Te Rerioa (Day Dreaming), 1897 (oil on canvas)

Te Rerioa was painted during Gauguin’s second stay in Tahiti. It shows two women watching over a sleeping child in a room decorated with elaborate wood reliefs. The figures do not communicate, heightening the sense of mystery. Gauguin meant the subject to be unclear. He wrote, ‘Everything is a dream in this canvas: is it the child? is it the mother? is it the horseman on the path? or even is it the dream of the painter!!!’ He inscribed the Tahitian word for ‘dream’ in the lower part of the composition but misspelled it: it should read ‘rereioa’. When Gauguin journeyed to Tahiti for the second time, in 1895, he had a stopover in New Zealand. While awaiting his ship to be serviced, he spent time at the Auckland Museum, which held a collection of Maori art. Among the objects that he encountered there was an elaborately carved decorative bowl with two figures that formed the handles. Two years later Gauguin included a painted version of the wooden bowl in The Dream, but he converted it into a cradle for the sleeping baby. For detail see 65741