Gauguin intended this print for the cover of his memoir, titled "Noa Noa," (literally “fragrant, fragrant"), a phrase he used to refer to Tahiti, a place to which he returned repeatedly and where he found inspiration. Gauguin first printed this image upon his return to Paris after his first stay in the French colony (1891–1893). When his memoir was printed without images, painter, art critic, and printer Louis Roy (French, 1862–1907) produced a series of Gauguin's woodcuts in a separate edition. The flat application of color and non-illusionistic rendering of the scene depicted alludes to a Japanese woodcut tradition to which Gauguin and many of his contemporaries looked for new visual principles.