.
Marla Prather and Charles F. Stuckey, eds., Gauguin: A Retrospective (New York: Hugh Lauter Levin, 1987), p. 181 (ill.).
Michel Hoog, Paul Gauguin: Life and Work (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), p. 181, fig. 125.
Françoise Cachin, Gauguin (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), p. 296; translated (Paris: Flammarion, 1990).
James Wood, “Foreword” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, 2 (1994), p. 100.
Lyn Delliquadri, “A Living Tradition: The Winterbothams and Their Legacy,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, 2 (1994), pp. 105, 110 n. 11.
Margherita Andreotti, “The Joseph Winterbotham Collection,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, 2 (1994), pp. 130–31 (ill.).
Sophia Shaw Pettus, “Checklist of the Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1921–1994,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, 2 (1994), p. 183 (ill.).
Inge Fiedler and Michael Bayard, “Emerald Green and Scheele’s Green”, in Elisabeth West FitzHugh, ed., Artist’s Pigments: A Handbook of their History and Characteristics, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997), p. 263.
Art Institute of Chicago, Highlights of the Exhibition: Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, supplement to exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2001), p. 69, fig. 49.
Britt Salvesen, Gauguin (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago and New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001), pp. 27 (detail ill.), 43–44, 108, no. 11, pl. 11.
Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, “The Studio of the Tropics,” in Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001), p. 337, fig. 7.
Susan Alyson Stein, “From the Beginning: Collecting and Exhibiting Gauguin in New York,” in Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein, The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002), pp. 168, 230 n. 84.
“Gauguin, Cat. 28, Te burao (The Hibiscus Tree) (1923.308),” in Gauguin Paintings, Sculpture, and Graphic Works at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Gloria Groom and Genevieve Westerby (Art Institute of Chicago, 2016), https://publications.artic.edu/gauguin/reader/gauguinart/section/139805.
Adriano Pedrosa, Fernando Oliva and Laura Cosendey, eds., Paul Gauguin: The Other and I, exh. cat. (São Paulo: Museu de Arte de São Paulo, 2023), front matter (detail), 208 fig. 118, 261.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings, May 3–September 15, 1921, cat. 50.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, An Exhibition of Modern French Paintings, November 1921, cat. 9.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1–November 1, 1933, cat. 356.
San Francisco, The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Exhibition of French Painting from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Day, June 8–July 8, 1934, cat. 103.
Des Moines Art Center, 19th and 20th Century European and American Art, June–July 1948, cat. 39.
Lowe Art Gallery, The University of Miami, 19th and 20th Century French Painting, March 15–April 9, 1952, cat. 13; travelled to Athens, The University of Georgia, April 14–May 19, 1952.
Art Institute of Chicago, Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture, February 12–March 29, 1959, cat. 43; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 21–May 31, 1959.
Richmond, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Anniversary Loan Exhibition: Treasures in America, January 13–March 5, 1961, no cat. no.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Artist Looks at the Landscape, June 22–August 25, 1974, no cat.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Van Gogh in Arles, October 3–December 30, 1984, no cat. no.
Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art, Shikago Bijutsukan Insho-ha ten (The Impressionist Tradition: Masterpieces from The Art Institute of Chicago), October 18–December 17, 1985, cat. 55; traveled to Fukuoka, Fukuoka Art Museum, January 5–February 2, 1986; Kyoto, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, March 4–April 13, 1986.
Leningrad [St. Petersburg], Hermitage Museum, Ot Delakrua do Matissa: shedevry frantsuzskoĭ zhivopici XIX-nachala XX veka, iz Muieia Metropoliten v Niu-Ĭorke i Khudozhestvennogo Instituta v Chikago [From Delacroix to Matisse: Great Paintings From the XIX century to the Beginning of the XXth century From Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago], March 15-May 19, 1988, cat. 45; Moscow, Pushkin Museum, June 10-July 30, 1988.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, The Art of Paul Gauguin, May 1–July 31, 1988; traveled to Art Institute of Chicago, September 17–December 11, 1988; Paris, Grand Palais, January 10–April 20, 1989 (Chicago only, supplement no. 5).
Niigata Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, Shikago Bijutsukan ten : kindai kaiga no 100-nen (Masterworks of Modern Art from The Art Institute of Chicago), April 20–May 29, 1994, cat. 16; travelled to Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, June 10–July 24, 1994; Yokohama Museum of Art, August 6–September 25, 1994.
Art Institute of Chicago, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, September 22, 2001–January 13, 2002, cat. 140; travelled to Amsterdam, The Van Gogh Museum, February 2–June 9, 2002.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Paul Gauguin: The Other and I. Apr. 28-Aug. 6, 2023, fig. 118.

Marius de Zayas, New York; sold his sale, The Anderson Galleries, New York, March 23–24, 1923, lot 83 for $3,000 to the Art Institute [price according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Ryerson Library, Art Institute]; purchased by the Art Institute with funds provided by Joseph Winterbotham for the Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1923.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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