GAUGUIN, Paul
(b. 1848, Paris, d. 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, French Polynesia)

The Meal (The Bananas)

1891
Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

It was only at a relatively late stage in this work's development that Gauguin transformed it from a simple still-life of Tahitian fruit to a genre scene, by including the heads of the three children, together with a view out of a doorway in the background. The configuration of the objects, the use of the large open bowl, together with the white cloth and the knife, is remarkably similar to the objects in the still-life by Cézanne that Gauguin owned. Although he did not have the work with him in Tahiti, he had copied it in the background of Portrait of a Woman with Still-Life by Cézanne the previous year, and a memory of the French work clearly lingered in this painting.




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