Portrait of Harriet Quimby

Harriet Quimby  20 x 16 inches Acrylic 2019

Harriet Quimby (1875-1912)  was an aviation pioneer and the first American woman to become a licensed airplane pilot.  She was born in a small town in Michigan at a time when the sole form of aviation was the hot-air balloon.  After the failure of the family farm, the Quimbys, nevertheless well-to-do, moved to San Francisco area.  As a child, Harriet was a strong-willed tomboy.  An adult Harriet, independent and intent on supporting herself, worked as a stage actress and then secured positions on several San Francisco newspapers as a journalist.  In 1903 she moved to New York City and got a job as a writer and photographer for Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.  In a few years she became its  theater critic.

In 1906 Harriet, who had a taste for adventure, took the opportunity to ride in a race car and, loving it,  purchased her own automobile — still very much a novelty.  Aviation, though, would become her passion.  In October 1910 Harriet Quimby attended an aviation competition  held at Belmont, New York, and became fascinated by this new and still experimental form of transportation.  (The first flight of a heavier-than air ship had been made by Wilbur and Orville Wright on December 17, 1903).  There, Harriet made the acquaintance of pilot who had competed in the events,  John Moisant.  Moisant, born in Illinois in 1868 of French Canadian descent, had acquired some wealth from sugarcane plantations in Central America.  By 1909 he had taken up aviation as a hobby and learned to fly in France.  While still a novice, he had flown across the English Channel on August 17, 1910, the first to do so with a passenger — accompanied as well by his pet, a small cat named Mademoiselle Fifi.

Full of enthusiasm for airplanes, Harriet decided to take flying lessons along with Moisant’s sister Matilde at an aviation school John and his brother Alfred were  operating on Long Island, New York.  Unfortunately, on December 31, 1910, John Moisant, while competing at an aviation event in Louisiana, was thrown from his plane by a gust of wind while attempting a landing.  He died, falling 25 feet and breaking his neck.  The two women were nevertheless undeterred and decided to go ahead with their plans to be fliers.   (Harriet got her newspaper to pay for her lessons!)  On August 1, 1911 Miss Quimby passed her test and was awarded an aviator’s certificate of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale via the Aero Club of America.  (Based on the Aero Club of France, it was founded in 1905, if not earlier, to promote aviation and to award pilot licenses, which were necessary for participation in most aviation demonstrations and sporting events).   Harriet became the 37th licensed American airplane pilot, but the very first woman.   Matilde became the second American woman to receive a pilot’s license.  (In March 1910, Frenchwoman Elise Raymonde de Laroche became the first female pilot internationally).

After getting her license Harriet Quimby joined Moisant International Aviators, which employed a team of pilots to perform in air exhibitions all over the country.  Flying was still a dangerous enterprise, but very profitable, for the public were obsessed with airplanes and flight.  For her debut, Miss Quimby flew over Staten Island at night for 7 minutes with 15,000 (or 20,000) spectators watching.  Her efforts netted her  a cool $1500 (this, at a time when a working man would be lucky to make $400 a year).

Harriet naturally attracted attention and press coverage because of her gender.  Not lacking in feminine appeal, she had flare and pizzazz and knew how to present herself.   Although petite, Harriet cut a fetching, if not dashing figure in a flight suit of her own design, a bright plum-colored satin, wool-lined jump suit — blouse, hood, and knickerbocker pants tucked into high laced boots, set off by some antique jewelry and, of course, aviation goggles.  Her fair, flawless complexion earned her the nickname of the “China Doll” and the “Dresden China Aviatrix.”

While flying, Harriet continued to write articles for  Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, many of them, not surprisingly, about aviation and woman’s place in it.  She also authored several screenplays for short films produced at Biograph Studios in New York in 1911.  The films featured major actors such as  Blanche Sweet and were all directed by the legendary D. W. Griffith.  Griffith’s wife, Linda Arvidson, had been a friend from Harriet’s time as an actress on the stage in San Francisco.  In 1909 Harriet had a small part in one of Griffith’s shorts, which starred Linda Arvidson and also featured Mary Pickford in a bit role.

