One of a suite of ten night scenes, this woodcut was printed to accompany Noa Noa, voyage de Tahiti (1901), a romanticized and partially fictional text by Paul Gauguin describing his spiritual transformation during his first sojourn to Tahiti, from 1891 to 1893. Immersing himself in the island’s belief systems and customs, he contextualized his paintings of Tahitian life for Parisian audiences unfamiliar with the subject matter. This nightscape of a figure in repose watched by others in the background is related to a passage in Noa Noa about Teha’amana, a vahine, or woman, who lived with Gauguin.