Paul Gauguin – Nevermore (O Tahiti)

Paul Gauguin – Nevermore (O Tahiti) – hand-painted oil painting reproduction

A woman lies on the bed and looks straight out at us; behind her a dark bird perches, and beside it two figures are talking. In the upper left corner, in capitals, stands the word NEVERMORE. The work was painted in February 1897 during the second Tahitian stay, oil on canvas, 116 × 60.5 cm, and is held by the Courtauld Gallery (Courtauld Institute of Art) in London under accession number P.1932.SC.163. The word from that corner is painted here by hand: a hand-painted oil painting reproduction, oil on canvas, with no printing. The museum gives the measurement as height by width: 60.5 × 116 cm.

The word is Poe’s; the bird, by the painter’s account, is not

The title is unmistakably Poe’s: Nevermore is the refrain of The Raven of 1845, a poem read aloud at Gauguin’s farewell dinner in 1891. The bird in the picture, however, was denied by the painter himself as Poe’s raven – he described it as “the bird of the devil who watches”. Poe’s word therefore stands on the canvas while the bird, according to its author, is not his. We do not resolve the contradiction: the title points one way, the painter’s statement the other, and both belong to what is known about the painting.

Colour instead of narrative

Gauguin built the mood from colour rather than from an event: a bright yellow pillow, blue and green bands in the bedding, vertical pinks and violets in the background. The scene does not develop – the woman does nothing, she only looks – so the range of colour carries the whole meaning. The erotic undertone is hard to miss, yet the painting states nothing outright; the tension comes from what is painted beside the figure, not from the figure itself.

The composer who bought it

Gauguin sent the canvas from Tahiti to his friend Daniel de Monfreid, who in 1898 sold it to the British composer Frederick Delius for 500 francs. Gauguin wrote to Monfreid that he had done well to let Delius have Nevermore. Later the work reached the collector Samuel Courtauld, and since 1932 it has been in the Courtauld Gallery in London. That one of the best-known Gauguins hung for decades in a composer’s house is worth knowing.

A hand-painted reproduction for your home

The format is markedly long and low – close to two to one – and that is what decides where it belongs: above a bed, above a low chest, or along a corridor, not on a narrow wall. We paint the motif in eight sizes, from 80 × 50 cm to 200 × 120 cm. Another reclining figure with a watcher behind her is in Spirit of the Dead Watching; from the same year 1897 comes Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, and the Tahitian day out of doors is in Fatata te Miti (By the Sea).

• Subject: Nevermore (O Tahiti), Paul Gauguin, 1897
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas – never printed
• Original: 116 × 60.5 cm, Courtauld Gallery, London, acc. P.1932.SC.163
• Interesting fact: the title is Poe’s, but Gauguin himself denied the bird was a raven – he called it the bird of the devil who watches