While flying in Mexico in ceremonies honoring the inauguration of President Francisco Madero in November 1911, Harriet Quimby got the idea of flying across the English Channel.  Frenchman Louis Blériot had flown the Channel in July 1909, but no woman had thus far done it.  By spring she was ready to make the flight.  On April 16, 1912 Harriet took off from Dover, England with the intention of landing in Calais on the other side of English Channel.  She had never flown over water before and had never relied upon a compass.   It was a dangerous passage even for an experienced pilot.  Harriet, though, was all but fearless.  The flight was not without difficulty.  Running into a cloud bank she lost her way, but an hour later she able to land 25 miles from Calais on a beach in Herdelot, France.  The natives, realizing her accomplishment, bore her in triumph on their shoulders.  However, the feat was barely recorded — bad timing.  Only two days before, the RMS Titanic had sunk, struck by an iceberg in the North Atlantic.  The enormity of the disaster, the loss of 1500 passengers, was only just realized and preoccupied the press, otherwise very interested in accomplishments in the field of aviation.

In September of 1911 pilot Cal Rodgers had made the first cross country flight in a biplane called the Vin Fiz Flyer.  The Armour Meat Company was now marketing a new grape soda they dubbed Vin Fiz and they used Rodgers and his image to market it.  When Rodgers was killed in a crash in April 1912 after flying into a flock of birds, the company searched for another endorser.  They decided upon Harriet Quimby.  Her flight-suited image would adorn Vin Fiz advertisements and enhance her status as a celebrity.

On July 1, 1912 Harriet Quimby participated in the Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts.  She was flying a new plane, a two-seater Bléliot monoplane.  The organizer of the meet, William Willard, was her passenger.  She flew her plane to the Boston light in the harbor and returned to circle the airfield.  At the altitude of 1000 feet the plane, for some reason, pitched forward with the result that Willard was ejected, falling to his death in the sea.  Harriet righted the plane, but only for a moment.  It pitched forward again and, despite having some sort of seat restraint, she was tipped out of the plane as well and fell to her death.  The plane crashed surprisingly intact on the muddy beach.  Spectators found Harriet’s lifeless body on the beach as well.  Although much debated, it has never been determined what caused the tragic accident.

Harriet Quimby was only 37 when she died.  She had been a pilot for less than a year, yet she made a huge mark on the history of aviation.  She was an inspiration to those who came after and is still remembered as a heroine and female role model.        

Her friend Matilde Moisant broke what was then the altitude record (1200 feet) during an airshow on September 1911.  However, she crashed her plane on April 14, 1912, two days before Harriet was to make her historic flight across the English channel.  Matilde recovered from her injuries, but never flew again.  She lived to the age of 85, dying in 1964 in California.

Portrait of Leif Erikson

Leif Erikson 18 x 24 inches Acrylic 2019

Leif Erikson (970 - 1020)  is considered to be the first European to set foot on the North American continent, doing so hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus opened up the Americas to exploration and colonization.  (There are numerous other claimants to this achievement, but none widely accepted). 

Leif’s grandfather Thorvald Ásvaldsson was exiled from Norway in about 960, during the reign of King Haakon the Good.  Apparently he had killed several people and as punishment was exiled to Iceland, a large island to the west that had been discovered by Thorvald’s great grandfather’s brother and was now a thriving Norse settlement.  Accompanying Thorvald was his 10 year old son Erik the Red (red referring to the color of his hair and beard).  

Around 982 Erik the Red was sentenced to three years in exile for killing the man who had slain several of his thralls (slaves).  He consequently left Iceland and sailed west, reaching  a huge land mass that had yet to be thoroughly explored or successfully settled.  He spent his three years in exile there and when he returned to Iceland he promoted settlement of the land that he called “Greenland” (the name stuck).    With arable land in Iceland running out, he was able to attract many potential colonists and led a fleet of 25 ships to Greenland.  Although only 14 of the ships reached Greenland, two permanent settlements were established there on the southwest coast.  Its population soon reached a few thousand individuals.  Erik the Red established himself as the chieftain of the so-called Eastern Settlement and became an honored and wealthy man.

