Auti te pape (Women at the River) from the Noa Noa Suite

Auti te pape (Women at the River) from the Noa Noa Suite is a significant wood-block print created by Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903) during his critical period in the early 1890s (1893-1894). This striking example of Gauguin’s graphic work was executed in black ink on grayish-ivory China paper. The piece belongs to the wider Noa Noa project, a visual and literary account of his first sojourn to Tahiti, where he sought an idealized, non-industrialized existence away from metropolitan France. Gauguin’s deliberate decision to embrace the woodcut medium reflected his burgeoning interest in primitive and non-Western art forms, allowing him to achieve a stark, visceral quality unlike his oil paintings.

The subject matter, depicting Tahitian women gathering or bathing near a river, is characteristic of Gauguin’s exoticized vision of the South Pacific. The technique utilizes deep carving and dramatic contrasts, emphasizing simplified forms and rhythmic lines that often blur the boundaries between the figures and the environment. Unlike traditional European relief printing, Gauguin treated the woodblock surface experimentally, emphasizing the grain and raw textures inherent in the medium. This deliberate roughness heightened the sense of the exotic landscape and the women's integration into their natural world, a defining feature of his Post-Impressionist style.

Although the work was initially conceived and carved by the artist, the physical prints, including Auti te pape, often saw complex production histories. The edition represented here was printed posthumously by Gauguin’s son, Pola Gauguin (Danish, born France, 1883-1961), and published by Christian Cato in Copenhagen. This extended the legacy of these powerful graphic statements well into the 20th century. This work is a crucial example of Symbolist prints and graphic innovation rooted in France, and it resides today in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.