Tahitian Fisherwomen is an 1891 painting in the Post-Impressionist style by the leading French artist Paul Gauguin.
This painting depicts an image of women going through life as usual. Gauguin was influenced by his interest in French Polynesia. He spent his time painting the people of Tahiti in a style called Primitivism.
Gauguin has been critiqued for his exploitative relationship with the subjects of most of his paintings. This critique is aggravated by his decision to marry a thirteen-year-old girl with who he got pregnant. He came back to France without his new bride and began to dress in Polynesian costumes, displayed an exotic persona, and conducted yet another affair with a teenage Polynesian girl.
He returned to Tahiti after raising enough money and spent the rest of his life in French Polynesia. He went to Tahiti, married a fourteen-year-old girl, and had two children with her before moving to the Marquesas Islands in search of a more primitive society.
He eventually returned back to Tahiti to live out his final months – he would gain the majority of his fame posthumously.
Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Fisherwomen is located in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany.