Nevermore

Paul Gauguin painted Nevermore while living in Tahiti, an island in the southern Pacific colonised by France. Intended for a white European male audience, this image of a reclining nude belongs to a long artistic tradition. To the familiar theme however, Gauguin added a sense of exoticism and of unease. The young woman is not at rest but anxiously aware of the two figures behind her, who may be evil spirits. For modern viewers, her youth is the most disconcerting aspect. She is sometimes identified as Paul Gauguin's 15-year-old companion Pahura.

The painting's title associates the bird on the ledge with Edgar Allan Poe's poem ‘The Raven’. In it, a poet, driven mad by the death of his lover, hears a raven endlessly repeating ‘nevermore’.
This sense of loss may allude to Gauguin's disillusionment at the destruction of Tahitian culture by French administrators and Church missionaries. This did not prevent him from taking advantage of his position as a European coloniser. Pahura was one of several teenagers that he took on as ‘wives’. The widespread racist fantasy of Tahitian girls as sexually precocious led to clear exploitation.