Women with a Peacock

Paul Gauguin did this low wooden relief depicting an exotic scene with seated women and a peacock at the end of his life, probably on the island of Hiva Oa, where the artist had moved from Tahiti in 1901 hoping to draw closer to his dream of a primitive world unspoiled by civilization in the Marquesas Islands and to find inspiration there. At that time, he returned to sculpture, especially the simple wood block technique, which suited his decorative primitivist stylization. The Slovak politician and diplomat Milan Rastislav Štefánik acquired the relief for his collection in 1910 while on a research trip to Oceania.