Description
Faaturuma (Melancholic) – a picture hanging on the wall behind her
The woman sits on a wooden chair with a curved frame, turned slightly to the left. She wears a long pink-red dress that falls to the floor and covers her feet; in her lap she holds a white cloth. She has raised her right hand to her chin and cheek and tilted her head a little. Behind her stands a deep blue wall. At the upper left, on that wall, hangs a framed picture with a landscape in greens and cream, and beside it a pale opening lets in a faint light. The floor is olive yellow. At the lower right the signature is painted with the year. The work is held by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art under the inventory number 38-5.
A picture inside the picture
On the blue wall behind the seated figure hangs a framed landscape. It is small but clearly painted: one sees green fields, a pale path and the sky, all closed inside a dark frame. It is the only rectangle in a scene otherwise made entirely of curves – the rounded chair back, the bent arm, the soft folds of the dress. That is why the eye stops at it, although it takes up only a small part of the canvas.
Two spaces on one canvas
That tiny framed landscape brings another place into the room. Outside the frame is an interior: blue wall, olive floor, chair. Inside the frame is open country, with light and distance. The picture therefore shows a closed room and a view out of it at the same time, without needing a window to do it.
How the museum gives the measurement and the signature
The museum record gives the measurement first in inches and then, in brackets, in centimetres: 93.98 x 68.26 cm, as height by width. It places the signature at the lower right, together with the year, and there it is indeed visible on the canvas. Record and painting therefore agree.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the pink-red dress is the hardest part: it fills almost half the canvas and must stay alive, or the scene stiffens into an even surface. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: a seated woman in a long pink-red dress before a blue wall, a framed landscape above her.
- Technique: oil on canvas, a deep blue ground and an olive-yellow floor.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 35 x 50 cm to 140 x 200 cm; 65 x 90 cm and 92 x 130 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: the framed picture on the wall is the only rectangle in the scene.
Gauguin’s women of Tahiti on this shelf: Nevermore (O Tahiti), Three Tahitian Women and Ia Orana Maria.
