The painting was executed in Paris on Gauguin's return from his first period of living and working in Tahiti and is more imaginative than real. It depicts a central carved idol of the goddess Hina standing on a rock by the beach around which human figures are arranged in a symmetrical pattern. On the left two women are bearing votive offerings and on the right two others are dancing the upaupa, an erotic Tahitian dance which the colonial authorities tried to ban. In the foreground is an enigmatic group of three bathers, whose poses suggest they represent birth, life and death, but about which Gauguin never spoke.
In style the work is typical of the artist's Post-Impressionism in its simplification of forms and the dramatic use of color.
