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Tahiti Paul Gauguin French Polynesia
Tahiti (;) is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia; this overseas collectivity of the French Republic is sometimes referred to as an overseas country.  The island is located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the central Southern Pacific Ocean, and is divided into two parts: The bigger, northwestern part Tahiti Nui and the smaller, southeastern part Tahiti Iti. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous with surrounding coral reefs. The population is 183,645 inhabitants (2012 census), making it the most populous island of French Polynesia and accounting for 68.5% of its total population. 

Tahiti is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The capital of the collectivity, Pape'ete, is located on the northwest coast with the only international airport in the region, Fa'a'ā International Airport, situated 5 km from the town centre.

Tahiti was originally settled by Polynesians between 300 and 800 CE. They represent about 70% of the island's population with the rest made up of Europeans, Chinese and those of mixed heritage.

The island was part of the Kingdom of Tahiti until its annexation by France in 1880, when it was proclaimed a colony of France. It was not until 1946 that the indigenous Tahitians were legally authorised to be French citizens. French is the only official language although the Tahitian language (Reo Tahiti) is widely spoken.

Geography

Tahiti is the highest and largest island in French Polynesia lying close to Moorea island. It is located 4400 km south of Hawaii, 7900 km from Chile and 5700 km from Australia.

The island is 45 km across at its widest point and covers an area of 1045 km2. The highest peak is Mont Orohena (Mou'a 'Orohena) (2241 m). Mount Roonui, or Mount Ronui (Mou'a Rōnui) in the southeast rises to 1332 m. The island consists of two roughly round portions centred on volcanic mountains and connected by a short isthmus named after the small town of Taravao, situated there.

The northwestern portion is known as Tahiti Nui ("big Tahiti"), while the much smaller southeastern portion is known as Tahiti Iti ("small Tahiti") or Tai'arapū. Tahiti Nui is heavily populated along the coast, especially around the capital, Papeete.

The interior of Tahiti Nui is almost entirely uninhabited.  Tahiti Iti has remained isolated, as its southeastern half (Te Pari) is accessible only to those travelling by boat or on foot. The rest of the island is encircled by a main road which cuts between the mountains and the sea.

A scenic and winding interior road climbs past dairy farms and citrus groves with panoramic views. Tahiti's landscape features lush rainforests and many streams, including the Papenoo River on the north side.

Climate

November to April is the wet season, the wettest month of which is January with  of rain in Papeetē. August is the driest with .

The average temperature ranges between 21 and with little seasonal variation. The lowest and highest temperatures recorded in Papeete are 16 and, respectively. 

History

Prehistoric colonization of Tahiti

The first Tahitians arrived from Southeast Asia in about 200 BCE,  after a long migration from South East Asia or Indonesia, via the Fijian, Samoan and Tongan Archipelagos. This hypothesis of an emigration from Southeast Asia is supported by a number of linguistic, biological and archaeological proofs. For example, the languages of Fiji and Polynesia all belong to the same Oceanic sub-group, Fijian-Polynesian, which itself forms part of the great family of the Austronesian Languages.

This emigration, across several hundred kilometres of ocean, was made possible by using outrigger canoes that were up to twenty or thirty meters long and could transport families as well as domestic animals. In 1769, for instance, James Cook mentions a great traditional ship (va'a) in Tahiti that was 33 m long, and could be propelled by sail or paddles. 
In 2010, an expedition on a simple outrigger canoe with a sail retraced the route back from Tahiti to Asia. 

Tahitian society was composed of chiefdoms and territories based on kinship and military power among various clans. A clan was led by a chief (Ari'i rahi), nobles (Ari'i) and lesser chiefs. The Ari'i were believed to be descendants of Polynesian gods and invested with supernatural power (mana). A symbol of their status were belts made of red feathers.

However, clan leaders did not hold absolute power, and their role included consulting with general assemblies or councils, especially in times of war. The marae was a sacred place of worship constructed of raised stone platforms in open ground, performing a cultural function similar to such structures in other Polynesian societies. The marae were at the centre of the spiritual and social life of the clan. Here, gods were invoked and leaders enthroned. It was also a place for ceremonies such as preparation for war, birth celebrations as well as burial rituals. Types of marae ranged from simple family platforms to larger edifices for leaders of high status, although all were considered tapu. Early European contact saw the arrival of the London Missionary Society in 1797 who introduced Christianity and documented the Tahitian language (Reo Tahiti).

Civilization before the arrival of the Europeans

Before the arrival of the Europeans the island was divided into different chiefdoms, very precise territories dominated by a single clan. These chiefdoms were linked to each other by allegiances based on the blood ties of their leaders and on their power in war. The most important clan on the island was the Teva,  whose territory extended from the peninsula in the south of Tahiti Nui. The Teva Clan was composed of the Teva i Uta (Teva of the Interior) and the Teva i Tai (Teva of the Sea), and was led by Amo and Purea.Salvat, p. 187

A clan was composed of a chief (ari’i rahi), nobles (ari’i) and under-chiefs ( 'Īato'ai). The ari’i, considered descendants of the Polynesian gods, were full of mana (spiritual power). They traditionally wore belts of red feathers, symbols of their power. The chief of the clan did not have absolute power. Councils or general assemblies had to be called composed of the ari’i and the 'Īato'ai, especially in case of war. The more unrelated the ari’i were to the chief of the clan, the more autonomous they were, forming a counterweight to his authority.

The clans were organized around marae, open air cultic sites. These marae were at the heart of the religious and social life of the clans: that is where the gods were invoked, where the chiefs were enthroned, and where war and fishing expeditions were prepared, and where births and deaths were celebrated. There was a hierarchy of marae, progressing from simple family marae to royal marae. The size of any marae is proportional to the influence of the family. One of the royal marae of Tahiti is Farepu’a, built on the accession of Tetuana’e Nui. The marae were protected by tapu, an absolute and sacred ban, transgressing which would bring on a curse. The term passed into western languages as taboo.

First European visits

Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, serving the Spanish Crown in an expedition to Terra Australis, was perhaps the first European to set eyes on the island of Tahiti. He sighted an inhabited island on 10 February 1606  which he called Sagitaria (or Sagittaria). However, whether the island that he saw was actually Tahiti or not has not been fully ascertained. It has been suggested that he actually saw the island of Rekareka to the south-east of Tahiti.  According to other authors the first European to arrive in Tahiti was Spanish explorer Juan Fernández in his expedition of 1576–1577. 

The first European to have visited Tahiti according to existing records was lieutenant Samuel Wallis, who was circumnavigating the globe in HMS Dolphin, and landed on 17 June 1767  in Matavai Bay, situated on the territory of the chiefdom of Pare (Arue/Mahina), governed by the female chieftain "Oberea" (Purea). Wallis named the island King George Island. The first contacts were difficult, since on the 24 and the 26 June 1767,  some Tahitians in canoes tried to take the ship and beach it, possibly because they were afraid the English had intentions of staying permanently, or possibly to take possession of the metallic objects from the ship. In retaliation, the English sailors opened fire on the canoes and on the crowds on the hills. In reaction to this powerful counter-attack, the inhabitants of the bay laid down offerings for the English, showing their wish for peace or to submit. Following this episode, Samuel Wallis was able to establish cordial relations with the female chieftain “Oberea “ (Purea) and remained on the island for a total of 40 days, until 27 July 1767.

On 2 April 1768,  it was the turn of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, completing the first French circumnavigation, to land in the Bay of Matavai. He only stayed about ten days on the island, which he called “Nouvelle-Cythère “, or "New Cythera", because of the warm welcome he had received and the sweetness of the Tahitian customs. The account he gave of his port of call would contribute to the creation of the myth of a Polynesian paradise and nourished the theme of the good savage, so dear to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which was very much in fashion. Between this date right until the end of the 18th century, the name of the island was spelled phonetically “Taïti”. Beginning in the 19th century, the Tahitian orthography “Tahiti” became normal usage in French and English. 