Among the four children of Erik the Red and his wife Thjodhild (a descendant of an Irish king) was Leif, who earned th epithet, “the Lucky.”  Leif grew up in Greenland, but Erik was a mostly absent parent.  Leif was raised by his father’s thrall, Tyrker, who, not Norse, may have been of Germanic, Slavic, or even Hungarian derivation. 

In 999 is when we first hear of Leif Erikson.  He set sail at that time for Norway, but blown off course, he landed in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.  Staying there for the summer, he fell in love with a noblewoman named Thorgunna, who bore him a son.  Marriage with her was not practical, but she did eventually send their son, Thorgils, to Greenland. 

At last arriving in Norway, Leif was presented to King Olaf Tryggvason at his capital of Trondheim and became his hirdman, one of his retinue of warriors and household companions.  It was there that Leif, to please his king, converted to Christianity, renouncing the traditional Norse religion, which featured the gods Thor, Odin, Freyr, and so forth.  King Olaf succeeded in what his predecessor King Haakon had tried but failed to do, convert the people of Norway to the Christian religion, even if Olaf often had to do it forcibly. 

Leif Erikson returned to Greenland in the spring, but on the voyage back home his ship was blown off course and ended up farther west that was intended.  Leif and his men saw a strange uncharted land that had reportedly been glimpsed many years before by an Icelandic merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson on his voyage to Greenland.  Erikson rescued some shipwrecked seamen who also claimed to have seen this land.  Significantly, the land sighted by Erikson and Herjólfsson was forested.  Greenlanders, who lacked timber, were, therefore, interested.  So was Leif.  Possessed by the curiosity of the explorer, which many Norsemen of the time were amply endowed with, he was determined to find it again.  With the support of the Greenlanders, he mounted an expedition to voyage farther west and explore the newly found land.  He recruited a crew of 35 men and purchased the very boat Bjarni Herjólfsson had sailed in when he had made his sighting.   Erik the Red had been persuaded to join the expedition, but when he fell off his horse riding to the ship, he begged off, deciding the omens were against him.

The Greenland explorers set out in the fall of 1000 or 1001.  The voyage of Leif Erikson was indeed successful.  He made landfall first at what was probably Baffin Island, a rocky, desolate place he named Helluland (flat-rock land).  Continuing south and west he landed on a  country well forested.  He dubbed it Markland (forest land).  This was probably Labrador on the coast of what is now Canada.  Next, two days sailing to the south, he found country where the climate was milder, the landscape lusher, and the waters teeming with salmon.  Here he decided to stop and spend the winter.  Half of his men, though, led by Tyrker, were sent out to conduct explorations.  It was Tyrker who found a welcoming land distinguished by its vines and grapes.  The Norse moved there to winter and named it Vinland  (land of vines).  The settlement built there was later called Leifsbudir (Leif’s booths).  It was probably located on the tip of the northern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland.

With a cargo of timber and grapes, Leif Erikson returned  to Greenland in the spring.  He then followed through with his mission to Christianize the country.  Erikson, perceived as a man of strength, character, and wisdom, was respected and listened to when he brought word of this new religion.  Therefore, he was generally successful in his efforts to convert the people of Greenland to Christianity, (although it is probable Christianity had already taken root there).  His mother was quick to embrace the new religion and had a Christian church built, but his father, Erik the Red, rejected it and stubbornly clung to his belief in the old Norse deities.  (As a result of this religious disagreement between husband and wife, Thjodhild denied Erik her bed).

