preview

The Spirit Of The Dead Keeps Watch

Decent Essays

The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch is an oil painting from the post impressionism era. The painting was done while Paul Gauguin was visiting Tahiti. The painting shows a young girl laying naked on a bed while a mysterious figure watches over her. The painting uses dark tones to create a sense of unease in the background, and uses the softer yellow tone to draw the viewer’s eye into the center of the painting. The mysterious figure is thought to be a Tupapaus, a Tahitian mythological spirit, which inhabits the island and illuminates the forest at night. Gauguin was originally from Europe, and viewed the Tahitian people as highly primitive, which as we known from lectures, was what many colonisers thought of African and Asian countries, because

Get Access