Esther Bruton: Searching for Gauguin in Tahiti

Three Graces by Esther Bruton
Courtesy Michael D. Horikawa Fine Art

On March 29, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported that Esther Bruton would be spending several months in Tahiti. She travelled with two friends: her fellow Monterey Group artist, Ina Perham (who would later become Ina Perham Story), and Marie Smith of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The women departed from San Francisco on April 24. The trip, probably inspired by their romantic visions of Gauguin painting native people on a remote island, must have been an extraordinary adventure for three single women in the 1920s.  

Esther's friend and fellow artist, Ina Perham Story
www.geni.com/people/Ina-Perham-Story/357543270500010522

Esther Bruton’s passport photo, 1924

Marie O. Smith’s passport photo, 1924

While in Tahiti, the women lived in a small grass hut “close to native life.”¹  Years later, Esther provided this amusing anecdote about her time in Tahiti:

We watched every day from under our sun porch covered with one great leafy spread of banana leaves, waiting for something unusual to happen…   And then one day it happened. We thought we saw the great Gauguin ourselves -- tall, gaunt, loosely hung, with dreamer’s eyes, but young. We hurried over to Monsieur Tessier to tell him that Gauguin was still in the village. Monsieur Tessier smiled kindly and informed us that we had seen Emile, ‘the little one’--Gauguin’s 20-year-old-son.²

There is certainly a degree of mischief and humor in Esther’s story, as she must have been aware that by 1924 Gauguin had been dead for more than twenty years. They eventually met Gauguin’s son Emile Marae a Tai (1899-1980), whom Esther described as “an indolent, dreamy man...who showed little interest in art.”³  Strangely, Gauguin had another son also named Emile (1874-1955) who never set foot in Tahiti.

Although Esther, Ina, and Marie hoped to see more works by Gauguin (they saw just one), the trip was far from a loss. The native people and tropical setting would resurface a decade later when Esther was hired to provide commercial illustrations for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company’s 1936 advertising campaign. (The Hawaiian Pineapple Company was founded in 1901 by James Dole and was the predecessor of today’s Dole Food Company). Although she had never been to Hawaii, Esther drew upon her memories of Tahiti to create a stunning four-panel screen depicting three native women bathing in a lagoon.  Esther named the work Three Graces in homage to the countless artworks throughout history that have the same title and subject matter.  

Esther’s work was hugely successful in promoting the beauty and mystique of Hawaii and undoubtedly increased pineapple sales for the company. Three Graces is currently for sale at Michael D. Horikawa Fine Arts in Honolulu.

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¹Gene Hailey.  California Art Research, San Francisco: Abstract from WPA Project 2874, 1937, p. 33.

²Quoted in Karen Liberatore’s “The Circus is Back in Town,” San Francisco Chronicle, 31 Jan. 1988.

³Gene Hailey.  California Art Research, San Francisco: Abstract from WPA Project 2874, 1937, p. 33.