Vinland was visited by other Norsemen, but problems arouse when contact was made with the native Inuit inhabitants, who the Norse called skraelings.  Many of these encounters were hostile.  Leif’s brother Thorvald first came upon them in 1004.  Armed conflict resulted and Thorvald was killed.  Trade was conducted with the skraelings, but any future settlements were imperiled by their general hostility to foreigners.  It is conjectural how many further Norse settlements were made in America or how far from Vinland they might have been.  It is established that for centuries after Norsemen did make expeditions to Markland, particularly to acquire timber.  It was probably an open secret among mariners that such lands did exists to the west, although after the abandonment of the Norse settlements, no one deemed it worthwhile to travel there.  Christopher Columbus visited to Iceland in 1477 and may have been privy to and inspired by stories of Vinland and lands to the west.

 The last Norse settlements in Greenland were abandoned in the early 14th Century and the onset of the Little Ice Age made the island virtually uninhabitable due to the lower temperatures and the consequent inability to grow crops there.  Other factors, though, are believed to have contributed to decline of Norse Greenland.

It is not certain how many voyages Leif Erikson might have made to Vinland.  After the death of his father from the plague in 1004 he assumed a role as chieftain in Greenland and probably remained there after that time. The date of Leif Erikson’s death is uncertain, sometime between 1019 and 1025.  He was succeeded as chieftain by his son Thorkell.  (The identity of Thorkell’s mother is not known).

Icelandic sagas written in the 13th Century are primary sources for accounts of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson.  But there are some earlier, more reliably historical accounts such as that of Adam of Bremen, a German scholar who wrote in the late 11th Century.   Norse discovery of the New World  would eventually be corroborated by archaeology.  In the early 1960s Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his archaeologist wife Anne Stine uncovered remains of a Norse settlement dated to 1000 AD in the northern tip of Newfoundland at a place known as L’Anse aux Meadows.  It was probably the site of Leifsbudir.  While further archaeological evidence suggest that Vinland was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence area, its location remains a matter of controversy.  Cape Cod, for instance, is believed by some to be the Norse Vinland.   There are, in fact, many theories regarding the extent of the Norse presence in America, some supported by evidence that is intriguing, but others based upon dubious, even spurious assumptions.

Nothing is known of Leif’s appearance.  We know that he had a grandson, but no further descendants have been identified.  Leif Erikson, though, remains an iconic hero, especially to Scandinavians in America.  Sometimes cast as a competitor to Columbus, he maintains the advantage of possessing a reputation that is unsullied  — save for the illegitimate Scottish offspring!

Portrait of Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin  18 x 24 inches, Acrylic on Cradled panel, 2019

 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)  Born Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, he was an important  post-Impressionistic French painter whose work, though mostly unappreciated in his lifetime,  achieved popularity and critical success after his death and had considerable influence upon 20th Century art. 

Paul was born into a middle class family of social activists.  His father Clovis was a liberal journalist and his maternal grandmother was an author and supporter of the early socialist movement.  When, in 1850, Clovis Gauguin’s newspaper was closed down by the French government, he decided to take his wife Alina and their children to Peru.  His wife’s father was from a Peruvian family of wealth and social standing and could perhaps help them. Unfortunately on the way, Clovis had a heart attack and died.  Nevertheless, Alina Gauguin, with her children, 2  1/2 year-old Marie and 1  1/2 year-old Paul, was well received by her father’s family, whose members included the future president of Peru.  For the next few years the Gauguins would live a life of luxury and privilege.  Paul would be doted on and indulged by servants, an idyllic early childhood that he would never quite let go of.

Unfortunately, the political fortunes of Alina’s family’s  fell and, in 1854, the Gauguins had to return to France, pretty much broke.  Gauguin’s mother supported herself as a dressmaker and left Paul in Orléans to be raised by his paternal grandfather.  Paul was able to attend prestigious schools, including a naval preparatory school in Paris.  Completing his education, Gauguin became a merchant seaman, a pilot’s assistant.  After three years he joined the French navy for a two-year enlistment.  It was while he was in India that he heard of his mother’s death months before.

