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The Call
Paul Gauguin1902
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States
Painted on a remote island in Polynesia a year before the artist's death, <em>The Call</em> belongs to a series of late works that explore the mysteries of life and death. Two women stand with bare feet, as if on sacred ground. One woman gestures to someone outside the picture, perhaps responding to a "call" from fate or destiny. Gauguin realized his ambition of painting from memory and the imagination through such mysterious, dreamlike images.
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Details
- Title: The Call
- Creator: Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
- Date Created: 1902
- Physical Dimensions: Framed: 160.5 x 119 x 9.5 cm (63 3/16 x 46 7/8 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 131.3 x 89.5 cm (51 11/16 x 35 1/4 in.)
- Provenance: Ambroise Vollard [1866-1939], Paris, France, Baron Wolf Kohner [1866-1937], Budapest, Hungary, (Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY, November 9, 1943, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Type: Painting
- Rights: CC0
- External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1943.392
- Medium: oil on fabric
- Inscriptions: Signed lower right: P. Gauguin / 1902
- Fun Fact: Although known as one of the founders of modern art, Gauguin found inspiration in ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art. The woman with the pointing finger on the right side of this painting was taken from a figure on the Parthenon frieze.
- Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Culture: France, late 19th-early 20th Century
- Credit Line: Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
- Accession Number: 1943.392
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