Gauguin began painting Ia Orana Maria within a year of arriving in Tahiti. For much of the time prior to producing this painting Gauguin lived mainly as an observer of Tahitian life, recording thoughts in letters and journals but not translating these thoughts to canvas. Then - suddenly - Gauguin let loose a massive quantity of paintings, many of these containing obvious Christian symbolism. Although this symbolism can partially be explained by the Christian influences he encountered among the natives of Tahiti, could there perhaps be another element to Gauguin's fascination with Christianity in his art? To answer this question, let us look at some of Gauguin's art from his life prior to arriving in Tahiti.
Although Ia Orana Maria - which is translated to We Greet Thee, Mary - is the first example of Gauguin's use of Christian symbolism in his Tahitian works as well as one of his earliest Tahitian works, it was not the first time that Gauguin used religious symbolism in his art. His curiosity with Christian symbolism in particular became evident during his time spent in Pont-Aven and Brittany between 1886 and 1888.
As Thomas Buser points out in his article entitled “Gauguin’s Religion,” is that – unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Gauguin was intrigued by religion. Buser states “for Gauguin…religion played an important role in his art and in his life” (Buser 375) . In his art, this religious questioning was evident long before his journeys to Tahiti. He painted Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) in 1888, The Yellow Christ, Christ on the Mount of Olives, Green Christ Breton Calvary, and Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ in 1889. He portrays Christ and the crucifixion in varying ways in these pieces, illustrating Gauguin’s tumultuous relationship with Christianity and questioning nature toward it. Gauguin’s feelings regarding Christianity become even hazier when we consider that, as Ziva Amishai-Maisels points out in Gauguin’s Religious Themes, Gauguin identifies himself with Christ in a series of paintings. She states that Gauguin related his “ ‘martyrdom’ for his art” with Christ’s own martyrdom (Amishai-Maisels 74). It was this parallel that caused Gauguin to pictorially represent himself as Christ. And yet, recognizing his imperfection, he also created Self-Portrait with a Halo and Soyez Amoureuses. Amishai-Maisels continues her evaluation of Gauguin’s Christianity by arguing that in these two pieces, Gauguin is identifying with the devil (Amishai-Maisels 133). What makes this contradiction perhaps more interesting is that the pieces in which Gauguin identifies with Christ and the ones in which he identifies with Satan were all created in the same span of two years, from 1888-1890. Clearly Gauguin’s complicated relationship with Christianity was thriving during the part of his life spent in Europe, long before his arrival in Tahiti in 1891.
Paintings, clockwise from top:
Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) (1888), Oil on Canvas, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; The Yellow Christ (1889), Oil on canvas, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ (1889), Oil on canvas,Private collection; Green Christ (The Breton Calvary) (1889), Oil on canvas, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique