In 1903, the year of his death, Paul Gauguin wrote from his home on the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia to his painter friend George-Daniel de Monfreid in Paris. He was thinking of giving up life on this volcanic mote in the middle of the Pacific, he said, and returning to Europe to head to Spain to paint. Gauguin was probably not even half serious but De Monfreid posted back an extraordinary response. Whatever the circumstances, don’t do it, he counselled; the paintings that he was sending to France had made him a “legendary, unforgettable artist” and “a great man who has supposedly disappeared from the world”. His reappearance would spoil everything. “Simply stated, you are blessed with the immunity of the dead and famous, you have passed into art history.”
Gauguin certainly didn’t feel blessed. Although a stipend from the art dealer Ambroise Vollard meant that his perennial money worries had lessened, he was nevertheless in trouble with the French administration on the islands, which had long seen him as an unruly provocateur, and his health was a catastrophe. He had eye problems, sores on his leg, and eczema; he had suffered heart attacks, spells of “violent twitching” and vomiting blood. He had attempted suicide. The “legendary, unforgettable artist” was a wreck, and he didn’t last long.
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