Meyer de Haan’s family reduced his allowance after learning about his relationship with Marie Poupée, leaving Gauguin periodically unable to pay for lodging. When funds ran out, he returned to Pont-Aven. He occasionally visited Paris, painting nudes including In the Waves/Ondine and Life and Death. A countess promised to show his wood carving to the minister of finance, but nothing came of it. In May, inventor Charles Charlopin promised to buy 38 paintings for 5,000 francs once his steam engine patent came through.

Vincent van Gogh proposed joining Gauguin in Le Pouldu, causing panic. Gauguin instructed Marie Poupée to write that there was no room and told Van Gogh the location was unsuitable. A month later, Vincent shot himself and died two days later in Theo’s arms. Meanwhile, Gauguin’s application for a job in Tonkin, where he hoped to draw inspiration from the local art, was rejected. He learned about Madagascar and plans to establish a “workshop of the tropics” (173), but Madeleine’s brother, Émile Bernard, insisted that they go to Tahiti instead, based on his reading of Pierre Loti. Gauguin eventually agreed.

In October, Theo van Gogh offered to co-finance the trip but developed psychiatric symptoms from syphilis shortly after. Theo died in January, ending Gauguin’s last steady income. De Haan was recalled to Holland by his brothers, who disapproved of his transformed art and his impregnation of Marie Poupée. Charlopin never followed through, and Marie Poupée refused to let Gauguin leave without paying his bill. When the poet and artist Eugène Boch bought five paintings for 500 francs, it allowed Gauguin to partially pay and leave—but only by leaving all his other paintings as collateral.

In late November, Gauguin moved to Paris, quarreled with Schuffenecker about funding the Tahiti expedition, and moved to a cheap flophouse. George-Daniel de Monfreid, a protégé of Gauguin’s, became his business manager and launched a fundraising campaign. Gauguin joined the Symbolist circle at the Café Voltaire, led by poet Paul Verlaine. The group also included writer Jean Moréas, critic Albert Aurier, poet Charles Morice, poet Eugène Carrière, and sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Through the Café Voltaire, Gauguin met the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who became a crucial supporter. Gauguin made a portrait etching of Mallarmé with Edgar Allan Poe’s raven on his shoulder. With Mallarmé’s support and an article by Octave Mirbeau, Gauguin held an auction at the Hôtel Drouot on February 23, 1891. Thirty works sold for 7,350 francs after expenses. However, Émile Bernard, who felt he deserved to be viewed as the leader of the artistic movement, publicly described Gauguin as an “impostor” on the eve of the sale, severing their friendship.

Meanwhile, Gauguin received news from Mette that Emil planned to join the Dutch navy and that Clovis had experienced a fall, though he had not been seriously injured. Concerned, Gauguin visited the family in Denmark. Though he had never stopped corresponding with Mette, they were now firmly estranged, with her family urging her to divorce. Gauguin also found himself distant from his children, who could not speak French.

Gauguin returned to Paris for a farewell banquet at the Café Voltaire. His excursion to Tahiti was still scheduled, and he had secured travel assistance and a State promise to purchase a painting upon his return. Prior to the banquet, Gauguin was overcome, weeping about failing both his vocation and family. During the dinner, however, Mallarmé toasted Gauguin’s integrity, and Gauguin replied with a brief expression of affection. He wrote to Mette promising that within three years, she wouldn’t need to work, proposing that they remarry when he returned. He then sailed from Marseilles, never to see Mette or any of his children again.

Gauguin departed Marseilles on the luxury steamer Océanien with canvas, paints, a rifle, musical instruments, and his “museum of the mind” (193)—photographs and postcards of artworks. After a 63-day voyage, during which he celebrated his 43rd birthday on June 6, he arrived at Tahiti on June 8, 1891. At dawn, he saw black volcanic cones rising from the sea and smelled the island’s distinctive fragrance, “noa noa.” His ecstasy faded when he saw Papeete: a disappointing European building site of brick houses with tin roofs, imposed after an 1884 fire, when France banned traditional construction.

Stepping ashore in his purple suit, embroidered Breton waistcoat, and Buffalo Bill hat with long hair flowing, Gauguin was met with laughter. Tahitians call him “taata vahine” and “mahu”—“man-woman.” Only “mahus,” individuals assigned male at birth but raised as girls to fill a needed gender role, wore long hair. Lieutenant Jénot escorted Gauguin to meet Governor Lacascade, who suspected that Gauguin was a government spy. The suspicion spread through Papeete’s small French community.

The next morning, King Pomare V, the last royal ruler of Tahiti, died. At the funeral, Gauguin observed French colonial officials organizing ceremonies mixing tradition with imposed Western forms. The late king had abdicated in 1880, signing away constitutional rights in exchange for a pension spent mostly on alcohol. Watching Tahitians cleanse themselves in a river after the ceremony, Gauguin realized with profound melancholy that old Tahiti was gone. He decided to leave Papeete and live among Indigenous Tahitians in the countryside.

