Gauguin traveled via Sydney to Auckland, New Zealand, where he missed his Tahiti connection and waited two weeks in a cold, unheated hotel. Bored and unable to speak English, he despised the city’s imitation European character that ignored Indigenous culture. He finally visited the Auckland Institute and Museum, where he encountered a collection of Māori carvings, tattoos, weaving, and painting. He sketched extensively and purchased postcards for his reference collection.

Arriving in Papeete in early September 1895, he found the island transformed by electric lights, fenced animals, tennis courts, and a fairground carousel. Disgusted, he resolved to leave for the Marquesas as soon as possible. Commissioner General Isidore Chessé invited him on a diplomatic voyage to nearby islands. While Huahine and Bora Bora welcomed the French ship with feasts, Raiatea-Tahaa’s Chief Teraupoo flew the British flag in defiant resistance.

Back in Papeete, Gauguin took lodgings but repeatedly failed to board boats to the Marquesas, as his worsening leg required proximity to the French hospital. The doctor diagnosed eczema complicated by erysipelas, not syphilis. A century later, in 2000, four of Gauguin’s teeth were discovered in a well at his former Hiva Oa home. International DNA and isotope analysis confirmed that they were his and that he had spent his childhood in Peru. Tests showed no traces of mercury, cadmium, or arsenic—standard syphilis treatments—definitively disproving the persistent legend of his syphilis infection.

In 1895, he rented land in Punaauia, south of Papeete, and bought a pony and trap. He built a traditional-style hut, carving doorposts with idols inspired by the Māori art he had seen. He sent for Tehamana, now married. She lived with him briefly before returning to her husband. Their child from his first visit was gone—the circumstances unknown. Neighbors provided a new companion, 14-year-old Pau’ura a Tai, whom he called Pahura. Unlike the intense relationship with Tehamana, this was one of convenience. Pahura was sociable, undemanding, and an excellent model. Gauguin lived easily, eating tinned food, drinking wine, and hosting evening music gatherings. Years later, Pahura remembered him fondly as a “rascal.”

Inspired by Pahura, he painted Te Arii Vahine (The King’s Wife), which he considered his best work. In June 1896, Pahura became pregnant, inspiring his Motherhood series. She gave birth around Christmas, but their daughter died days later. In February 1897, he painted Nevermore, showing grieving Pahura with a raven, referencing Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” (1845).

A letter from Mette brought more devastating news: Their daughter, Aline, had died of pneumonia at 19. Overwhelmed with grief and rage, Gauguin declared that he no longer loved God. He sent Mette a final, cursing letter, severing their personal correspondence. She never informed him when their son, Clovis, died three years later.

In his grief, he painted Self-Portrait (Near Golgotha), depicting himself as Christ approaching crucifixion. Around the same time, he developed conjunctivitis that required hospital treatment. Soon after, his rented land was sold, forcing him to borrow 1,000 francs and buy his own plot in Punaauia. He commissioned an expensive wooden house, leaving him deeply in debt. Agent Lévy canceled their agreement, leaving only the unreliable Chaudet. He proposed a syndicate scheme to de Monfreid for steady income, but no one invested. He refused to beg for state aid, though de Monfreid applied on his behalf; Gauguin returned the insulting 200-franc payment.

Meanwhile, his health collapsed. Pahura nursed him devotedly, but he required hospitalization for arsenic powder treatment on his infected legs. Unable to pay, he was registered “indigent.” Villagers shunned him, fearing leprosy. He experienced heart attacks and vomited blood. The local store denied him credit; he and Pahura survived on her foraging and her family’s charity.

He began writing his spiritual testament, originally titled The Catholic Church in Modern Times and later renamed Modern Thought and Catholicism. Following heart attacks, he attempted to die by suicide by taking arsenic: He vomited up the poison and survived.

Unable to afford canvas, he used four meters of coarse copra sacking to paint his monumental masterpiece, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? The work depicted humanity’s creation and fall through synthesized cultural references, reading right-to-left, contrary to Western convention. In the painting, a “bounding” fox enters Eden, bringing with it “wildness” and “chance.” The painting traces life from birth through knowledge and sin to death, ending with a white goose crushing a lizard—a symbol of the futility of words.

