This archive report was first published on 4 December 2019.
On December 4, 2019, a rare Paul Gauguin painting, 'Te Bourao II', sold for 9.5 million euros at a Paris auction, sparking controversy over the artist's relationships with young girls in Polynesia.
The 1897 painting, which depicts a Tahiti landscape, was expected to fetch around five to seven million euros.
According to the Artcurial auction house, the buyer is an 'international collector', and the artwork will remain in France.
It is one of the few paintings from Gauguin's Tahiti period still in private hands, with the last sale in France of a Gauguin from this period occurring 22 years ago.
Recent years have seen increasing attention on Gauguin's attitudes to the young women who feature in the paintings of this period, with an exhibition at the National Gallery in London aiming to consider these relationships and the impact of colonialism through contemporary debate.
