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Showing posts from March, 2016

Recent acquisitions: Twenty-four original photo cabinet card views of Tahiti

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The Pacific Collection recently acquired a set of twenty-four cabinet card images of Tahiti , taken circa 1895 by an unidentified member of an American tourist group. The photographs include a range of subjects, some with captions, including landscapes, interiors and exteriors of buildings, and Tahitians. One image in particular stands out -- a man, woman and child in front of their home. On the back of the image is a hand-written caption: "Lawyer Goupil's residence, finest on the island." On the one hand, both the image and caption are somewhat unimpressive, but they hint at a more historic value: Auguste Goupil was a well-known lawyer in Tahiti. The image presumably shows Goupil, his wife and their daughter, Jeanne. Roughly a year after this photo was taken, Goupil hired Paul Gauguin to paint Jeanne, which resulted in one of Gauguin's more famous works, "Portrait of a Young Woman, Vaite (Jeanne) Goupil." A detail of the photograph and Gauguin's pai