Portrait of Tehamana

Portrait of Tehamana is a significant study created by Paul Gauguin French, 1848-1903, during his initial stay in Tahiti. Executed between 1891 and 1893, this powerful image utilizes charcoal and wetted charcoal on cream wove paper. Gauguin employed precise drawing techniques, including stumping and careful erasing, allowing him to modulate the shadows and highlights, creating a rich tonal range often associated with his subsequent woodcuts. The use of wetted charcoal allowed him to achieve deep, velvety blacks and sharp contrasts, emphasizing the sitter’s serene yet profound gaze. The surface texture was selectively fixed to preserve the desired effects of the complex medium.

The sitter, Tehamana, was Gauguin's Tahitian partner and a central figure in the artist’s oeuvre during this period. She is immortalized in several works, including the well-known painting, Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents). This intensive drawing, originating from the artist’s Post-Impressionist sensibility, captures an idealized vision of Polynesian identity which Gauguin, originally from France, sought to document.

Although fundamentally a preparatory drawing, the Art Institute of Chicago classifies the work as a Print, recognizing its essential role in Gauguin’s exploration of printmaking during the 1890s. Studies such as this one were crucial exercises, helping the artist refine compositions for both paintings and the woodblock prints he would fully explore upon his return to Europe and later Tahiti. This piece demonstrates Gauguin’s technical mastery and his cultural search for the exotic, defining his legacy. The work resides in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.