He took language lessons from Jénot and interpreter Monsieur Cadousteau. Following advice to cut his hair and wear white suits, Gauguin painted Suzanne Bambridge, a woman of both English and Polynesian heritage. The unflattering portrait horrified her father, and no further portrait commissions followed. After two fruitless months, Gauguin accepted an invitation to stay in Paea. Finding it too close to Papeete, he searched for an unspoiled place. He took Titi, a girl from Papeete, on the journey but soon realized that her cheerful chatter clashed with his creative process. By mutual consent, he took her back to Papeete.

In Mataiea, a village of about 500 people with a church on either side, a prominent villager named Anani rented Gauguin a traditional hut near the south-facing beach, with a view west to the island of Moorea. Gauguin discovered that Loti’s romantic vision of living off the land was a lie. Every fruit tree and hut belonged to someone, fishing required specialized knowledge, and hunting wild boar was dangerous. He survived mainly on expensive tinned corned beef. His health deteriorated as his heart began to beat irregularly. Neighbors offered to share meals, but accepting without payment would have violated his pride.

He worked cautiously, painting small figures in landscapes as he acclimated to the startling equatorial colors. A neighbor sat for him after examining his photograph of Manet’s Olympia. When Gauguin claimed that the woman depicted in the painting was his wife, the woman returned dressed carefully. He painted Vahine no te tiare (Woman with a Flower), a synthesis of inner and outer reality.

He became friends with Jotepha, a villager who cut down Gauguin’s beloved, but diseased, coconut palm. When Gauguin asked where to find wood for carving without stealing, they journeyed deep into the mountains following a “sacred path” through darkness. During the expedition, Gauguin experienced sexual attraction to Jotepha but resisted, interpreting the moment as his transformation from corrupt European to purified “savage.” They returned carrying rosewood, and Gauguin carved it peacefully.

On Sundays, he attended the Catholic mission church and became close to Sister Louise. He painted Ia orana Maria (Hail Mary), depicting the Virgin Mary and Christ child as contemporary Polynesians. In the work, two bare-breasted women cross a blue river to worship them while an angel swoops down through jungle foliage. The painting localizes Christianity’s foundational myth, dividing space horizontally into three spiritual realms. When exhibited in Europe, it was condemned as blasphemous until a 1951 papal encyclical permitted depicting Indigenous people as biblical characters.

In November, the rainy season brought cold winds through Gauguin’s hut. Weakened by poor nutrition, he developed chest pains and began coughing blood. After his lungs hemorrhaged in the new year, he admitted himself to Papeete’s military hospital. The expensive treatment troubled him, as no money had arrived from France. However, he formed friendships with confectioner Sosthène Drollet and nurse Jean-Jacques Suhas, whose two-year-old son, Atiti, loved watching Gauguin paint. When Atiti died in March, Gauguin painted a funerary portrait that his parents treasured. Money problems ultimately forced Gauguin to leave the hospital early. Anani insisted that he recuperate in Anani’s European house, where Gauguin repaid Anani’s kindness by painting murals, including a Tahitian Eve on a glass door panel.

Desperate for money, Gauguin applied for a magistrate position on Hiva Oa, but the governor, Lacascade, lectured him on his unsuitability. When his funds dwindled to 45 francs, he prepared to petition for free repatriation. However, a local pirate captain named Charles Arnaud intercepted him and provided 400 francs, saving Gauguin from the humiliating interview.

After selling his rifle to lawyer Auguste Goupil, Gauguin borrowed Goupil’s rare Voyages aux îles du Grand Océan by Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout, the definitive work on Polynesian history and mythology. Gauguin copied extensive passages and illustrated them, later working these into Ancien culte mahorie. The Polynesian creation myths resonated with Gauguin, particularly the story of the god Oro founding the Arioi cult dedicated to free love, dance, and worship. The Arioi—a roving sacred band founded in the 15th century—practiced complete sexual freedom and murdered any children born to them. Gauguin was simultaneously fascinated and disturbed by infanticide juxtaposed against the paradise myth.

Gauguin briefly worked as caretaker for a bankrupt Chinese shopkeeper’s property—a low point—but then Captain Arnaud returned and again provided money. Deciding to tour the island, Gauguin traveled inland and discovered a cluster of huts, inspiring Matamua (In Olden Times), a painting of mytho-historical past using visual language from Roman wall paintings, Egyptian tomb friezes, and Borobudur temple figures.

Gauguin continued to Faaone, where a woman invited him to eat and asked where he was going; when Gauguin surprised himself by saying that he was looking for a wife, the woman offered him her daughter. The woman returned with 13-year-old Tehamana carrying a small parcel of belongings. She agreed to live with him. Gauguin signed a hasty pseudo-contract with no money exchanged.

