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Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manaò tupapaú)
Paul Gauguin · Post-Impressionism & Neo-Impressionism
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
- Date
- 1892
- Dimensions
- 72.4 x 92.4 cm
- Medium
- Oil on burlap mounted on canvas
- Location
- Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, United States
This painting shows a young Tahitian woman lying face down on a bed covered with a yellow-patterned cloth, her eyes wide open with fear. Behind her, in profile, sits a dark hooded figure, the spirit of the dead.
A closer look
Gauguin wrote that he had come home late one night to find his young companion lying in the dark, terrified, because Tahitians believed that the tupapaú, spirits of the dead, roamed at night. He painted her fear, surrounded by deep violet, glowing flowers like sparks and the strange watching figure. The pose recalls Manet's Olympia, which Gauguin admired and copied, but here the nude is not offering herself to the viewer; she is caught in a private moment of dread. The work is now also seen critically, as part of a colonial fantasy of the 'exotic'.
History of the painting
Gauguin sent the painting back from Tahiti and showed it in 1893 at his exhibition at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris, where its subject puzzled many visitors. It later belonged to A. Conger Goodyear, president of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo and the first president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and came to the Buffalo museum from his collection in 1965.
More by Paul Gauguin
In this gallery
When Will You Marry? (Nafea Faa Ipoipo)
Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)
Arearea (Joyfulness)
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
The Yellow Christ