In 1871 Paul Gauguin returned to Paris and through a family friend obtained employment as a stockbroker.  He was successful and became quite well-to-do.  In 1873 he married Mette-Sophie Gad (1850-1920), a Danish woman, and they had 5 children together.  Gauguin became interested in art and was a regular at the cafes frequented by the Impressionists, who, at that time, were the rebels of the art world.  He began purchasing the work of many of these avant-garde and as yet unheralded artists and came to know most of them personally; Camille Pissarro was a particular friend.  Gauguin himself tried his hand at painting and a little sculpture.  No one seemed to think much of his efforts, but Paul felt compelled to spend more and more of his time with art.  In 1877 he moved from the 9th arrondissement of Paris (on the right bank in central Paris) to a newer, urban area, Vaugirard.   It was a poorer neighborhood, but his 3rd floor apartment had a studio.  Gauguin’s efforts began to bear fruit.  He was beginning to sell his work and was able to exhibit paintings in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1881 and 1882. 

By 1883 stockbroker Paul Gauguin had decided to devote himself to art full time.  He could not have chosen a worse time.  The stock market had crashed the year before and dealers and collectors were buying little art.  In January 1884 Gauguin moved his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply than in Paris.  The transition from amateur to professional was a difficult one and it put strains on his family life.   Mette and the children soon moved to Copenhagen in her native country of Denmark.  Gauguin, bringing his art collection, followed in November of 1884.  The restless and frustrated Gauguin got a job selling tarpaulins, but it was an ill-starred venture — Paul didn’t even speak Danish!

Separating from his wife, Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, taking with him his 6-year old son (who would eventually have to be sent to a boarding school, paid for by Pauls’ sister).  The upcoming winter was a time of misery.  Paul found no sales, no inspiration, and had to support himself in poverty taking menial jobs.  In the May 1886 at the Impressionist exhibition he showed several paintings, but most of them were old work, and he only made one sale.  Paul was assertive and opinionated, and art seemed to bring out his crankiness.  He made no friends publicly deploring the pointillist work of Georges Seurat that was now in fashion among the avant-garde.  And he quarreled with his friend Pissarro, making an enemy of his former friend, a man he had regularly painted with on Sunday afternoons.

In the summer of 1886 Gauguin stayed at the artist’s colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany.  This turned out to be a success: he finally found a place where he felt at home.  He gave full reign to his flamboyant and aggressive personality, dressing in an outlandish manner to attract attention.  Even if his artwork was not particularly admired, he thought a really neat guy: he made quite a hit there with the younger artists and students.  And his skill as a boxer and a fencer only enhanced his image.

Even as he continued to copy other artists, Gauguin developed his own style.  He would shun the objective representations of Impressionism and embraced a naive style inspired by the art of Asia and Africa — bold colors and lines, often featuring objects of flat color outlined in black.  He rejected the classical elements of painting, eg. correct perspective and proportion, formal composition, and shadings, highlights, and gradations of color.  Objecting to the superficiality of most contemporary art, he incorporated symbolic elements into his paintings.  It was his intent to paint not what the eye sees, but what the mind sees and thus capture the essence rather than merely the appearance of what he chose to paint.

In 1887, with one of his new young artist friends, Charles Laval, Gauguin travelled to Panama to find inspiration in the exotic.  They didn’t find there.  Broke and without jobs, they appealed to the French embassy to pay for their return trip to France.  On the way back, though, he and Laval stopped on the French West Indian island of Martinique and decided to stay.  Sick and living uncomfortably in a leaky hut, Gauguin nevertheless enjoyed himself and found inspiration, mingling with and painting the native inhabitants.  

Gauguin painted a dozen or more pictures during his 5-month stay and with them seemed to hit his stride as an artist.  These, landscapes with figures, scenes of rural life with simple people, informally painted and brightly colored,  epitomized what would be his style.  He exhibited them when he returned to France.  The work attracted the attention of an important Dutch art dealer, Theo van Gogh, who bought some of his work and showed it to his wealthy clients.  Paul become friends with van Gogh’s brother Vincent, who was a struggling artist.  Paul and Vincent corresponded and in his letters to him Gauguin formulated and expounded upon his philosophy of art.