Gauguin approached lawyer and coconut magnate Auguste Goupil, who commissioned a portrait of his nine-year-old daughter Jeanne (also called Vaîte). The resulting work portrayed the serious child as a priestess with “startlingly white” skin and classical features. Goupil hired Gauguin as drawing master for his daughters, providing meals and income. However, Gauguin clashed with Goupil’s reactionary views on women and art. After a heated argument, he quit.

A pharmacist commissioned The White Horse but rejected the finished painting because Gauguin had shaded the mystical white horse—a symbol of death—with green reflections. Gauguin applied for a position at the bank that had underwritten his mortgage but was rejected for being officially “indigent.” He reluctantly accepted work as an assistant draftsman for the Department of Public Works in Papeete at six francs daily.

The office work proved humiliating. He and Pahura moved to Papeete, where he paddled to work in a canoe. The building was hot, and his duties were menial. Former French acquaintances shunned him, his name was struck from the military club, and Tahitians distrusted him as a colonial employee. Pahura, bored and homesick, spent increasing time back in Punaauia, where visitors helped themselves to Gauguin’s possessions. When Public Prosecutor Charlier dismissed his complaints about the trespassing, Gauguin wrote a satirical letter attacking Charlier’s incompetence and sent it to Les Guêpes (The Wasps), a new opposition newspaper. Proprietor François Cardella, a Corsican adventurer who had made his fortune growing opium and running a pharmacy, hired Gauguin as a writer for 50 francs monthly.

Gauguin and Pahura moved back to Punaauia and repaired their house. From June 1899 to August 1901, steady journalistic income freed his painting from financial anxiety. He produced lyrical landscapes and still lifes and painted sunflowers in memory of Van Gogh.

Writing for Les Guêpes under pseudonyms including “Tit-oil” (“the masturbator”), he attacked political figures and mocked Goupil’s proposed railway line. He erected satirical statues in his garden, including a nude female figure that so offended the local priest that he demanded its removal. The magistrate threw out the case. Under his own name, Gauguin advocated for women’s rights but delivered a racist public speech against Chinese immigration. For a brief period, he published his own newspaper, Le Sourire (The Smile). The handwritten pages mixed text with illustrations and cartoons mocking Governor Gallet. The paper circulated widely despite small print runs.

In April 1899, Pahura gave birth to their son, Émile. Gauguin was not registered as father, probably at the family’s insistence so that he could not legally remove the child from the island.

He received sporadic payments from dealers—1,200 francs from Chaudet in 1896, 700 francs in 1897, and 1,000 francs from Vollard in 1898. However, he felt betrayed learning that Vollard had first bought the works cheaply to resell at a profit. Conversely, news that Degas was collecting his paintings delighted him. In 1899, after an early payment, money from France stopped entirely, leaving him desperate by June.

De Monfreid sent canvas and colors so that Gauguin could paint for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Gauguin refused to exhibit with Émile Bernard and the Volpini group, who had repeatedly accused him of plagiarism. He planned a monumental work titled Ruperupe (Luxury) but could not complete it. Smaller paintings sent instead arrived too late due to an addressing error.

Learning that Chaudet had died the previous year, he negotiated with Vollard in January 1900. By March, they agreed: Gauguin would send 20 to 24 paintings yearly for a 300-franc monthly allowance. At the moment of signing, Romanian prince Emmanuel Bibesco offered matching terms, but Gauguin chose Vollard. Having no new paintings, he sent 500 woodblock prints to fulfill the contract.

Then illness struck again. By this time, Schuffenecker had stopped writing, unable to tell Gauguin that Clovis had died at 21 from blood poisoning following surgery. Fragile and disillusioned, Gauguin felt that he had betrayed his dream by remaining in compromised Tahiti. Selling his house required Mette’s signature, which she provided without mentioning Clovis’s death. Swede Axel Nordman bought the property for 4,500 francs; his son later burned hundreds of Gauguin’s sketches, carvings, and paintings as “lumber.”

