Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses

Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses (Be In Love and You Will Be Happy) is a bas-relief wood panel carved and polychromed by French artist Paul Gauguin in the autumn of 1889.

Gauguin depicts himself in the upper right, sucking his thumb and grasping the hand of the fleshy nude woman, a Polynesian or African, who seems to recoil in fear.

Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses is one of three similarly themed artworks that Gauguin prepared in 1889 for the Salon; the other two, possibly pendants to this panel, are the paintings In the Waves[2] and Life and Death.

[3] Gauguin was a pleasure seeker and found European morals constraining; his relocation to Polynesia seemingly released him from all that, but brought deep feelings of guilt and exploitation.

[1] Art critic Albert Aurier in 1891 questioned the meaning of the work, in which "all lasciviousness, all the struggles of mind and flesh, and all the pain of sensual delight seem to writhe and gnash their teeth".