Spirit of the Dead Watching By Gauguin

Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. In Tahitian mythology the title may refer to either the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her. The subject of the painting was Gauguin's Tahitian wife Tehura, then 14 years old, who one night, according to Gauguin, was lying in fear when he arrived late home: "immobile, naked, lying face downward on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear . . . Might she not with her frightened face take me for one of the demons and spectres of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights?" The spirit she fears is personified by the old woman seated at left. The strong colors are symbolic of the native Polynesian belief that phosphorescent lights were manifestations of the spirits of the dead.