Pahura refused to accompany Gauguin to the Marquesas, but bubonic plague spreading from San Francisco finally galvanized him. On September 6, 1901, he boarded Le Croix du Sud, loading his possessions—instruments, furniture, ceramics, his reference library, and building timber—for the 900-mile voyage.

The ship stopped briefly at Fatu Hiva, where Gauguin met an old man who had been imprisoned for cannibalism and smiled nostalgically when asked if human flesh tasted good. Arriving at Hiva Oa’s rugged volcanic landscape, Gauguin was greeted warmly by islanders who knew him from his satirical journalism in Les Guêpes and Le Sourire. They called him “Koké,” unable to pronounce the letter G. Among the crowd were Dr. Buisson and the gendarme Brigadier Désiré Charpillet.

Ky Dong, a distinguished Vietnamese exile and former revolutionary leader, took charge of Gauguin’s settlement. Born Nguyen Van Cam, he had been named “Ky Dong” (marvelous child) by his teachers and educated at the emperor’s expense. He led the 1898 Marvelous Child Rebellion against French rule in Vietnam. After its failure, a processing error sent him to Tahiti instead of Devil’s Island. French authorities moved him to the remote Marquesas in 1901 to limit his influence.

Ky Dong found Gauguin lodging with restaurateur Matikaua and gave him a tour of the capital, Atuona. Gauguin invited every woman they met for tea and cakes. He attracted the scorn of others by showing interest in Fetuhonu, a tall 20-year-old born with a “clubfoot.”

Learning that the Catholic Church was the main landowner, Gauguin feigned piety, attending Mass for 11 days until Monsignor Joseph Martin, the bishop, sold him a prime acre across from Ben Varney’s general store for 650 francs. Gauguin immediately stopped churchgoing and designed a two-story wooden house with a studio and living quarters. Carpenters Samuel Kekela and Tioka Tissot built it during a month-long party fueled by wine. Gauguin and Tioka exchanged names, a “high[] honor” in the Marquesas that entailed mystically becoming one and sharing wives, possessions, and spiritual power. Gauguin defiantly named his home the Maison du Jouir (“House of Pleasure/Orgasm”), calling it his “little fortress” from which he would champion Marquesan rights.

The Marquesas population had collapsed from 50,000 at French annexation in 1842 to fewer than 5,000 by 1901 due to disease, warfare, and Peruvian raids for enslaved labor. French authorities anticipated the Marquesas population’s complete extinction. Bishop Martin, arriving in 1890, had forbidden tattooing, erotic dances, drinking, polyandry, and nudity. He forced women into concealing “Mother Hubbard” dresses and smashed sacred temple sites. Human sacrifice and cannibalism were prohibited, though old worship continued secretly in remote valleys.

Gauguin wrote to the Colonial Inspectorate protesting unequal alcohol laws and disproportionate fines. He petitioned the General Council against colonists’ wanton killing of native-owned pigs. Around Christmas of 1902, when a rare murder occurred, he wrote to the investigative judge accusing the gendarme of lazy, racist investigation. When he discovered that forced internment of mission school children was illegal for those living beyond four kilometers from school, he called a beach meeting to inform families; the girls’ school lost a third of its pupils, and Gauguin became a “marked man.”

In March 1902, Governor Édouard Petit refused to meet him. Nevertheless, Gauguin detailed tax injustices and gendarme corruption in a long letter, pointing out that the taxes collected from islanders funded only French interests. He advocated tax resistance; in one year, revenues fell from 20,000 to 13,000 francs. When Charpillet seized his property for unpaid taxes, Gauguin turned the auction into a farce by being the only bidder. He also targeted the Church, carving satirical statues of both Bishop Martin as “Father Lechery” and the bishop’s mistress, Thérèse, and placing them at his stairs.

Gauguin carved his studio entrance with the house’s provocative name, the Polynesian creation god Taaroa, naked women on doorposts, and phrases like “Be mysterious” and “Be in love and you will be happy” (338). He pinned pornographic postcards in his bedroom as commentary on Western hypocrisy. The Maison du Jouir became a salon for music, dancing forbidden Polynesian dances, and political talk. In November 1901, he obtained a new companion, 14-year-old Vaeoho Marie-Rose, from her father, Chief Hapa, in exchange for cotton fabric and a sewing machine.

