Description
Paul Gauguin – Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) – hand-painted oil painting reproduction
A young Tahitian woman lies on her stomach and glances sideways at us; behind her, at the head of the bed, sits a dark hooded figure. The work was painted in 1892 in Tahiti, in oil on coarse burlap rather than ordinary artists’ canvas, 72.4 × 92.4 cm, and is held by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum under accession number 1965:1 (A. Conger Goodyear Collection). Here this night scene takes its colour from the brush: a hand-painted oil painting reproduction, oil on canvas, with no printing. The museum gives the measurement as height by width: 72.4 × 92.4 cm.
What tupapau means
In Tahitian belief the tupapau are the spirits of the dead, who stay by the graves at night and keep watch over the world of the living. The figure at the head of the bed is therefore not an emblem of fear but a specific being from local religion, painted as though it were standing in the room. That is exactly why the scene is not a nightmare but a meeting: the girl is awake, not asleep, and both she and the spirit are equally real within the picture.
The title is deliberately double
Gauguin said himself that the title can be read in two directions: either the girl is thinking of the ghost, or the ghost is thinking of her. He did not resolve the ambiguity and did not want to. The painting therefore has no single correct reading, and anyone offering one is choosing between two possibilities the painter left open. We do not choose for you here.
Who the girl was, and why that is disputed
In his book Noa Noa Gauguin named the model Teha’amana and wrote that she was about thirteen years old. That is his own statement, not a museum record. Recent scholarship reads it with reserve: some researchers point out that Noa Noa is a literary work written for a reader, and that later identifications amount to hints rather than proof. We give both, because both belong to what is known about this painting – Gauguin’s claim, and the doubt about it.
A hand-painted reproduction for your home
Above are photographs of this work as it was made in our workshop. We paint it in eight sizes; 92 × 72 cm is the measurement of the original, and 180 × 140 cm is available for a large wall. The dark violet and deep blue read as quiet and dense, so the painting carries a wall with little light. From the same Tahitian year comes Arearea (Joyousness); Tahitian motherhood without a night scene is in Maternity (Women on the Seashore), and the whole Tahitian summation in Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?.
- Subject: Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau), Paul Gauguin, 1892
- Technique: hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas – never printed
- Original: 72.4 × 92.4 cm, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, acc. 1965:1, A. Conger Goodyear Collection
- Interesting fact: the original is not painted on artists’ canvas but on coarse burlap
