Case file · Folklore / legend
Gauguin's 'Spirit of the Dead Watching'
In 1892 Paul Gauguin painted 'Manaò tupapaú', showing his young Tahitian companion frightened by the tūpāpaʻu, the spirit of the dead that Tahitians feared at night.
1892 CE · -17.75, -149.47 · status: legend
The account
Gauguin wrote that he had come home to find her terrified in the dark. The painting made the Tahitian ghost belief famous in Europe; it is now in the Albright–Knox gallery in Buffalo.
The sceptical view
Gauguin's account romanticises and exploits his relationship with a girl of 13 or 14; the spirit belief predates him and was recorded by Cook's crews in the 1770s.