Te Nave Nave Fenua (The Delightful Land)

Toward the right of the picture a nude woman stands facing front, one hand reaching toward a flower. At head height flies a lizard-like creature with spread red wings, and in the background blue and green trees and, at her feet, an earth of red, orange and purple spread as planes of color. The title "TE NAVE NAVE FENUA" is inscribed along the bottom edge.

The story of Eve reaching for the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden is transposed to a southern island: Eve becomes a Tahitian woman, the serpent a large lizard, and the apple a bright flower. Gauguin went to Tahiti in 1891 in search of paradise and painted this work in 1892. In 1893 it was shown in his solo exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris, and a woodcut with the same composition reversed left to right was later made.

The work passed through several owners and the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, and in 1922 Ohara Magosaburo acquired it through Kojima Torajiro. In 1923 it was shown at the Exhibition of Western Masterworks held at a primary school in Kurashiki, and it became one of the core works of the Ohara Museum of Art, which opened later.