{"id":185366,"date":"2026-08-13T16:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/?post_type=product&p=185366"},"modified":"2026-08-13T16:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:38:22","slug":"merahi-metua-no-tehamana","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/paul-gauguin\/merahi-metua-no-tehamana\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Gauguin \u2013 Merahi metua no Tehamana (The Ancestors of Tehamana)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merahi metua no Tehamana \u2013 Gauguin\u2019s portrait of Tehamana and her ancestors<\/h2>\n

In 1893 Paul Gauguin painted the portrait of Tehamana, his Tahitian companion, and titled it Merahi metua no Tehamana \u2013 Tehamana has many parents. The girl sits facing the viewer directly, in a blue-and-white striped mission dress with a white collar, a fan held in her hands. Behind her back a band of yellow signs runs the full width, and below it a deity and a smaller attendant figure appear. The work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago under accession number 1980.613. The format is portrait \u2013 the museum states height first and width second.<\/p>\n

Who Tehamana is<\/h3>\n

Tehamana is not an unnamed model but a named person: the title of the work carries her name. Gauguin painted her in the dress the missionaries had brought to Tahiti, that is in a European cut, while the ground behind her is something else entirely \u2013 Tahitian, and older than the missions. It is precisely that contrast which carries the work: the girl sits between two worlds, dressed in one and surrounded by the other.<\/p>\n

The signs behind her back<\/h3>\n

The band of yellow signs above her is not Tahitian writing. Gauguin took the forms from patterns he had seen elsewhere in Oceania and arranged them as a decorative frieze. They are painted as script but cannot be read \u2013 they work as a sign of the ancestors, not as text. Below them stands a dark female figure with raised arms, and beside her a smaller one; together they form a scene that belongs to belief, not to the mission school.<\/p>\n

The lettering at the lower left edge<\/h3>\n

In the lower left corner the title MERAHI METUA NO TEHAMANA is painted in the colour itself, with the painter\u2019s signature and the year beside it. It is his own brushstroke and part of the original work \u2013 not a watermark added afterwards, and not a publisher\u2019s mark. On the reproduction it is painted just like the rest of the scene, because it belongs to the work.<\/p>\n

The measurement: two sources differ<\/h3>\n

This is worth stating plainly: two reliable sources give different measurements. The Art Institute of Chicago records 75 x 53 cm; Wikidata records 76.3 x 54.3 cm. The year, the museum and the accession number agree in both entries \u2013 only the measurements differ. It makes no difference to choosing a format, because the ratio between the sides stays almost the same and a portrait work stays portrait. The support is jute, a coarse weave the painter also used for other works of those years.<\/p>\n

How a hand-painted reproduction is made<\/h3>\n

The reproduction is painted by hand, in oils on canvas, brushstroke by brushstroke. On this subject the face takes the greatest care: if that quiet, slightly withheld bearing is lost, the portrait becomes mere costume. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished piece for approval.<\/p>\n