This is Kathrin, whose portrait by Thomas Eakins hangs in the YUAG. It is an unusual painting. The intention of a portrait is usually to illuminate the nature of the subject—but Eakins renders Kathrin in almost total darkness. She looks gaunt, almost sickly, with shadow obscuring her face. She dangles her wrist absent-mindedly to tease a kitten which rests in her lap, her fingers long and skeletal. The suffocating darkness of the space, combined with the excessive intricacy of her lace dress, makes her appear trapped in her home. Her face is absent, almost bored; she fans herself disinterestedly. There’s something terribly sad in the way she is rendered—barely visible, pale, dressed as if for some formal event that she will never attend.

This work by Gauguin, Two Tahitian Women, particularly struck me during our visit to the Met. These women are beautiful, black eyebrows defined, hair thick and youthful. They hold flowers and a plate of fruit, perhaps meant to invite the viewer in. But there’s something guarded and distant about their expressions, their beauty rendering them inaccessible. The woman on the left gazes off into some unknown location; she on the right leans over towards the one beside her about to whisper a secret in her ear. The greenish undertones to their skin, reminiscent of a medieval Italian tempera painting that’s aged badly, allow them to almost blend into the verdent background. Both of their arms are crossed over their torsos, protecting their vital organs. Gauguin meant to depict their beauty; instead, they reflect the discomfort he induced in them. He notoriously raped several women he encountered while in Tahiti, taking multiple child brides. As viewers, we undergo two parallel experiences: one of Gauguin’s imperialist fantasy, paradisal and unreal; the other of these two women as they were in reality, defending themselves against the dangerous artist and foreigner.