In July 1768, Captain James Cook was commissioned by the Royal Society and on orders from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, a phenomenon that would be visible from Tahiti on 3 June 1769.  He arrived in Tahiti on board HMS Endeavour in April 1769 and remained on the island until August.  He set up camp at Matavai Bay along with Charles Green and Daniel Solander.The length of stay enabled them to undertake for the first time real ethnographic and scientific observations of the island. Assisted by the botanist Joseph Banks, and by the artist Sydney Parkinson, Cook gathered valuable information on the fauna and flora, as well as the native society, language and customs. Cook estimated the population to be 200,000 including all the nearby islands in the chain.  This estimate was later lowered to 35,000 by anthropologist Douglas L. Oliver, the foremost modern authority on Tahiti, at the time of first European contact in 1767.  His crew moreover maintained friendly relations with the cheftainess "Oberea" (Purea), whom they mistakenly took to be the Queen of Tahiti. These exchanges created favorable conditions for the rise of the Pōmare Dynasty.

The Viceroy of Peru, Manuel de Amat y Juniet, following the instructions of the Spanish Crown, organized an expedition to settle and colonize the island in 1772, largely to prevent other powers from gaining a base in the Pacific from which to attack the coast of Peru, but also to evangelize. He sent two expeditions under the command of navigator Domingo de Bonechea in 1772 and in 1774. Bonechea died on 20 January 1775 in Tahiti, where his grave was rediscovered in the 20th century. The Spanish mission on Tahiti was abandoned on 12 November that year after Charles III of Spain cancelled the mission as a consequence of his secular policy.  Some maps still bear the name Isla de Amat for Tahiti, named after Viceroy Amat who ordered the expedition. A most notable result of these voyages was the drafting of a diary by a soldier of the Spanish Navy named Maximo Rodriguez, covering a period of 12 months, which contains valuable ethnological information about the Tahitians of the 18th century.

Cook later returned to Tahiti between 15 August and 1 September 1773, and for the last time between 13 August and 8 December 1777. On these visits Cook made harbour at Tautira Bay, which is sometimes known as Cook's Anchorage. During his final stay he accompanied the chief Tū (nephew of the female chieftain "Oberea" (Purea)) on a warring expedition to Mo'orea ('Aimeo). Cook, however, refused to offer him military support and was content with just visiting the island.

British influence and the rise of the Pōmare

Mutineers of the Bounty

On 26 October 1788, HMS Bounty, under the command of Captain William Bligh, landed in Tahiti with the mission of carrying Tahitian breadfruit trees (Tahitian: uru) to the Caribbean. Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist from James Cook's first expedition, had concluded that this plant would be ideal to feed the African slaves working in the Caribbean plantations at very little cost. The crew remained in Tahiti for about five months, the time needed to transplant the seedlings of the trees. Three weeks after leaving Tahiti, on 28 April 1789, the crew mutinied on the initiative of Fletcher Christian. The mutineers seized the ship and set the captain and most of those members of the crew who remained loyal to him adrift in a ship's boat. A group of mutineers then went back to settle in Tahiti.

Although various explorers had refused to get involved in tribal conflicts, the mutineers from the Bounty offered their services as mercenaries and furnished arms to the family which became the Pōmare Dynasty. The chief Tū knew how to use their presence in the harbours favoured by sailors to his advantage. As a result of his alliance with the mutineers, he succeeded in considerably increasing his supremacy over the island of Tahiti.

In about 1790, the ambitious chief Tū took the title of king and gave himself the name Pōmare. Captain Bligh explains that this name was an homage to his eldest daughter Teriinavahoroa, who had died of tuberculosis, "an illness that made her cough (mare) a lot, especially at night (pō)". Thus he became Pōmare I, founding the Pōmare Dynasty and his lineage would be the first to unify Tahiti from 1788–1791. He and his descendants founded and expanded Tahitian influence to all of the lands that now constitute modern French Polynesia.

