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 powerful wood-block print created by Paul Gauguin French, 1848-1903, between 1893 and 1894. This piece belongs to the celebrated Noa Noa Suite, a collection of prints Gauguin produced upon his return to France from his first pivotal trip to Tahiti. The suite was intended to illustrate his contemporaneous manuscript recounting his experiences and idealization of indigenous Tahitian culture.

The technical execution of this work demonstrates Gauguin’s highly experimental and influential approach to the print medium. It features a complex, layered process involving the dual printing of the woodcut block in pale orange and black ink. Crucially, this printing was carried out over pre-existing transferred oil-based media, resulting in unique washes of yellow, pink, orange, blue, and green color, supplemented by traces of conifer resin, likely pine resin. This highly personalized, hand-inking technique ensures that each impression of Auti te pape is subtly distinct in texture and hue. The use of cream wove Japanese paper underscores Gauguin’s interest in non-Western artistic materials, a tendency popular in France during the Post-Impressionist era.

The image depicts Tahitian women engaged in an intimate, everyday scene near a river, characterized by the use of simplified, block-like forms and strong outlines typical of Synthetism. Gauguin sought to imbue the scene with symbolic and emotional meaning, departing sharply from the optical realism of earlier French movements. This important example of his innovative prints resides in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where its unique layering technique can be closely studied. The widespread availability of such prints through public domain resources further extends the legacy of this important artist.