Vaeoho Marie-Rose lived with Gauguin for nine months. When she became pregnant, he painted tender maternity scenes, including Group with Angel, Nativity, and Mother and Child (all 1902). In August 1902, she returned to her village to give birth to their daughter, Tahiatikiaomata. She remained there, eventually marrying a man named Putoanu, who adopted the child. The family, like Pahura’s, may have refused Gauguin’s offer to register as father to prevent him from legally removing the child from the island.

His primary model became Tohotaua, the adopted daughter of his cook, Kahui. Many Marquesans rubbed bright orange turmeric powder into their skin as insect repellent, giving them a gilded appearance, so Gauguin requested large tubes of yellow ochre paint from Vollard. His portrait Young Girl with a Fan (1902) contrasted sharply with his earlier, symbol-laden portrait of Tehamana. A photograph by visiting photographer Louis Grelet showed Tohotaua tense and apprehensive in Gauguin’s studio, wrapped in a Manchester-manufactured pareu amid multicultural references. Gauguin’s painted portrait in the identical pose swept away contextualizing clutter, presenting her as a person rather than a construct. The subtle color palette—beige, olive, cream, gray, blue, citron, gold, and amber—“risk[ed] insipidity without the strongly painted tricolor bull’s-eye on her fan” (346).

Tohotaua was married to Haapuani, Atuona’s taua (sorcerer), a child raised from birth to be his generation’s spiritual conduit for history and occult knowledge. The Sorcerer (1902) depicted Haapuani as a symbol of hidden power, though Gauguin subverted the solemnity by including a fox and peacock. Barbarian Tales (1902) paired Haapuani with Meyer de Haan. Three figures sit in a glade: red-haired Tohotaua as unspoiled Eve, de Haan dressed in a Jewish kippah and Mother Hubbard dress with a tupapau’s claw foot, representing threatening Western civilization, and Haapuani in Buddha pose, his magic protecting the Indigenous girl from Western corruption. Haapuani later confirmed that occasional sexual relations between Gauguin and Tohotaua caused no jealousy.

During early 1902, Gauguin painted prolifically—20 or more finished works celebrating the island’s beauty in brilliant colors. His routine began with dawn bathing, followed by morning painting. Lunch was required precisely at eleven o’clock. Cook Kahui had easy work; Gauguin continued eating tinned foods bought from Ben Varney despite the island’s abundance. He shared meals equally with Kahui, the gardener, and his pets. He kept close company with name-brother Tioka and Ky Dong, enjoying painting in solitude.

Vollard honored their agreement, regularly exchanging paintings for money. When Vollard sent 3,000 francs in July, Gauguin talked of saving. Around September, however, his health declined: worsening eyesight and deepening leg sores. He bandaged his legs daily and walked with a phallic stick that infuriated authorities and entertained locals.

One afternoon, a terrifying, greenish creature emerged from the bushes. At close range, he saw an emaciated old woman covered in faded tattoos. She groped him sexually, spat “Pupa!” (European) in disgust upon failing to feel the ridge caused by a ritual surgery on Polynesian boys’ penises, and shuffled off. The haunting encounter sharpened his subsequent work.

As his legs deteriorated, he bought a horse and then a cart when riding hurt too much. Since there was no doctor on the island, Ky Dong helped medically. Protestant pastor Paul-Louis Vernier, 32, befriended Gauguin while bandaging his legs. Both men cared deeply for the islanders and found common intellectual ground. Vernier’s cooperative day school contrasted with Bishop Martin’s imprisoning Catholic institution. He was beloved for his medical work and respectful approach. His friendship with Gauguin deepened through shared religious interests—Vernier translated Saint Matthew’s Gospel into Marquesan while Gauguin wrote Modern Thought and Catholicism. Gauguin lent Vernier Mallarmé’s L’Après-midi d’un faune and gave him an etching of Mallarmé.

On Bastille Day, Gauguin judged a choir competition between Catholics and Protestants, tactfully splitting the prize. He wrote de Monfreid about possibly returning to Europe to paint Spanish subjects, but de Monfreid warned strongly against it, explaining that Gauguin’s legendary exile status benefited his reputation.

