The Seed of the Areoi by Gauguin - Poster

This painting is owned by the Museum of Modern Art. It shows a woman from Tahiti sitting on a blue and white blanket. She sits in a dignified position with her back very straight, like the old Egyptians depicted people in art. She has some white flowers in her hair and in her left hand she holds a flowering mango (seed) that she seems to offer to the viewer. This flowering mango symbolizes fertility and was the sacred fruit of the Areoi society. On the bottom right is a three-legged table (called an umete in Polynesian) with more mangos in different colors. The woman is sitting against a background of pink flowers. In the background is the beautiful landscape of Tahiti which shows some mountains, water, trees, and a piece of the sky. Gauguin kept this painting relatively simple and did, for example, not include any shadows. He created a very colorful painting where the colors are not all very realistic. A more detailed discussion of this painting can be found at https://www.tripimprover.com/blog/the-seed-of-the-areoi-by-paul-gauguin.