Be Be (The Nativity)

By the time Gauguin lived on Tahiti, Christmas was already a fully established festival there, enriched by local colour and traditions. The image of the Virgin and Child fitted organically into the life of the islanders who considered the birth of any new human a sacred event.
The artist sought to give his paintings titles in the local Polynesian language, although he only had a poor command of it. Be Be might be translated as “nativity”, “to be”, “future”, or else the two syllables might be taken as onomatopoeic imitation of the bleating of animals in the stable, or the new mother repeating the French word bébé.
The composition is extremely straightforward, even illustrative – Gauguin’s companion Pahura is shown in a sideways view, holding an infant, while an angel stands alongside. The setting is a stable, seemingly from biblical times.
Knowing the details of Gauguin’s biography, we can foresee the tragic conclusion – the sickly child will die, having survived less than 10 days, and the figure alongside is most probably the angel of death. Gauguin is evidently drawing a parallel between the sorrow of the Virgin Mary, aware of the fate that awaits her Child, and his own bitter experience of the loss of a new-born baby.