{"id":83462,"date":"2021-09-02T18:01:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T16:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/uncategorized\/her-name-was-vairaumati\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T20:10:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T19:10:38","slug":"her-name-was-vairaumati","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/paul-gauguin\/her-name-was-vairaumati\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Gauguin \u2013 Her Name was Vairaumati"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paul Gauguin \u2013 Her Name was Vairaumati \u2013 hand-painted oil painting reproduction<\/h2>\n

In the Tahitian account Vairaumati is not the god\u2019s daughter but his wife<\/strong>. That difference is what this picture is named for. The canvas was painted in 1892<\/strong> on Tahiti, oil on canvas, 68 \u00d7 91 cm<\/strong> (width \u00d7 height, an upright format), and it is held by the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts<\/strong> in Moscow; before that it was in the collection of Sergei Shchukin<\/strong>. Here it is made again under the brush: a hand-painted oil painting reproduction<\/strong>, oil on canvas, with no printing.<\/p>\n

Oro is her husband, not her father<\/h3>\n

By tradition Vairaumati was the daughter of Ta\u2019ata<\/strong>, the first man. The god Oro<\/strong> made a rainbow, crossed it down to earth and took her as his wife; she bore him a son, Hoa-tabu-i-te-ra\u2019i<\/strong>, who became a great ruler, and the Arioi<\/strong> society traces its origin to that marriage. Father and husband are therefore two different figures, and Oro is the second of them. Confusing the two is an old error that runs through many descriptions of this painting \u2013 including the one we ourselves used to carry.<\/p>\n

The title is painted on the canvas itself<\/h3>\n

Along the bottom centre, in the painter\u2019s own hand, stands \u201cVa\u00efraumati tei oa\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 her name is Vairaumati. In the lower left corner are the signature Paul Gauguin<\/strong>, the year 92<\/strong> and the word Tahiti<\/strong>. The title is not a museum label, then; it is part of the picture. The woman sits on a blue pareu patterned with white flowers, a dark carved idol rises behind her, and at her feet stands a white bird holding a lizard in its claws; what that scene means is not settled, and we will not announce it as fact.<\/p>\n

The road to Moscow<\/h3>\n

The painting stayed first with the artist\u2019s family, then passed to the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard<\/strong>. From him the Moscow collector Sergei Shchukin<\/strong> bought it in 1904<\/strong>. After the revolution it was nationalised in 1918<\/strong> into the First Museum of New Western Painting, and since 1948<\/strong> it has been in the Pushkin Museum. Twelve years, then, between a Tahitian canvas and a Moscow wall.<\/p>\n

A hand-painted reproduction for your home<\/h3>\n

The upright format and the deep blue of the pareu make this a picture for a narrow wall that people stand close to \u2013 beside a door, in an entrance hall, at the end of a corridor. We paint it in eight sizes; 68 \u00d7 91 cm<\/strong> is exactly the size of the original, while for a larger wall 90 \u00d7 120 cm is a frequent choice. From the same year of 1892 comes Spirit of the Dead Watching<\/a> \u2013 Tahitian tradition again, but as fear rather than as genealogy; Arearea<\/a> shows the same flat colour without a story, and Three Tahitian Women<\/a> is the other picture of ours that reached Russia by the same route of private collections.<\/p>\n