Marie-Angélique Satre, who kept a hotel at Pont-Aven, was regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the area. About 1920, she explained the circumstances in which this portrait was painted: "Gauguin was very sweet and very miserable […]. He kept telling my husband he wanted to paint my portrait, so one day he started. […] but when he showed it to me, I said "How horrible!" and told him to take it away […]. Gauguin was very sad and said, crestfallen, that he had never painted such a good portrait as that one". The model's bewilderment when she saw the painting is hardly surprising.

   Gauguin, who had decided to "dare all", broke with the traditional practices of perspective and spatial unity. In a process taken from Japanese prints, he circled the portrait of Angélique Satre and laid it on a mainly decorative background, partitioning the forms and surrounding the figures with a darker outline.

   The rigid pose, the young woman's ceremonial costume and the inscription LA BELLE ANGELE printed in capital letters reinforce the solemnity of the portrait. On the left, Gauguin has inserted an anthropomorphic pot, in a Peruvian style, which adds symbolic force and seems to be an exotic version of a Breton idol. Regarded as a masterpiece by Degas, who bought it in 1891, La Belle Angèle is a striking illustration of Gauguin's main aesthetic concerns in the heteroclite assembly of various sources of inspiration which he regarded as primitive and in the simplification of the forms.

百度翻译：http://fanyi.baidu.com

　　在油画《美丽的恩琪拉》一画中，我们看到了另一种情调。这是一个美妇的肖像。画家高更在这个肖像上完全是按照色彩结构的要求确切地修酌着她的形——脸、手、衣服。玫瑰色、绿色和淡蓝色借助形象本身和背景上的蓝色和红色衬托出来；菩萨偶像上的金黄色和橙黄色使这些色彩显得更加多样。因此，这里的形是服从面的，这就可以使观者更好地欣赏那些纯色的区域。

　　但是，画家高更虽然颇感兴趣于这个肖像本身，他却并不仅限于画一个一般的肖像；为了赋予肖像以一种超自然现象的色彩，他把肖像安置在一个虚幻的圆圈里；高更在画的左侧，安上一尊模糊不清的佛像，暗示肖像本身所给人的印象也与这个偶像一样，同时也显示了画家对东方神秘主义的尊崇。这一切都没有任何理性的价值，但是，甚至是在许多年过后的今天，艺术家的这一幻想仍然以其色彩的力量，以及如果可以这样说的话，以其对神秘事物的活龙活现的造型表现而使观者迷惑。马拉美说高更的这句话颇可用于这幅画：“令人惊奇的是，这么多的奥妙竞能容纳在这么鲜明的形式之中。”