Paul GAUGUIN (1848-1903), Mata Mua (in olden days)

color heliogravure, heavy vellum paper, 23 x 31 (plate imprint), 28 x 38 (framed);
signed from plate below composition; numbered in pencil 52/350. Original certificate.
In an idyllic landscape surrounded by mountains, a group of women worship Hina, the goddess of the moon. In the foreground, a girl plays a flute. On the left, separated by the trunk of a tall tree that divides the composition in two like a hinge, another group dances around the idol. Gauguin traveled to Tahiti in 1891, hoping to find artistic inspiration among primitive peoples whose development had not been affected by Western civilization. However, all he came across were traces of a glorious past already doomed to extinction. Mata Mua (In the Old Days) is a hymn to the natural way of life that Gauguin so ardently sought. Painted in bright, flat colors and rejecting any claim to naturalism, it is also an elegy to a lost Golden Age.