The Queen (painting)

The Queen or The King's Wife is an early 1896 oil on canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. It is also known as Woman with Mango Fruits, Woman under a Mango Tree or Te arii vahine (the Tahitian title painted at bottom right).

It was produced on Tahiti, with Gauguin writing to his friend Daniel Monfreud in Paril 1896 “I have just finished a painting …, which I consider much more successful than the previous one: a naked queen lies on a green carpet, a servant picks fruits, two old men near a larger tree are discussing the tree of knowledge; in the depths of the sea coast. <...> It seems to me that in terms of colour I have never created a single thing with such a strong solemn sonority. The trees are in bloom, the dog is guarding, on the right, two doves are cooing. But what is the point of sending this painting when there are already so many others that are not for sale and cause a howl? This will cause an even louder howl.”

Monfreud kept the painting until it was bought in August 1903 for 1,100 francs by Gustave Fayet. The news of Gauguin's death in April 1903 had not yet reached Monfreud, so the latter sent him a letter informing him that the painting had sold, but the letter was returned unopened and marked "deceased". Fayet, Gauguin and Monfreud all considered the painting one of the artist's best, heavily influenced by Manet's Olympia, of which Gauguin made a copy (now in a private collection) and of which he took a reproduction to Tahiti.  The canvas is permeated with serene sensuality” [4].

However, not all researchers agree with the parallels with Olympia. For example, R. Bretell voiced the hypothesis that as a prototype Gauguin used the figure of a reclining monk from one of the reliefs of the Borobudur temple in Java [2] : numerous parallels from these reliefs are also clearly visible in the work of Gauguin of the Tahitian period - according to A. G Kostenevich by the end of the 19th century, Borobudur was already widely known in Europe and a significant part of it had been studied, Gauguin could well see drawings and photographs of its architectural decoration [5].

In her hands, the girl holds a red fan, shaped like a Japanese one. According to M. A. Bessonova, “according to Tahitian legends, the red fan is a sign of the royal family and at the same time an instrument of temptation. She lies not just under the mango tree, but under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Through the branches of the tree, two figures are visible, reminiscent of figures from Gauguin's largest canvas “ Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? (oil on canvas; 139.1 × 374.6; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston , inventory no. 36.270). Also, these figures strongly resemble figures from the painting by Eugene Delacroix "The Dying Seneca", which was in the collection of Gauguin's guardian A. Arosa [2].

For the first time the picture was shown to the public in 1898 at an exhibition in Stockholm, where it was held under the name "Black Madonna" [6]. In 1906, a painting entitled “Woman with Mango Fruits” was exhibited at the Autumn Salon in Paris [7], where a Moscow businessman and collector S. I. Shchukin saw it and wanted to buy it. The sale took place in May 1908 [8], its circumstances are detailed by J. Wildenstein ru fr :

“In the apartment on rue de Bellechasse [belonging to Faye], Monfreud often visited the “most beautiful Gauguins” ... One day, entering the room where he usually saw them, he was shocked: Te Arii Vahiné was no longer there.

“Oh, you know,” Faye said, “I didn't want to sell it. You know how much I love this picture. But what do you want, such an offer was received ... He [Shchukin] really wanted her and offered me fifteen thousand francs. Of course, I refused and told him: "Of course, if you offered an unusual price for this, then I might have agreed." “But how much?” “For example, thirty thousand francs.” “Thirty thousand francs? Hold on! And the picture was gone [7].

Shchukin's picture appeared under the title "Woman under a mango tree" [9]. At the same time, Shchukin also bought from Faye another painting by Gauguin, The Gathering of Fruits, which cost him much less - 17,000 francs [10]. This painting is also in the collection of the Pushkin Museum (oil on canvas; 128 × 190 cm; inventory No. Zh-3268) [11].

After the October Revolution, the Shchukin collection was nationalized, and since 1923 the painting was in the State Museum of New Western Art , where it received its modern name (despite this, in the reason catalog of Gauguin’s paintings compiled by J. Wildenstein, it is listed under the name “La femme aux mangos (I)" - "Woman with mangoes" [12] ). After the GMNZI was abolished in 1948, the painting was transferred to the Pushkin Museum [13] . The painting is exhibited in the former wing of the Golitsyn estate on Volkhonka , in the Gallery of European and American Art of the XIX-XX centuries , room 17 (Gauguin room) [14] [15]

Before sending the painting to Europe, Gauguin made a sketch from it in a mirror image and subsequently pasted it into the manuscript "Noa-Noa", stored in the Department of Graphics of the Louvre (inventory No. RF 7259, 353) [16] .--->