At the suggestion of Theo, Vincent van Gogh asked Gauguin to live and paint with him at Arles in southern France, where van Gogh had gone for his health.  Vincent had rented rooms in a residence known from one of his paintings as the Yellow House.  (The house was damaged during WWII and demolished).  Paul accepted the invitation and arrived at Arles on October 23, 1888.   He soon learned he had made a mistake.  The two may have learned from each other, but there were inevitable conflicts.  Their painting styles and techniques were quite different, for instance, Gauguin did not share van Gogh’s enthusiasm for painting outdoors in all weathers and van Gogh could not adapt himself to Gauguin’s habit of painting from memory.  But van Gogh idolized Gauguin.  He hoped to be treated as his colleague, an equal, but Gauguin, dominating and lecturing, was not comfortable doing so.  Their intense personalities clashed and their relationship deteriorated.  The insecure and emotionally needy Van Gogh desperately hoped that Gauguin would not desert him.  Gauguin, who had chucked his marriage and respectable life to be an artist, chafed at attachments and obligations.  What’s more, Gauguin was naturally quarrelsome, while the sensitive van Gogh’s mental state was delicate at best.

In late December after being cooped up in the Yellow House for days because of rain, the two men quarreled violently.  When Gauguin took a walk, van Gogh chased after him and threatened him with a razor.  Afterwards Gauguin spent the night in a hotel.  Vincent, distraught and apparently having a psychotic episode in which he heard voices, cut off his left ear with the razor.  Although he later would not remember the episode, van Gogh bandaged his head and wrapped up the severed ear, which he delivered to a prostitute that worked in a brothel he and Paul frequented.  He later passed out and was taken by the police to a hospital.  As he recovered, Van Gogh repeatedly asked that Gauguin visit him, but Paul thought it best to leave Arles.  He returned to Paris and never saw van Gogh again, although they did continue to correspond.   (An alternative version of that night’s events has Gauguin being responsible for severing van Gogh’s ear during a physical altercation and Vincent agreeing not to say anything to implicate Paul).

Paul Gauguin hit upon the idea of going to the romantic South Seas, Tahiti, in particular, an overseas territory of France.   There he could leave behind the artificialities of civilization and be free of the demands of modern life.   A successful auction of his work in February 1991 provided the necessary funds for his trip.  After visiting his wife and children in Copenhagen for what turned out to be the last time, he departed for Tahiti on April 1, 1991. 

Gauguin spent his first three months in the capital of Tahiti, Papeete, but the city had already become so Europeanized it no longer had the primitive charm Gauguin was looking for.   Consequently, he moved to a village more than 30 miles from Papeete and lived there, native-style, in a bamboo hut.  This was a productive period with Gauguin executing his best and most representative work, portraits of native girls, scenes of native life, and illustrations of the lost culture and religion of Tahiti.  He also produced many woodcarvings.  Some of paintings were sent  back to France and Gauguin encouragingly heard word of sales.  During his stay in Tahiti, Gauguin contracted a marriage with a 13-year old native girl, whom he used as a model.  He also found time to write a travelogue entitled Noa Noa, which he would publish in 1901 —  however, the truthfulness of some of his accounts is suspect.

Gauguin was plagued by bad health, initially heart problems.  He was broke as well and so felt compelled to return to France, relying as he had before on government charity to pay for his passage. 

He returned to Paris in August 1893.  A show of his work in November 1893 was arranged by his long-time friend Edgar Degas.  Gauguin had bought Degas’ works when he was a collector in the ‘70s.  Now, Degas collected Gauguin’s works and lent him support and approval — even as other artists, Pissarro, Renoir, and Monet, scoffed at his works.

Continuing to produce “Tahitian” paintings, Paul set himself up in a studio in Montparnasse, an artist district in Paris.  He held a weekly salon where he would bedeck himself in Polynesian attire and show off his latest mistress, an exotic teenager from Java.  

