Focus on this artwork and explore the Commentary by Gauguin.
There are five sources for Gauguin's description of the painting: a letter to his patron Daniel Monfreid dated 8 December 1892, another letter to his wife Mette the same day, his 1893 manuscript Cahier pour Aline ("Notebook for Aline"), the first unpublished 1893-4 draft of Noa Noa and then finally the published 1901 version prepared together with his collaborator  Charles Morice. Richard Field has provided a critical analysis of these sources.
Letter to Daniel Monfreid
In an 8 December 1892 letter to Daniel Monfreid, Gauguin gives the titles of eight paintings he is sending out for exhibition in Copenhagen. He translates the title Manao tupapau as "Think of the Ghost, or, The Spirits of the Dead are Watching"  and goes on to say that he wants to reserve it for a later sale, but will sell for 2,000 francs. He describes the painting as follows (without explaining the subject is a nude):This picture is for me (excellent). Here is the genesis (for you only). General Harmony. Dark dull violet, dark blue and chrome. 1. The draperies are chrome 2. because this colour suggests night, without explaining it however, and furthermore serves as a happy medium between the yellow orange and the green, completing the harmony. These flowers are also like phosphorescences in the night (in her thoughts). The Kanakas believe that the phosphorous lights seen at night are the souls of the dead.In short, it is a fine bit of painting, although it is not according to nature.
Paintings from Gauguin's first Tahitian period selected for his Copenhagen exhibition
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		Letter to Mette Gauguin
In an 8 December 1892 letter to his wife, Gauguin gives translations of the Tahitian titles of the paintings he intends to send. He stresses this is for Mette's eyes only, so that she can provide them for those who ask for them. He fixes a price of at least 1,500 francs for the painting, and goes on to describe it as follows:I painted a nude of a young girl. In this position she is on the verge of being indecent. But I want it that way: the lines and movement are interesting to me. And so, I give her, in depicting the head, a bit of a fright. It is necessary to justify this fright if not to explain it because it is in the character of a Maori person. Traditionally these people have a great fear of the spirits of the dead. One of our own young girls [in Europe] would be frightened to be caught in this position. (The women here would not.) I have to explain this fright with the least possible literary means as was done formerly. So I did this. General harmony, somber, sad, frightening, telling in the eye like a funeral knell. Violet, somber blue, and orange-yellow. I make the linen greenish-yellow: 1 because the linen of this savage is a different linen than ours (beaten tree bark); 2 because it creates, suggests artificial light (the Kanaka woman never sleeps in darkness) and yet I don't want the effect of a lamp (it is common); 3 this yellow linking the orange-yellow and the blue completes the musical harmony. There are several flowers in the background, but they should not be real, being imaginative, I make them resemble sparks. For the Kanaka, the phosphorescences of the night are from the spirit of the dead, they believe they are there and fear them. Finally, to end, I make the ghost quite simply, a little old woman; because the young girl, unacquainted with the spirits of the French stage, could not visualise death except in the form of a person like herself. There you have the script that will prepare you for the critics when they bombard you with their malicious questions. To conclude, the painting had to be made very simple, the motif being savage, childlike  
According to Gauguin, the phosphorescences that could be seen in Tahiti at night, and which natives believed to be the exhalations of the spirits of the dead, were emitted by mushrooms that grew on trees. The description of the spirit of the dead that the artist would have been familiar with came from the work of Pierre Loti, who described the spirit as a "blue-faced monster with sharp fangs"; the decision to paint an old woman instead of a bizarre demon may have been prompted by the desire to use a symbol that would be more familiar to a European audience.Cahier pour Aline
