The Invocation

Paul Gauguin

National Gallery of Art

Five women, all with brown skin, sit and stand in a landscape painted with tones of emerald green, mauve pink, lilac and plum purple, and cobalt blue in this horizontal composition. To the right of center, a nude woman stands on a patch of violet-colored ground with both arms overhead, as she looks up. To our left, two women wearing only pale blue cloths around their waists sit side-by-side on a patch of amethyst-purple ground. Both sit with their bodies angled to our right, and they look toward the ground with their arms across their chests. To our right of the standing woman, the final pair of women stand or walk toward the right edge of the painting. The woman to our left in that pair wears a dusky rose-pink dress and a bright, coral-pink head covering. She holds one arm across her chest, elbow bent. Next to her, the fifth woman is bare-chested with a white cloth tied around her waist, covering her legs. She looks to our right and holds up her arm, which extends off the right edge of the composition. The purple patches on the ground are surrounded by other areas of raspberry pink and mauve. A band of trees and vegetation stretches across the background, leading back to cobalt-blue mountains along the horizon. Mountains to each side of the composition brush the top edge, and the shallow U of sky between them is ivory white. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “Paul Gauguin 1903.”