Delightful Land

Paul Gauguin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this print Gauguin reimagines the Biblical story of the Fall. Eve is now a native Tahitian woman, the Garden of Eden a lush tropical paradise, the devilish serpent a fantastical winged lizard, and the apple from the Tree of Knowledge an exotic flower from a peacock-like plant. The right-hand border of the print is patterned much like the carved house-posts that Gauguin encountered in Tahiti. Adding to the cultural mix, Gauguin based Eve's statuesque figure on photographs of sculpted frieze from a Javanese Buddhist temple. The composition derives from an earlier painting by the artist (1892; Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan) which he further reworked in a series of drawings and monotypes.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art