Description
Parau na te Varua ino (Words of the Devil) – who is watching in this picture
On the right stands a nude female figure, turned directly towards us, with long dark hair and one hand raised to her chin. In the other hand she holds a white cloth. She stands on a broad pink-violet surface across which thin yellow lines wind. To her left, much lower and much smaller, a second figure crouches in a blue hooded garment; its eyes are unusually pale and look straight ahead, its hands resting on its knees. Between the two runs a band of vivid orange-red flowers. Behind, dark green thickens; at the top centre a white star-shaped blossom opens, and at the upper right a red and green form appears. The work is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington under the inventory number 1972.9.12. The museum record gives the measurement as height by width: 91.76 x 68.5 cm.
The figure that watches
The picture has two centres, not one. The standing figure is large, lit and placed in the foreground; the crouching one is small, pushed to the edge and half hidden in the leaves. And it is this second figure that gives the scene its weight: it does nothing, it only watches. Its pale eyes are the only places in the picture that truly stare. Because of them the standing figure is not alone, although she appears to be.
The inscription the museum records, and which we can see too
In the lower left corner the signature and the year are painted, and beneath them, in red script, the title Parau na te Varua ino. The museum record states exactly this: signature and title at the lower left. Both are indeed visible on the canvas, so record and painting agree.
A work that found no buyer at auction
The museum’s provenance record states that on 18 February 1895, at the painter’s own Paris sale, the canvas was offered as number 10 and did not sell; it therefore stayed with him. Only in October 1900 was it bought by the dealer Ambroise Vollard. The detail is worth knowing because it shows that a work now hanging in a great national gallery found no buyer at the time.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the face of the crouching figure is the hardest part: if the pale eyes are lost, so is the thing that holds the picture up. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: a standing figure on a pink ground and, at the edge, a crouching figure in blue that watches her.
- Technique: oil on canvas, dark green behind and a light surface in front.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 30 x 40 cm to 150 x 200 cm; 60 x 80 cm and 90 x 120 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: signature and title are painted into the lower left corner, one beneath the other.
If the same period interests you, see also Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau), Nevermore (O Tahiti) and Woman Holding a Fruit; Where Are You Going?.
