Artwork
The Call
The Call is an unspecified painting by the Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. It dates from 1902 and is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
About this work
Overview
Created during the final year of his life, this oil painting depicts two barefoot women standing on a swath of red earth under a luminous, flat‑colored sky. One figure extends her arm toward an unseen point beyond the canvas, suggesting a response to an unseen summons. The work belongs to a late series in which the artist investigated the enigmatic boundaries between existence and its cessation.
Subject & Meaning
The composition presents a quiet, ritualistic scene: the women’s simple garments and bare feet evoke a sense of primal presence on a sacred surface. The gesturing hand implies an answer to an external call, which scholars have interpreted as an allusion to destiny, mortality, or an unnamed larger force that the artist felt approaching.
Technique & Style
Executed with thick impasto strokes, the paint builds a textured surface that intensifies the vivid, unmodulated hues of the background. The flat, decorative coloration and simplified forms reflect the artist’s move toward imagined, memory‑based imagery, producing a dreamlike atmosphere that contrasts with the physicality of the brushwork.
History & Provenance
The canvas was painted on a remote Polynesian island, far from the artist’s native France, during a period of declining health. It remained in the artist’s personal collection until after his death, after which it entered the European market and was eventually acquired by a major museum, where it is displayed among his late works.
Context
This piece forms part of a series created shortly before the artist’s death, a time when he deliberately abandoned direct observation in favor of internal recollection and fantasy. The work reflects his ongoing fascination with the spiritual dimensions of life, a preoccupation that intensified as he confronted his own mortality while living in isolation in the Pacific.
Artist & collection
Artist
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (; French: ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements.
