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=== First visit to Tahiti === By 1890, Gauguin had conceived the project of making [[Tahiti]] his next artistic destination. A successful auction of paintings in Paris at the [[Hôtel Drouot]] in February 1891, along with other events such as a banquet and a benefit concert, provided the necessary funds.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=125}} The auction had been greatly helped by a flattering review from [[Octave Mirbeau]], courted by Gauguin through [[Camille Pissarro]].{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=125|loc=Thomson notes that Gauguin was alert to the potential for self-publicity. Camille Pissarro, no admirer of Gauguin, later scathingly observed that Gauguin had set out to "get himself elected … as a man of genius}} After visiting his wife and children in Copenhagen, for what turned out to be the last time, Gauguin set sail for Tahiti on 1 April 1891, promising to return a rich man and make a fresh start.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=127}} His avowed intent was to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional".<ref>Mathhews pp.157–167.</ref><ref>Arifa Akbar, "The painter who invented his own brand of artistic license", ''The Independent'', 20 April 2010.</ref> Nevertheless, he took care to take with him a collection of visual stimuli in the form of photographs, drawings and prints.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=143}}{{efn| He described his collection in a letter to [[Odilon Redon]] as "a whole little world of friends". They included Redon's lithograph ''La Mort'' as well as photographs of subjects such as a temple frieze at [[Borobudur]] and an Egyptian fresco from an XVIIIth dynasty tomb at [[Thebes, Egypt|Thebes]].{{sfn|Thomson|1987|pp=143, 145, 152}}}} He spent the first three months in [[Papeete]], the capital of the colony and already much influenced by French and European culture. His biographer Belinda Thomson observes that he must have been disappointed in his vision of a primitive idyll. He was unable to afford the pleasure-seeking life-style in Papeete, and an early attempt at a portrait, ''[[Suzanne Bambridge]]'', was not well liked.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=133}} He decided to set up his studio in Mataiea, [[Papeari]], some {{convert|45|km}} from Papeete, installing himself in a native-style bamboo hut. Here he executed paintings depicting Tahitian life such as ''[[Fatata te Miti]] (By the Sea)'' and ''[[Ia Orana Maria]] (Ave Maria)'', the latter to become his most prized Tahitian painting.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=182|loc=Thomson notes that Gauguin offered ''Ia Orana Maria'' to the [[Musée du Luxembourg]], whose officials turned it down unceremoniously, "thus confirming and reinforcing Gauguin's hatred of officialdom"}} [[File:Paul Gauguin 040.jpg|thumb|180px|''Vahine no te tiare (Woman with a Flower)'', 1891, [[Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek]]]] Many of his finest paintings date from this period. His first portrait of a Tahitian model is thought to be ''Vahine no te tiare'' (''[[Tahitian Woman with a Flower|Woman with a Flower]]''). The painting is notable for the care with which it delineates [[Polynesians|Polynesian]] features. He sent the painting to his patron [[George-Daniel de Monfreid]], a friend of Schuffenecker, who was to become Gauguin's devoted champion in Tahiti. By late summer 1892 this painting was being displayed at Goupil's gallery in Paris.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|pp=92, 136–138}} Art historian [[Nancy Mowll Mathews]] believes that Gauguin's encounter with exotic sensuality in Tahiti, so evident in the painting, was by far the most important aspect of his sojourn there.{{sfn|Mathews|2001|p=187}} He often rendered titles of his works in [[Tahitian language|Tahitian]], although some of these titles were misconjugated to a point where they were hard to understand by native Tahitian speakers themselves.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Danielsson |first1=Bengt |title=Gauguin's Tahitian Titles |journal=The Burlington Magazine |date=1967 |volume=109 |issue=769 |pages=228–233 |url=https://www.jstor.com/stable/875243 |issn=0007-6287}}</ref> Gauguin was lent copies of {{Interlanguage link|Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout|fr|3=Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout|lt=Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout's}} 1837 ''Voyage aux îles du Grand Océan'' and {{Interlanguage link|Edmond de Bovis|fr|3=Edmond de Bovis|lt=Edmond de Bovis'}} 1855 ''État de la société tahitienne à l'arrivée des Européens'', containing full accounts of Tahiti's forgotten culture and religion. Gauguin was fascinated by the accounts of ''[[Arioi]]'' society and their god [['Oro]]. Because these accounts contained no illustrations and the Tahitian models had in any case long disappeared, he could give free rein to his imagination. He executed some twenty paintings and a dozen woodcarvings over the next year. The first of these was ''Te aa no areois (The Seed of the Areoi)'', representing Oro's terrestrial wife Vairaumati, now held by the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]. His illustrated notebook of the time, ''{{Interlanguage link|Ancien Culte Mahorie|it}},'' is preserved in the Louvre and was published in facsimile form in 1951.