Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryTe burao (The Hibiscus Tree)
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Follow the fallen branches from the bottom edge toward the trunk, then search for the dog among them and the small person beyond the tree.
In this 1892 painting from Gauguin’s first stay in Tahiti, a large tree dominates the view. Fallen branches spread across the foreground, with a dog among them and a small person in the distance. The contrast in scale gives the tree an almost architectural presence. Curving contours and patches of color organize the scene more strongly than a detailed botanical description.
Oil on canvas · 68 × 90.7 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Post-Impressionism
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- Te burao (The Hibiscus Tree)
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
- Date
- 1892
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 68 × 90.7 cm (26 3/4 × 35 11/16 in.); Framed: 86.4 × 109.3 × 8.9 cm (34 × 43 × 3 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Joseph Winterbotham Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.