What! Are You Jealous? (1892) by Paul Gauguin, Art Print from the Original on Satin Canvas

Original public domain image, digitally enhanced. Oil on canvas. Gaugin painted in Tahiti from 1891 to 1893 when he returned to France.

His romantic image of Tahiti as an untouched paradise derived in part from Pierre Loti’s novel Le Mariage de Loti (1880). Disappointed by the extent to which French colonisation had actually corrupted Tahiti, he attempted to immerse himself in what he believed were the authentic aspects of the culture.

He employed Tahitian titles, such as Fatata te Miti 'Near the Sea', and Manao Tupapau 'The Spirit of the Dead Watching'. He also used oceanic iconography, and portrayed idyllic landscapes and suggestive spiritual settings. In his sculptures and woodcuts from this period, he portrays a deliberately rough-hewn look.

Despite the title, in 'What! Are You Jealous?' there seems to be no rivalry between the two women, who are not talking. Rather, the question might be directed at those who would see the painting in the future, and who might envy Gauguin and his models their tropical "sweetness of doing nothing."

The seated woman is borrowed from a kneeling figure on the frieze at the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, a photograph of which Gauguin had in his possession. Eugene Delacroix, seeing the white-garbed Arabs in Morocco, had already felt that classical Greek culture was repeated from the lives of more primitive peoples. The headband of flowers worn by the profile figure is reminiscent of an ancient laurel wreath.

The reclining woman (right) may have been added later. The two bodies are bright but shadowed, standing out against the rosy lilac sand. Here we see all trace of realism abandoned in favour of colour harmonies: the line of the strand caresses the women's bodies; and the reflections in the water are a vibrant, abstract pattern, intoxicating and glowing brightly.

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