Noa noa (Fragrant)

Noa noa (Fragrant), executed by Paul Gauguin French, 1848-1903 between 1894 and 1895, is a significant wood-block print created following the artist’s initial return to France from Tahiti. This print series served as a visual accompaniment to the illustrated travelogue and memoir that Gauguin was compiling, also titled Noa noa, which detailed his experiences in the South Pacific and his search for an aesthetic purity outside of European tradition. The resultant book and its complementary prints profoundly influenced the Symbolist movement and solidified Gauguin's reputation as a leader of Post-Impressionist exploration.

Gauguin intentionally embraced the challenging and relatively crude wood-block print medium, leveraging its inherent textures to create a stark, graphic intensity distinct from his painting practice. The specific technique employed for this work is highly experimental: black ink is used for the main impression, laid over a layer of solvent-thinned and selectively applied yellow ocher ink on cream wove paper. This innovative layering strategy allowed the artist to introduce saturated, primitive color elements while preserving the rough, immediate quality of the woodcut, giving the final piece a powerful, raw expressiveness.

This important series demonstrates Gauguin's dedication to printmaking during this pivotal period of his career, pushing the boundaries of traditional techniques in France to convey his exoticized visions of Polynesian life. The complexity and layering visible in these prints reflect the artist’s profound impact on graphic arts in the late 19th century. This piece is held in the renowned collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it serves as a critical document of the shift towards modern Symbolism. As a foundational work of modern art history, reproductions are often made available through museum and public domain archives for study and appreciation.