Memories of Tahiti

A drawing by Paul Gauguin stood out, followed by several portraits, notably by Marval and Hawkins.

This drawing by Paul Gauguin saw its estimate double to €132,400. It combines a text full of derision with two illustrations— Moses on the Mountain and Tahitian Women Playing the Flute—created two or threeyears after the painter’s arrival in Tahiti in 1891. It coincides with the writing of *Noa Noa*, which he began in 1893 as a travel journal recounting his discovery of the Polynesian island, and which he would later supplement with images that defied the logic of his narrative. Two paintings caused a stir, each fiercely contested up to€74,144: *La Femme en rose, beach (98x145cm) by Jacqueline Marval(1866–1932), sheltering from the sun under a striped tent, and the Portrait of Berthe Bruyère (62x51cm visible) signed by Louis Welden Hawkins (1849–1910), exhibited at the Salon of the Société nationale des beaux-arts in Paris in 1899. Marval enjoyed success in the1920s and discovered Biarritz, where she stayed regularly and from which she drew inspiration for subjects related to the rise of seaside tourism and its leisure activities. As for the model in Hawkins’s painting, she is likely the wife of the physician and art collector Adolphe Paul Bruyère (1868–1911). By imitating a photograph with this monochrome portrait, he places it within the Art Nouveau style, featuring a floral motif surrounding her face, echoed by a wide border painted with similar motifs and inscriptions, extending the composition outward in a Symbolist manner. Two other works tied forsecond place at€52,960: the portrait of a Young Provençal (41x33cm) by Moïse Kisling(1891–1953), painted in Sanary-sur-Mer in 1948, and *Wooden Construction* (69x49cm) by Joaquín Torres García(1874–1949), an abstract oil on wood from 1930. Unsurprisingly, the charm of *The Little Girl with Her Cat* (22.5×15.2cm), a drawing in India ink by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968) from 1950, sold for 43,692€.