Paul Gauguin – Ia Orana Maria

Paul Gauguin – Ia Orana Maria – hand-painted oil painting reproduction

Mary and Jesus are Tahitian, an angel with yellow wings stands among the trees, and two women in pareus bow towards them. The work was painted in 1891, in Gauguin’s first Tahitian year, oil on canvas, 113.7 × 87.6 cm, and is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York under accession number 51.112.2 (bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951). We make this scene as a hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas – painted, never printed. The museum records the measurement as height by width.

The title is a Tahitian greeting

Ia Orana Maria is Tahitian for “Hail Mary”. The Christian scene is therefore translated into Tahitian speech and Tahitian bodies: Mary wears a red pareu, the child sits on her shoulder, and to one side a table carries bananas and fruit in place of offerings. Gauguin’s interest in Christian iconography had shown itself earlier, in 1888 and 1889 at Pont-Aven and in Brittany – Tahiti did not bring him the subject, it brought a new dress for it.

Two of the figures come from Java

The two standing women on the left, palms pressed together, were not observed in Tahiti. Gauguin took them from the relief frieze of the Borobudur temple in Java, a ninth-century Buddhist monument he knew from photographs and carried with him. The Tahitian scene is thus assembled from three places at once: Christian iconography, a Javanese relief and Tahitian models. This is not ethnography but montage – and it is exactly why the painting looks ceremonial rather than like a scene from daily life.

What he wrote about it himself

In 1892 Gauguin described the work to Daniel de Monfreid almost as an inventory: an angel with yellow wings points out Mary and Jesus, both Tahitians, to two Tahitian women, nudes wrapped in pareus. The description is precise and carries no interpretation – the painter says what he painted, not what it is supposed to mean. It remains disputed whether carrying a child on the shoulder was a Tahitian habit of the period; some scholars see an Egyptian source instead, and because the question is unsettled we present it that way.

A hand-painted reproduction for your home

The photographs above show this painting as it came from our workshop. We paint it in several sizes; 89 × 114 cm is closest to the original, while for a smaller wall 60 × 80 cm is a frequent choice. The upright format and the quiet red-and-green range work well in a hallway, a bedroom or beside a staircase. If you are interested in how Gauguin moved Christian scenes into the landscape, see The Green Christ; Tahitian motherhood without Christian iconography is in Maternity (Women on the Seashore), and the whole Tahitian summation in Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?.

• Subject: Ia Orana Maria, Paul Gauguin, 1891
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas – never printed
• Original: 87.6 × 113.7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. 51.112.2
• Interesting fact: the two praying women are taken from the Javanese temple of Borobudur, not from Tahiti