They rode toward Mataiea, accompanied by Tehamana’s mother and two women she called her aunts. They stopped at a hut where Tehamana’s “nursing mother” (that is, the woman who breastfed her) asked tearfully if Gauguin was kind and would make Tehamana happy. She requested that after eight days, Tehamana return, remaining with her family if she was unhappy. At Taravao, the gendarme’s French wife called Tehamana a “trollop.” After the trial week, Tehamana returned to her family but then chose to come back.

Tehamana released a great flood of creativity. Gauguin painted more than 60 canvases in 1891-92, depicting village life in deliberately unrealistic heightened colors and simplified forms. The pictures bear Tahitian titles telling everyday tales. Little is known about the real Tehamana. Researcher Bengt Danielsson established that she lived from around 1878 to 1918, dying in the flu pandemic. Her parents came from Rarotonga, though Gauguin erroneously wrote that she came from Tonga. At 13, she had reached the legal age of consent, and such arrangements between Indigenous families and white men were common and considered materially advantageous.

Gauguin confessed falling precipitately in love with Tehamana—the first such experience since Mette. He admired her self-containment, inner strength, subtlety, and tact. Their daily life included dawn bathing and evening conversations where she asked about European gods and shared creation myths. One night, Gauguin returned late to find the oil lamp extinguished. Striking a match, he saw Tehamana lying naked, rigid with terror. She took him for a tupapau—a malign spirit that seizes people in darkness.

This inspired Manaò tupapaú (Spirit of the Dead Watching), which Gauguin explained in a letter to Mette. He constructed the painting like an Edgar Allan Poe tale using violet, dark blue, complementary orange, sickly greenish-yellow bed linen, and a “musical chord” of clear yellow. Light explosions in the background represent the tupapau. Knowing that mere light, the tupapau’s manifestation, would not impress Western viewers, he invented an embodied tupapau—a hooded human figure watching at the foot of the bed.

Gauguin priced Manaò tupapaú the highest at 1,500 francs when sending paintings to Mette for a Copenhagen exhibition. The exhibition was organized by painters Theodor Philipsen and Johan Rohde. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger lent 25 Van Goghs, and the exhibition opened on March 25, 1893—the first two-man show of Gauguin and Van Gogh. Copenhagen’s reaction was vociferously enthusiastic, with over 1,200 visitors on the first day. Critics praised the bold color and intensity.

Mette, de Monfreid, and agent Joyant wrote that Gauguin must return immediately to capitalize on his growing reputation. Gauguin discovered that Joyant had sold 1,000 francs’ worth of paintings without sending him money. In March, Tehamana told him that she was pregnant, and Lacascade approved his third-class repatriation ticket. He departed on June 4, unworried about leaving Tehamana because babies were welcomed and adopted by the entire community.

The only certain portrait of Tehamana is Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents). Behind her, the goddess Hina stands, sinister tupapaus flit, and flowers represent eternal “noa noa.” Her striped Mother Hubbard represents imposed religion that leaves her soul untouched. She sits by mangoes holding a plaited palm fan. Above her head runs an indecipherable inscription copied from Easter Island petroglyphs. The portrait synthesizes identity, “reaching back to ancient scripts and symbols, taking in religious antagonisms, colonial impositions, cultural and cross-cultural mysteries” (247).

On June 4, Gauguin departed Tahiti aboard the Duchauffault with 66 paintings. Lacascade hadn’t mentioned that the ship would only go as far as New Caledonia, where Gauguin had to wait three weeks before boarding the Armand Béhic for Marseilles. Seeing Lacascade also boarding, Gauguin’s pride compelled him to upgrade from third to second class. The miserable voyage included deaths from heatstroke. Arriving in Marseilles on August 31 with only three francs, he received a supportive letter from Sérusier with 250 francs, enabling train passage to Paris.

There, Gauguin discovered that his agent, Joyant, had left six months earlier and that his remaining pictures were sent to de Monfreid. Degas arranged a solo exhibition for Gauguin at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in November. Meanwhile, Uncle Zizi died, leaving about 22,000 francs divided between Gauguin and his sister, Marie. Mette demanded half of Gauguin’s half. He refused, arguing that while he was in Tahiti, Mette sold pictures from his collection—including precious Cézannes—without permission, keeping all proceeds. She considered this fair compensation for supporting the family, but Gauguin demanded a full inventory, which Mette never provided. Her brother-in-law, Edvard Brandes, revealed that he had bought 10,000 francs’ worth of pictures from Mette over two years. Gauguin felt cheated, and their correspondence escalated into open conflict.