Gauguin began this notebook in 1893 for his eldest daughter Aline, then sixteen years old, during his first visit to Tahiti. Unfortunately she died in 1897 from pneumonia before she could receive it. The notebook includes a description of the painting, under the title Genèse d'un tableau ("Genesis of a picture"), accompanied by a watercolor sketch. It is here that Gauguin remarked the title Manao tupapau can be understood in two ways:In this rather daring position, quite naked on a bed, what might a young Kanaka girl be doing? Preparing for love? This is indeed in her character, but it is indecent and I do not want that. Sleeping, after the act of love? But that is still indecent. The only possible thing is fear. What kind of fear? Certainly not the fear of Susannah surprised by the Elders. That does not happen in Oceania. The tupapau is just the thing... According to Tahitian beliefs, the title Manao tupapau has a double meaning... either she thinks of the ghost or the ghost thinks of her. To recapitulate: Musical part - undulating horizontal lines - harmonies in orange and blue linked by yellows and violets, from which they derive. The light and the greenish sparks. Literary part - the spirit of a living girl linked with the spirit of Death. Night and Day. This genèse is written  for those who always have to know the whys and wherefores. Otherwise the picture is simply a study of a Polynesian nude.Noa NoaNoa Noa was originally conceived as a travelogue to accompany Gauguin's 1893 Durand-Ruel exhibition. Gauguin wrote the first rough draft (now in the Getty Center) in 1893 but could not complete it in time. He subsequently entered into a collaboration with the Symbolist poet Charles Morice to produce a more elaborate and imaginative work. The manuscript for this, prepared between 1893 and 1897, is now in the Louvre. Extracts, including those dealing with the painting, were published in 1897 in the La Revue Blanche, while the whole work was finally published at Morice's expense, Gauguin having essentially lost interest, in 1901 in the La Plume edition.
In the draft account, Gauguin describes coming home late to find Teha'amana lying on her bed in the dark. This was to be followed by a description of the painting he never inserted. Finally he records Teha'amana chiding Gauguin for leaving her in the dark:One day I had to go to Papeete. I had promised to come back that same evening. On the way back the carriage broke down half way: I had to do the rest on foot. It was one in the morning when I got home. Having at that moment very little oil in the house - my stock was to be replenished - the lamp had gone out, and the room was in darkness when I went in. I felt afraid and, more still, mistrustful. Surely the bird has flown. I struck matches and saw on the bed (Description of the picture Tupapau)  The poor child came to herself again and I did all I could to restore her confidence. 'Never leave me alone again like this without light! What have you been doing in town? - you've been to see women, the kind who go to the market to drink and dance, then give themselves to the officers, to the sailors, to everybody?'
Gauguin's account is considerably extended in the final published version. Critics agree that Morice was responsible for the expansion, albeit with the full support of Gauguin. The description of the painting, previously omitted, now commences:Tehura lay motionless, naked, belly down on the bed: she stared up at me, her eyes wide with fear, and she seemed not to know who I was. For a moment I too felt a strange uncertainty. Tehura's dread was contagious: it seemed to me that a phosphorescent light poured from her staring eyes. I had never seen her so lovely; above all I had never seen her beauty so moving. And in the half-shadow, which no doubt seethed with dangerous apparitions and ambiguous shapes, I feared to make the slightest move in case the child should be terrified out of her mind. Did I know what she thought I was, in that instant? Perhaps she took me, with my anguished face, for one of those legendary demons or specters, the Tupapaus that filled the sleepless nights of her people.
This final version continues, as in the draft, with the quarrel over using prostitutes in town, and then concludes with a new remark:I would not quarrel with her, and the night was soft, soft and ardent, a night of the tropics. ...where Morice invokes what Pollock characterizes as an imaginary Utopia whose material foundation nevertheless lay in concrete social spaces, redefined by colonialism.Wadley comments, as essentially does Frèches-Thory, that the painting is an example of the fusion of reality and fiction in Gauguin's mature work. The two accounts of Tehura's reaction, that she was haunted by the tupapau, and that she was angrily suspicious Gauguin had been using prostitutes, likewise pose a similar confrontation between fiction and probable fact.
Maori Teha'amana Durand-Ruel La Revue Blanche right Pierre Loti La Plume Louvre Symbolist tupapau Oceania Kanakas Daniel Monfreid Getty Center Susannah surprised by the Elders Polynesian