Tahitian Faces (Frontal View and Profiles)

Paul Gauguin

ca. 1899 · Charcoal on laid paper · Drawings and Prints

Gauguin made this powerful drawing during his second trip to Tahiti. Among the most impressive of Gauguin’s surviving drawings, it is likely a preparatory study for the figure on the left in his 1899 painting Two Tahitian Women (49.58.1). The drawing has a strong sculptural effect due to both the masklike appearance of the blank eye sockets and the artist’s use of the stumping technique, in which he smudged the charcoal contour lines to model the head.

Artist

Paul Gauguin

Date

ca. 1899

Medium

Charcoal on laid paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1996