His hope was to find "an edenic paradise where he could create pure, 'primitive' art",[5] rather than the primitivist faux works being turned out by painters in France.

Upon arrival, he found that Tahiti was not as he imagined it: it had been colonised in the 18th century, and at least two-thirds of the indigenous people of the island had been killed by diseases brought by Europeans.

Field thought her pose had a Japanese precedent, Charles F. Stuckey suggests Delacroix's Women of Algiers.

Gauguin commonly inscribed his paintings in Tahitian at this time: he was fascinated by the language, though never advanced beyond its rudiments.

[9] Art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews wrote that Gauguin "portrayed the [Tahitian] natives as living only to sing and to make love.

[11] These paintings of Tahitians, including When Will You Marry?, were met with relative indifference when Gauguin returned to France, his 1893 Durand-Ruel exhibition only a limited success generating some favourable reviews but little by way of sales.