Te Po (Eternal Night), from the Noa Noa Suite

Artist Paul Gauguin (French, 1848 - 1903)

Printer Louis Roy (French)

Date1894

MediumWoodcut; printed in brown and black inks with hand applied watercolor on Japanese paper

DimensionsImage: 8 1/16 x 14 inches (20.48 x 35.56 cm)
Mat: 16 x 21 1/4 inches (40.64 x 53.98 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the Print Duplicate Fund

Object number71-9

Signed(block, on disk, u.l.):"PGO"

On View

Not on view

Collections

Prints

Terms

Exhibition History

Communications '71: An Exhibition of Prints, Banners, and Posters, Friends of Art Sales and Rentals Gallery, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 7-March 7, 1971.

Graphic Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 23-July 25, 1993, no cat.

Inked in Time: Six Centuries of Printed Masterpieces, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 22-May 31, 1998, no cat.

Color and Line: Masterworks on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 5-November 11, 2007, no cat., as Eternal Night (Te Po).

Color and Line: Masterworks on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 26-August 10, 2014, no cat., as Te Po (Eternal Night).

Color and Line: Masterworks on Paper, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 23-July 30, 2017, no cat., as Te Po (Eternal Night).

Gallery Label

No medium matched Paul Gauguin’s feelings toward his encounter with Tahiti more than woodcut. Made by gouging directly into wood, this technique allowed the artist to combine the dimensionality of his wood-relief sculptures with the vibrant color of his paintings. Woodcut printing also provided Gauguin with endless opportunities for experimentation. Gauguin often created prints slightly off-register to achieve a blurry, dream-like effect, as seen here. His use of thinly applied black ink over pale orange in the background contributes to a sense of otherworldliness.

Provenance

With Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, by March 29, 1971;

Purchased from Kennedy Galleries by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.

Published References

Communications '71: An Exhibition of Prints, Banners, and Posters, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1971).

Ellen Goheen, “From Romanticism to Pop,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 77, (repro.) [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 545, (repro.), as Te Po (La Grande Nuit)].

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 194, (repro.).

Marcel Guérin, L'oeuvre gravé de Gauguin (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1980), no. 15, II/II.

Elizabeth Mongan, Eberhard W. Kornfeld, and Harold Joachim, Paul Gauguin, Catalogue Raisonné of His Prints (Bern, Switzerland: Galerie Kornfeld, 1988), no. 21.IV.C./IV.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 212, (repro.), as Te Po (The Great Night).

George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 186-88, 299, (repro.), as Eternal Night (Te Po) (La grande Nuit).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 126, (repro.), as Te Po (Eternal Night).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.