Paul Gauguin, 1892 - Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) - fine art print

Summary of the modern art replica

In 1892 Paul Gauguin painted this 19th century masterpiece "Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)". The version of the work of art measures the size: 45,1 x 74,3 cm and was painted with the technique of oil on coarse fabric. It can be viewed in in the The J. Paul Getty Museum's digital collection, which is located in Los Angeles, California, United States of America. The artwork, which is in the public domain is provided with courtesy of The J. Paul Getty Museum.The creditline of the artpiece is the following: . Furthermore, alignment of the digital reproduction is landscape with an aspect ratio of 16 : 9, meaning that the length is 78% longer than the width. The painter, sculptor, graphic artist Paul Gauguin was a European artist from France, whose art style can be classified as Impressionism. The European painter was born in 1848 in Paris, Ile-de-France, France and died at the age of 55 in 1903 in Atuona, French Polynesia.

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In the product dropdown lists you can pick a material and a size of your choice. The following options are available for individualization:

• The poster print on canvas material: Our poster is a printed canvas with a slight surface finish. It is designed for putting the art print in a customized frame. Please keep in mind, that depending on the absolute size of the canvas poster print we add a white margin of approximately 2-6cm round about the artwork to facilitate the framing with your custom frame.
• Acrylic glass print (with real glass coating): The print on acrylic glass, often labelled as a UV print on plexiglass, will convert your favorite original into amazing wall decoration. The work of art will be custom-made with modern UV printing technology. It makes deep and rich color tones. The acrylic glass protects your selected art print against light and external influences for many years.
• Canvas print: The canvas print, which should not be confused with a canvas painting, is an image applied directly on cotton canvas. What is more, printed canvas creates a homelike and warm effect. A canvas of this artpiece will let you turn your own art print into a large size artwork. How can I hang a canvas on my wall? A canvas print has the advantage of being low in weight, which means that it is easy to hang the Canvas print without the help of additional wall-mounts. Hence, canvas prints are suited for any kind of wall.
• Aluminium dibond print: An Aluminium Dibond print is a print material with a true depth effect. The bright and white parts of the artwork shine with a silk gloss, however without the glow.

Important information: We try everything in order to depict the products with as many details as possible and to demonstrate them visually on the various product detail pages. Nonetheless, the colors of the print materials, as well as the printing might diverge slightly from the image on your screen. Depending on the settings of your screen and the nature of the surface, not all colors are printed 100% realistically. Because all the fine art prints are printed and processed manually, there might also be slight discrepancies in the size and exact position of the motif.

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Additional artwork information by the museum (© - The J. Paul Getty Museum - www.getty.edu)

I have just finished a severed kanak [Pacific Islander] head, nicely arranged on a white cushion, in a palace of my invention and guarded by women also of my invention. --Paul Gauguin

Writing to his friend Daniel de Monfreid, Paul Gauguin referenced in an almost offhand way this startling painting of a decapitated human head, which he made during his first stay in Polynesia in the early 1890s. Real events, from Tahitian King Pomare V's death soon after Gauguin's arrival, to the artist having witnessed a public execution by guillotine several years earlier, likely influenced its dark subject matter. Gauguin added the Tahitian words "Arii" and "Matamoe" in the canvas' upper left. The first means "noble;" the second, "sleeping eyes," a phrase that implies "death."

The notion of a human head ritually displayed in an ornate interior suggests the formality of a ruler lying in state, supported by the presence of sorrowful figures in the background. However, this scene doesn't correspond to actual accounts of Pomare V's funeral because the body wasn't decapitated. Gauguin was just as apt to fantasize about life in Polynesia as he was to document it. Bright reds, yellows, and pinks are juxtaposed with muted browns and purples to evoke a tropical sensibility. The rough, burlap-like canvas also hints at an exotic "primitivism." In his collage-illustrated book Noa Noa--which he began after his first trip to Tahiti--he included a copy of this painting and a comment that he thought of Pomare's death as a metaphor for the loss of native culture due to European colonization.

Symbolist artists, including Gauguin, had a predilection for images of decapitated heads and any associated figures, such as Orpheus and John the Baptist. But in a more general sense, Gauguin also freely mixed Eastern and Western imagery. His obsession with the theme of death, which appears throughout his Tahitian paintings, is less a reference to spiritual beliefs or to what he saw around him than perhaps more significantly, how he viewed himself. Gauguin thought of himself as a martyr victimized by modern society, which compelled him to escape to a "primitive" culture.