In a Garden

Just like Paul Gauguin, dozens of artists who were raised in the Western art tradition travelled to Pacific islands in search of their Eden. Jonas Rimša (1903–1978) also headed there in 1966, from Santa Monica in California, in pursuit of a Gauguinesque vision of earthly paradise. He stayed in Tahiti for seven months, but the impressions he gained and the motifs for his paintings lasted him for several years. Nijolė Tumėnienė, an expert in Rimša’s oeuvre, believes his composition In a garden is one of the earliest works he painted in Tahiti. The picture differs clearly from his other paintings of the time by the almost graphic ornamentality, the attention to detail, and the harmonious colouring, as if it were woven by the brush strokes, expressing the greenery of the vegetation and the blue of the sky, against a background in which the eye is caught by the red dress of a girl and a cabin roof of the same colour. According to Tumėnienė, Rimša was depicting the landscape that opened out in front of his eyes from the courtyard of Adrien Tuarau’s house in Pirae in Tahiti, where he was staying; and the girl, who could have been the host’s daughter Maeva, was his first model in Tahiti. (Jonas Rimša. Tropikų šauksmas, ed. by N. Tumėnienė, Vilnius, 2011, p. 69). Despite the real prototypes, the picture is perceived as a reflection of a dream about eternal summer and youth. Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.