A show in November 1994 resulted in sales, but subsequent exhibitions were financial failures.  Even though he had received an inheritance from an uncle, Gauguin was again short of funds.  He had become disillusioned with the European art world that had rejected him and embittered by the critical attacks directed against him and his work.   He yearned to go back to Tahiti.  And with help of friends he secured passage back to French Polynesia in June 1895.  He would never see Europe again.

In Tahiti he was able to support himself with sales of his artwork and enjoyed a comfortable life among the French colonists.  He was able to build a large house in an area outside Papeete where the rich people lived.  He became a journalist and took part in local politics.  He acquired another native wife, a 14-year old who bore him two children.  During his first year back in Tahiti he worked on nothing but woodcarvings.  When he returned to painting, he found himself catering to his fellow colonists rather than the avant garde of Paris.

In April 1897 he was in the process of building a new home, a lavish one, since the land on which his former home was situated had been sold.  Unfortunately, he was hard pressed financially and despaired of paying his debts.  His health was poor.  An injury to an ankle received during a drunken brawl back in France never healed and he had painful leg sores.  (These were long thought to be due to advanced syphilis, but recent examination of Gauguin’s teeth reveal no trace of mercury, which was commonly used to treat syphilis.  Therefore, it seems likely that he did not have the disease).  After finishing what he regarded as his masterpiece, the 14-foot wide tableau Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where Are We Going, he contemplated committing suicide.  But he did not go through with it.  His mood was soon buoyed and his fortunes were restored after several successful shows in Paris.  It seemed critics now liked his work.  And there was a new dealer who guaranteed him a regularly monthly advance.

Paul Gauguin could now fulfill his dream of settling in the more primitive Marquesas Islands, a French colony to the east of Tahiti.  He arrived there in September 1901 and built a fine two-story house in the center of the capital Atuona.  The Marquesas could not have been as he dreamed, though.  Its population had been decimated by European diseases so that only a few thousand inhabitants remained.  The Catholic Church indoctrinated the natives as the government oppressed them and traders exploited them.  Although it was not long before he antagonized the Catholic bishop, the iconoclastic  Gauguin befriended a Protestant pastor who had some medical training and was able to treat Gauguin’s legs.  Gauguin employed several servants and lived with another 14-year old girl who was probably as much nurse as wife.  They had a child together.  With no lack of models, Gauguin set out painting and sending his work back to France.  Back in Europe he had become a mysterious and legendary figure and his exotic art was at last appreciated.

By 1902 Gauguin’s health deteriorated, and he found it difficult to paint.  In addition to heart problems and the leg sores, he came to have vision loss.  He took morphine and  laudanum, but was careful to avoid becoming addicted.  Still full of spirit, though, Gauguin turned his attention to writing, recording reminiscences and penning complaints to the local government.  His criticisms of the constabulary led Gauguin to be charged with libeling a gendarme.  He received a prison sentence of three months.  Although in failing health, Gauguin endeavored to raise funds to go to Papeete to appeal his sentence.  He was very weak, in great pain, and suffering from fainting fits.  On the morning of May 8, 1903 he was found dead, either the victim of a heart attack or of an overdose of drugs he might have administered to ease his pain.

Gauguin’s effects were immediately auctioned off.  Some disappeared, but most of them eventually reached his wife Mete in Denmark.  His paintings increased in value and his reputation as an artist soared after his death.  Recently, one of his paintings was sold for 210 million dollars!  His primitive style has exerted considerable influence upon many early 20th Century artists, Pablo Picasso being the most notable.  He is still remembered in French Polynesia.  There is a Paul Gauguin Cultural Center in Atuona and a Paul Gauguin Museum in Tahiti.  He left descendants in Europe, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, some of whom became artists.

Gauguin and his colorful life inspired many literary works, among them Somerset Maugham's novel, The Moon and Six Pence.  Gauguin was memorably portrayed in the 1956 van Gogh film biography Lust for Life, with Anthony Quinn, himself an outstanding primitive artist and collector, winning an Academy Award for his performance.