The French painter Paul Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, an island in the South Pacific governed by France, on April 1, 1891, to get away from Europe.
In Paris his paintings sold badly. He wanted a cheap, warm place far from the city, and a world he believed was still untouched, so that he could paint it. He reached Papeete, the island's main town, in June.
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Papeete was a disappointment. It was a colonial town run by French officials, and Gauguin himself had arrived with an official letter from the government in Paris giving him an artistic mission.
He later told the story of his stay in an illustrated book, Noa Noa, a Tahitian phrase for "fragrant." There he wrote that life in Papeete soon became a burden, because it was still "the Europe which I had thought to shake off."
The mission itself left him puzzled. The government had entrusted it to him, he admitted, "I do not know why." And Tahiti was not even the first island he had chosen.
Madagascar, the first plan
In the spring of 1890, a year before he sailed, Gauguin wrote to his younger friend Émile Bernard, a painter he had worked beside in Brittany: "Irrevocably I will go to Madagascar…"
What You'll Discover
The novel that put Tahiti in his head.
What happened right after he landed.
Who the girl in his Tahiti book was.
How to read his biggest painting.