In 1791, HMS Pandora under Captain Edward Edwards called at Tahiti and took custody of fourteen of the mutineers. Four were drowned in the sinking of the Pandora on her homeward voyage, three were hanged, four were acquitted, and three were pardoned.

Landings of the whalers

In the 1790s, whalers began landing at Tahiti during their fishing expeditions in the southern hemisphere. The arrival of these whalers, who were subsequently joined by merchants coming from the penal colonies in Australia, marked the first major overturning of traditional Tahitian society. The crews introduced alcohol, arms and illnesses into the island, and encouraged prostitution, which brought with it venereal disease. These first exchanges with westerners had catastrophic consequences for the Tahitian population, which shrank rapidly, ravaged by diseases. So many Tahitians were killed by disease in fact that by 1797, the population was only 16,000. Later it was to drop as low as 6,000. 

Arrival of the missionaries

On 5 March 1797, representatives of the London Missionary Society landed at Matavai Bay (Mahina) on board Duff, with the intention of converting the pagan native populations to Christianity. The arrival of these missionaries marked a new turning point for the island of Tahiti, having a lasting impact on the local culture.

The first years proved hard work for the missionaries, despite their association with the Pōmare, the importance of whom they were aware of thanks to the reports of earlier sailors. In 1803, upon the death of Pōmare I, his son Vaira'atoa succeeded him and took the title of Pomare II. He allied himself more and more with the missionaries, and from 1803 they taught him reading and the Gospels. Furthermore, the missionaries encouraged his wish to conquer his opponents, so that they would only have to deal with a single political contact, enabling them to develop Christianity in a unified country. The conversion of Pōmare II to Protestantism in 1812 marks moreover the point when Protestantism truly took off on the island.

In about 1810, Pōmare II married Teremo'emo'e daughter of the chief of Raiatea, in order to ally himself with the chiefdoms of the Leeward Islands. On 12 November 1815, thanks to these alliances, Pōmare II won a decisive battle at Fe’i Pī (Punaauia), notably against Opuhara,  the chief of the powerful clan of Teva. This victory allowed Pōmare II to be styled Ari’i Rahi, or the king of Tahiti. It was the first time that Tahiti had been united under the control of a single family. It was the end of Tahitian feudalism and the military aristocracy, which were replaced by an absolute monarchy. At the same time, Protestantism quickly spread, thanks to the support of Pōmare II, and replaced the traditional beliefs. In 1816 the London Missionary Society sent John Williams as a missionary and teacher, and starting in 1817, the Gospels were translated into Tahitian (Reo Maohi) and taught in the religious schools. In 1818, the minister William Pascoe Crook founded the city of Papeete, which became the capital of the island.

In 1819, Pōmare II, encouraged by the missionaries, introduced the first Tahitian legal code, known under the name of the Pōmare Legal Code, which consists of nineteen laws. The missionaries and Pōmare II thus imposed a ban on nudity (obliging them to wear clothes covering their whole body), banned dances and chants, described as immodest, tattoos and costumes made of flowers.

In the 1820s, the entire population of Tahiti converted to Protestantism. Duperrey, who berthed in Tahiti in May 1823, attests to the change in Tahitian society in a letter dated 15 May 1823: “The missionaries of the Royal Society of London have totally changed the morals and customs of the inhabitants. Idolatry no longer exists among them, and they generally profess the Christian religion. The women no longer come aboard the vessel, and even when we meet them on land they are extremely reserved. (...) The bloody wars that these people used to carry out and human sacrifices have no longer taken place since 1816." 

When, on 7 December 1821, Pōmare II died, his son Pōmare III was only eighteen months old. His uncle and the religious people therefore supported the regency, until 2 May 1824, the date on which the missionaries conducted his coronation, a ceremony unprecedented in Tahiti. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Pōmare, local chiefs won back some of their power and took the hereditary title of Tavana (from the English word ‘governor’). The missionaries also took advantage of the situation in order to change the way in which powers were arranged, and to make the Tahitian monarchy closer to the English model of a constitutional monarchy. They therefore created the Tahitian Legislative Assembly, which first sat on the 23 February 1824.

