Nevermore

A young woman lies awake on a bed in a Tahitian hut, while a raven perches behind her and two figures talk in the shadows. Gauguin painted the word Nevermore across the corner, borrowing it from Poe.

The story behind the painting

Gauguin painted Nevermore in February 1897, during his second stay on Tahiti in the South Pacific. The model is Pahura, his teenage vahine, or wife, shown naked on a bed in their hut. At that time Pahura was grieving the loss of her first child, a child by Gauguin. The painter had not yet suffered his own great loss: his favourite European-born daughter Aline died in April 1897, two months after the picture was made. Gauguin knew Edgar Allan Poe's poem well; it had been recited at his farewell party in 1891.

What to look for

Pahura lies on the bed, and the curves of the headboard echo the curves of her body. In the background, behind the bed, you can see a raven and two mysterious human figures. The canvas is long and low, about 60 by 161 cm, so the figure stretches across most of its width. In the top left corner, in relatively large capital letters, Gauguin painted the title itself, Nevermore. Look at how the bird and the two shadowy figures stay behind her, while she lies in the foreground.

Meaning and intent

The title and the raven are an obvious reference to Poe's 1845 poem The Raven, in which a mourning student is visited in his room by a raven that croaks the single word nevermore in answer to every question he asks. Painted while Pahura was mourning her child, the picture carries that sense of loss into a Tahitian room. Gauguin himself claimed the bird represented a bird of the devil who watches. The source calls the work enigmatic, and the two figures in the background are left unexplained.

Legacy

The composer Frederick Delius bought the painting in 1898 from Gauguin's friend George-Daniel de Monfreid. In 1926 the British businessman Samuel Courtauld bought it and gave it to the Courtauld Institute of Art, where it has been in the collection since 1932 and on display in the Gallery. In 2010 a poll organised by the Art Fund charity voted it Britain's most romantic painting. It won against a shortlist of five that included masterpieces by Jan van Eyck and Titian.