{{sfn|Danielsson|1969|p=24}}{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=156}}{{sfn|Mathews|2001|p=174}} In all, Gauguin sent nine of his paintings to Monfreid in Paris. These were eventually exhibited in Copenhagen in a joint exhibition with the late Vincent van Gogh. Reports that they had been well received (though in fact only two of the Tahitian paintings were sold and his earlier paintings were unfavourably compared with van Gogh's) were sufficiently encouraging for Gauguin to contemplate returning with some seventy others he had completed.{{sfn|Mathews|2001|p=193}}{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=166}} He had in any case largely run out of funds, depending on a state grant for a free passage home. In addition he had some health problems diagnosed as heart problems by the local doctor, which Mathews suggests may have been the early signs of [[cardiovascular syphilis]].{{sfn|Mathews|2001|p=188}} Gauguin later wrote a travelogue (first published 1901) titled ''{{Interlanguage link|Noa Noa|ca}}'', originally conceived as commentary on his paintings and describing his experiences in Tahiti. Modern critics have suggested that the contents of the book were in part fantasized and plagiarized.<ref name="www.nytimes.com">{{cite news |first=Holland | title = The Self-Invented Artist| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/arts/design/25gaugin.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 | access-date =9 December 2010 | work=[[The New York Times]] | last=Cotter}}</ref><ref>Solomon-Godeau pp. 326, 328.</ref> In it he revealed that he had at this time taken a 13-year-old girl as native wife or ''vahine'' (the [[Tahitian language|Tahitian]] word for "woman"), a marriage contracted in the course of a single afternoon. This was [[Teha'amana]], called Tehura in the travelogue, who was pregnant by him by the end of summer 1892.{{sfn|Mathews|2001|pp=179–182}}<ref name=":0">Gauguin (1903), [https://archive.org/stream/noanoatranslated00gauguoft#page/62/mode/2up ''Noa Noa''] pp. 63–69.</ref><ref name="Smart">{{cite news|last1=Smart|first1=Alastair|title=Is it wrong to admire Paul Gauguin's art?|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8011066/Is-it-wrong-to-admire-Paul-Gauguins-art.html|newspaper=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150207210412/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8011066/Is-it-wrong-to-admire-Paul-Gauguins-art.html|archive-date=7 February 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Mathews|2001|p=180|loc=Mathews notes that Gauguin certainly emphasised the youth of the girl for dramatic effect. Nevertheless it is likely Teha'amana was in her early teens, as young girls at the time were commonly offered as native wives to Westerners. There is no further record of Teha'amana's baby. Mathews estimates it was probably adopted in keeping with Tahitian custom}} Teha'amana was the subject of several of Gauguin's paintings, including ''[[Merahi metua no Tehamana]]'' and the celebrated ''[[Spirit of the Dead Watching]]'', as well as a notable woodcarving ''[[Tehura (woodcarving)|Tehura]]'' now in the [[Musée d'Orsay]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Tehura|url=http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/catalogue-des-oeuvres/notice.html?nnumid=15289|website=musee-orsay.fr|publisher=[[Musée d'Orsay]]}}</ref> By the end of July 1893, Gauguin had decided to leave Tahiti and he would never see Teha'amana or their child again even after returning to the island several years later.{{sfn|Thomson|1987|p=181}} A digital catalogue raisonné of the paintings from this period was released by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute in 2021.<ref>{{Cite web |title=WPI Digital Archives & Catalogues Raisonnés |url=https://digitalprojects.wpi.art/artworks/gauguin/search |access-date=26 July 2022 |website=digitalprojects.wpi.art}}</ref> <gallery widths="200px" heights="200px" class="center"> File:Gauguin - Die Gesandten der Oro.jpg|Page from Gauguin's notebook (date unknown), ''Ancien Culte Mahorie''. [[Louvre]] File:Paul Gauguin - Te aa no areois - Google Art Project.jpg|''Te aa no areois (The Seed of the Areoi)'', 1892, [[Museum of Modern Art]] File:Paul Gauguin- Manao tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keep Watch).JPG|''[[Spirit of the Dead Watching]]'' 1892, [[Albright–Knox Art Gallery]], [[Buffalo, NY]] File:Paul Gauguin, ca.1891-1893, Tehura (Teha'amana), polychromed pua wood, H. 22.2 cm. Realized during Gauguin's first voyage to Tahiti. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.jpg|''Tehura (Teha'amana)'', 1891–3, polychromed pua wood, [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris </gallery>
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