In 1827, the young Pōmare III suddenly died, and it was his half-sister, 'Aimata, aged thirteen, who took the title of Pōmare IV. The Birmingham born missionary George Pritchard, who was the acting British consul, became her main adviser and tried to interest her in the affairs of the kingdom. But the authority of the Queen, who was certainly less charismatic than her father, was challenged by the chiefs, who had won back an important part of their prerogatives since the death of Pōmare II. The power of the Pōmare had become more symbolic than real, time and time again Queen Pōmare, Protestant and anglophile, sought in vain the protection of England.

In November 1835 Charles Darwin visited Tahiti aboard HMS Beagle on her circumnavigation, captained by Robert FitzRoy. He was impressed by what he perceived to be the positive influence the missionaries had had on the sobriety and moral character of the population. Darwin praised the scenery, but was not flattering towards Tahiti's Queen Pōmare IV. Captain Fitzroy negotiated payment of compensation for an attack on an English ship by Tahitians, which had taken place in 1833. 

In 1839 the island was visited by the United States Exploring Expedition; one of its members, Alfred Thomas Agate, produced a number of sketches of Tahitian life, some of which were later published in the United States.

French protectorate and the end of the Pōmare kingdom

In 1836, the Queen’s advisor Pritchard had two French Catholic priests expelled, François Caret and Honoré Laval. As a result, in 1838 France sent Admiral Abel Aubert Dupetit-Thouars to get reparation. Once his mission had been completed, Admiral Du Petit-Thouars sailed towards the Marquesas Islands, which he annexed in 1842. Also in 1842, a European crisis involving Morocco escalated between France and Great Britain, souring their relations. In August 1842, Admiral Du Petit-Thouars returned and landed in Tahiti. He then made friends with Tahitian chiefs who were hostile to the Pōmare family and favorable to a French protectorate. He had them sign a request for protection in the absence of their Queen, before then approaching her and obliging her to ratify the terms of the treaty of protectorate. The treaty had not even been ratified by France itself when Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout was named royal commissaire alongside Queen Pōmare.

Within the framework of this treaty, France recognized the sovereignty of the Tahitian state. The Queen was responsible for internal affairs, while France would deal with foreign relations and assure the defence of Tahiti, as well as maintain order on the island. Once the treaty had been signed there began a struggle for influence between the English Protestants and the Catholic representatives of France. During the first years of the Protectorate, the Protestants managed to retain a considerable hold over Tahitian society, thanks to their knowledge of the country and its language. George Pritchard had been away at the time. He returned however to work towards indoctrinating the locals against the Roman Catholic French.

Tahitian War of independence (1844–7) 

In 1843, the Queen's Protestant advisor, Pritchard, persuaded her to display the Tahitian flag in place of the flag of the Protectorate.  By way of reprisal, Admiral Dupetit-Thouars announced the annexation of the Kingdom of Pōmare on the 6 November 1843 and set up the governor Armand Joseph Bruat there as the chief of the new colony. He threw Pritchard into prison, and later sent him back to Britain. The annexation caused the Queen to be exiled to the Leeward Islands, and after a period of troubles, a real Franco-Tahitian war began in March 1844. News of Tahiti reached Europe in early 1844. The French statesman François Guizot, supported by King Louis-Philippe of France, had denounced annexation of the island.

The war ended in December 1846 in favour of the French. The Queen returned from exile in 1847 and agreed to sign a new covenant, considerably reducing her powers, while increasing those of the commissaire. The French nevertheless still reigned over the Kingdom of Tahiti as masters. In 1863, they put an end to the British influence and replaced the British Protestant Missions with the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris (Society of Evangelical Missions of Paris).

