Paul Gauguin, Te Rerioa (The Dream), 1897. Oil on canvas, 37 ⅜ x 51 ⅛ in. (95.1 x 130.2 cm), The Courtauld Gallery, London
Paul Gauguin’s 1897 painting Te Rerioa (The Dream) offers an interior scene of two Tahitian women, a small spotted dog, and a sleeping child; outside is a path with a horse and rider in the distance—or perhaps this image is merely a painting on the back wall. The ambiguous scene is dominated by slightly unsettling shades of yellow, a color frequently used by the artist throughout the 1880s and ‘90s, long before he left France. As the picture’s title indicates, the narrative–including any relation between the reclining figures–remains elusive and dream-like. Typical of Gauguin’s Tahitian works which were intended to communicate a Western worldview of “otherness,” a synthesized “exoticism” pervades the representation of the figures, the decorative wall elements and furniture, as well as the painting’s composition itself, which appears simplified, flattened, and stylized.