The Copenhagen exhibition’s paintings arrived in Paris two weeks before the Durand-Ruel opening, but two favorites were missing. Despite bitterness, Gauguin sincerely planned to use exhibition profits to finance his return to Polynesia with Mette and the children. However, Mette wrote to Schuffenecker that Gauguin’s handling of the inheritance had opened a rift in her heart, calling him selfish. Meanwhile, the inheritance was delayed because executors needed Marie’s signature in Colombia.

Gauguin had to pay all exhibition costs personally. His non-standard canvas sizes required custom frames. Following fashion, most were painted stark white, though Gauguin disliked the effect. The show opened on November 9; Durand-Ruel’s stately establishment, designed for wealthy Impressionist collectors, proved an unlikely setting for Gauguin’s canvases. The lighting made his colors appear harsher.

He exhibited 42 Tahitian paintings and carvings. Despite the outrage of conservative critics, Octave Mirbeau wrote warmly of the pieces. Thadée Natanson, another critic, was also supportive but questioned Gauguin’s choice to use Western models. Mallarmé remarked on the “extraordinary” blend of “mystery” and “splendor.” Degas purchased two pictures as public support and received a carved walking stick as a gift. Only 11 paintings sold—not a disaster financially but far from supporting a family trip to Tahiti.

Gauguin decided to write Noa Noa, a book about his time in Tahiti. Rather than a straightforward account, he aimed to create the literary equivalent of his paintings. He enlisted Charles Morice, who owed him money, to write “civilized” responses to Gauguin’s “savage” observations. However, Morice took over a decade to complete his part. By 1901, when Noa Noa was printed, the original concept had lost currency.

Gauguin rented a studio at 6 Rue Vercingétorix, creating a “glowing, golden cave” with chrome yellow paper on walls and glass (255). The Scandinavian couple William and Ida Molard lived below. William worked at the Ministry of Agriculture while pursuing composition. His wife, Ida, a Swedish sculptress, had a 13-year-old daughter, Judith, who flirted with Gauguin, but he kept her at arm’s length.

Gauguin started weekly Thursday salons. Guests entered through a door inscribed “Te faruru” (“Here We Make Love”). Gauguin “acted as shaman and storyteller” (258), dressing in flea-market exotica, reading from Noa Noa, playing music, and demonstrating dances. William Molard performed Wagner; English composer Frederick Delius contributed romantic music. Playwright August Strindberg demonstrated occult beliefs by performing on an untuned guitar.

Throughout 1893-94, Scandinavian culture dominated Paris. Eleven plays by Ibsen, Bjørnson, and Strindberg were staged. Strindberg’s psychological thriller Creditors (1888) about murder by bewitchment hit a contemporary nerve. Strindberg and Gauguin became friends, sharing naïveté, guilt over abandoning families, and love for Christ despite hating the established Church. They regularly walked together to Saint-Sulpice to view Delacroix’s Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.

Gallerist Ambroise Vollard likely introduced Gauguin to Annah la Javanaise, a young Black woman who became a popular model and Gauguin’s mistress. Gauguin’s previous mistress, Juliette Huet, discovered Annah and unleashed racist vitriol, to which Annah responded coolly. Juliette broke off relations with Gauguin, and Gauguin painted a full-length nude of Annah.

In Le Pouldu, Gauguin discovered Marie Poupée’s establishment gone; she had married and moved. When he located her, her “hostile” reception ended in complete refusal to let him redeem the pictures he had left with her. He then took Annah and her monkey to Pont-Aven, where things had also changed. However, he was still revered as the Pont-Aven school’s founder. He experienced a creative burst, painting eight major landscapes in the first month with fluent brush, dreamier vision, and freely non-realistic colors.

On May 25, Gauguin joined a group on a trip to Concarneau. Their “exotic” appearance attracted mockery from local boys. When one threw a stone, a brawl erupted. Using boxing skills, Gauguin sent several attackers into the water before falling—a wooden clog shattered his shinbone and splintered ankle bones. The mob kicked him as he lay prone, but gendarmes arrived, preventing his death. He was transported to Pont-Aven, where, from August through September, he lay in Pension Gloanec’s bed in terrible morphine-hazed pain. Annah’s monkey, Taoa, ate a poisonous yucca flower and died. Soon after, Annah left for Paris.

Friends visited, and Gauguin devised bedridden art using small paper sheets, making prints by transferring water-soluble pigment drawings using a metal spoon. The small prints depict listless, depressed Tahitian women drifting like ghosts. He also produced woodcuts by using his bed’s weight to press blocks.

Young writer Alfred Jarry visited to read three poems inspired by Gauguin’s paintings. On August 23, a trial gave Gauguin’s attackers nominal sentences and awarded him only 600 francs in damages—less than his medical bills. Bitter, he complained that people have the right to assassinate innocent men in Concarneau. A lawsuit against Marie Poupée resulted in judgment against him, and she kept the pictures forever. He planned to “return to Paris, sell everything, and return to Polynesia” (271).