Word: manao
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Dates: during 2004-2004
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...what he was after in one of his first major Tahitian canvases, Manao Tupapau, also called The Spirit of the Dead Watches. The girl lying uneasily on the yellow bedding is his 14-year-old mistress Tehamana. Gauguin had returned home one night to find her stretched on their bed in terror of the darkness, which Tahitians believed was populated by spirits. The seated figure brooding at left is one of them. Over the bed are the starbursts of imaginary flowers that Gauguin contrived to suggest the nighttime phosphorescence that the islanders believed was the visible sign of those spirits...
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