Acting as a “barefoot lawyer,” Gauguin helped islanders with land registry paperwork after reforms decreed that longtime residents needed title deeds to remain on their land. He wrote the Inspector of Colonies, analyzing colonial corruption and demonstrating how gendarmes’ financial interest in fines led to unjust prosecution of people with tattooed faces, who were assumed to be cannibals. He recommended posting regulations publicly and punishing breaches. When Gendarme Charpillet illegally used prisoners as personal servants, he was quietly transferred. His replacement, Gendarme Claverie, was Gauguin’s old adversary from Tahiti.

In January 1903, a devastating storm struck. Gauguin’s sturdy house survived while Atuona was wrecked. A child died, and vital fruit trees were destroyed. He pleaded with Claverie to cancel scheduled road work so that men could repair their homes, but Claverie refused. When Tioka’s hut was destroyed, Gauguin gave him land to rebuild.

In February, Judge Horville expelled Gauguin from court for wearing a pareu instead of trousers when defending 29 men accused of drunkenness. By the time he changed clothes, they were convicted. He vowed to appeal. Governor Petit granted Claverie permission to prosecute Gauguin should the opportunity arise.

Gauguin vomited blood after the courtroom expulsion. Afraid of overdosing on his frequent morphine injections, he gave his syringe to Ben Varney. His eyesight deteriorated despite spectacles. Laudanum made him sleepy. He painted little and badly, spending days in bed writing Ramblings of an Apprentice Artist (rejected by Mercure de France critic André Fontainas) and his stream-of-consciousness autobiography Avant et après, mixing memories, humor, and melancholy observations.

Ky Dong, sad to see his friend depressed and obsessive, provoked him by pretending to paint his portrait. Gauguin seized the brush and mirror to complete Self-Portrait, 1903, which referenced Greco-Roman Egyptian mummy portraits with its limited palette and depiction of Gauguin with a Roman haircut and antique tunic: “His temples are grizzled; his eyes behind the wire-rimmed spectacles are thoughtful and calm, as though fixed on another world” (359). He gave this picture to Ky Dong.

In March 1903, Gauguin reported Étienne Guichenay, the gendarme on the nearby island of Tahuata, for accepting bribes. Claverie seized the opportunity, obtaining permission to charge Gauguin with libel. On March 27, Gauguin was summoned to appear on March 31. Judge Horville found him guilty, sentencing him to three months’ imprisonment and a 500-franc fine.

Knowing he could not survive prison and lacking money for the fine, Gauguin sent for Vernier two days later. Vernier could only change bandages and advise against laudanum, but Gauguin begged Ben Varney for his morphine back. Revived, he wrote an appeal challenging Claverie to a duel and defending the poor and defenseless, who he said had no one but himself to represent them. A year later, authorities would admit that Gauguin’s accusations were justified, but Claverie would be promoted to sergeant.

After this effort, Gauguin isolated himself for a week. On May 8, he again sent for Vernier, asking whether it was day or night. Evidently unable to see and in pain, he abruptly switched to discussing Flaubert’s Salammbô. Reassured by his friend’s alert interest, Vernier returned to teaching.

That day, receiving no reply to his greeting, Tioka climbed the stairs and found Gauguin on the bed’s edge, one leg reaching toward the floor, dead. The news spread quickly. Bishop Martin pronounced conditional absolution over the corpse, reclaiming Gauguin’s soul. That evening, Vernier and Tioka planned a burial without religious ceremony for the next morning. When they arrived, however, the body was gone. Bishop Martin had buried Gauguin in the Catholic cemetery on the hill above Atuona—the spot with the sunset view Gauguin had loved on evening walks. Ultimately, Oviri, the Polynesian goddess of mourning, was placed on Gauguin’s grave.

Bishop Martin reported Gauguin’s death in contemptuous terms, calling him an enemy of God and decency. The administrator selling the contents of the Maison du Jouir wrote that he believed the liabilities would exceed the assets, as the painter’s few pictures from the so-called decadent school had little chance of finding buyers.