Paintings
The Call
Painting
Details
- Author / creator
- Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
- Object type
- Painting
- Date or period
- 1902
- Dimensions summary
- Framed: 160.5 × 119 × 9.5 cm; Unframed: 131.3 × 89.5 cm
- Support
- Canvas
- Paint medium
- Oil
- Place of origin
- France
- Acquisition method
- Purchase
- Credit line
- Purchased with the Hartley Bequest Fund, 1943
About this object
Painted on a remote island in Polynesia a year before the artist's death, The Call belongs to a series of late works that explore the mysteries of life and death. Two women stand with bare feet, as if on sacred ground. One woman gestures to someone outside the picture, perhaps responding to a "call" from fate or destiny. Gauguin realized his ambition of painting from memory and the imagination through such mysterious, dreamlike images.
Materials and technique
Oil on canvas
Signature and marks
Signed lower right: P. Gauguin / 1902