During the same period about a thousand Chinese, mainly Cantonese, were recruited at the request of a plantation owner in Tahiti, William Stewart, to work on the great cotton plantation at Atimaono. When the enterprise resulted in bankruptcy in 1873, a few Chinese workers returned to their country, but a large number stayed in Tahiti and mixed with the population.

In 1866 the district councils were formed, elected, which were given the powers of the traditional hereditary chiefs. In the context of the republican assimilation, these councils tried their best to protect the traditional way of life of the local people, which was threatened by European influence.

In 1877, Queen Pōmare died after ruling for fifty years. Her son, Pōmare V, then succeeded her on the throne. The new king seemed little concerned with the affairs of the kingdom, and when in 1880 the governor Henri Isidore Chessé, supported by the Tahitian chiefs, pushed him to abdicate in favor of France, he accepted. On the 29 June 1880, he ceded Tahiti to France along with the islands that were its dependencies. He was given the titular position of Officer of the Orders of the Legion of Honour and Agricultural Merit of France. Having become a colony, Tahiti thus lost all sovereignty. Tahiti was nevertheless a special colony, since all the subjects of the Kingdom of Pōmare would be given French citizenship.  On the 14 July 1881, among cries of “Vive la République!” the crowds celebrated the fact that Polynesia now belonged to France; this was the first celebration of the Tiurai (national and popular festival). In 1890, Papeete became a commune of the Republic of France.

The French painter Paul Gauguin lived on Tahiti in the 1890s and painted many Tahitian subjects. Papeari has a small Gauguin museum.

In 1891 Matthew Turner, an American shipbuilder from San Francisco who had been seeking a fast passage between the city and Tahiti, built the Papeete, a two-masted schooner that made the trip in seventeen days.

Twentieth century to present

In 1903, the Établissements Français d’Océanie (French Establishments in Oceania) were created, which collected together Tahiti, the other Society Islands, the Austral Islands, the Marquesas Islands and the Tuamotu Archipelago.

In 1946, Tahiti and the whole of French Polynesia became an overseas territory (Territoire d'outre-mer). Tahitians were granted French citizenship, a right that had been campaigned for by nationalist leader Pouvanaa a Oopa for many years.  In 2003, French Polynesia's status was changed to that of an overseas collectivity (Collectivité d'outre-mer) and in 2004 it was declared an overseas country (pays d'outre-mer or POM).

During the First World War, the Papeete region of the island was attacked by two German warships. A French gunboat as well as a captured German freighter were sunk in the harbour and the two German warships bombarded the colony. Between 1966 and 1996 the French Government conducted 193 nuclear bomb tests above and below the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. The last test was conducted on 27 January 1996. 

In 2009, Tauatomo Mairau claimed the Tahitian throne, and attempted to re-assert the status of the monarchy in court.

Politics

Tahitians are French citizens with complete civil and political rights. French is the official language but Tahitian and French are both in use. However, there was a time during the 1960s and 1970s when children were forbidden to speak Tahitian in schools. Tahitian is now taught in schools; it is sometimes even a requirement for employment.

Tahiti is part of French Polynesia. French Polynesia is a semi-autonomous territory of France with its own assembly, president, budget and laws. France's influence is limited to subsidies, education and security. The former President of French Polynesia, Oscar Temaru, advocates full independence from France. However, only about 20% of the population is thought to be in favor.

During a press conference on 26 June 2006 during the second France-Oceania Summit, French President Jacques Chirac said he did not think the majority of Tahitians wanted independence. He would keep an open door to a possible referendum in the future.

Elections for the Assembly of French Polynesia, the Territorial Assembly of French Polynesia, were held on 23 May 2004.

In a surprise result, Oscar Temaru's pro-independence progressive coalition, Union for Democracy, formed a government with a one-seat majority in the 57-seat parliament, defeating the conservative party, Tahoera'a Huiraatira, led by Gaston Flosse. On 8 October 2004, Flosse succeeded in passing a censure motion against the government, provoking a crisis. A controversy is whether the national government of France should use its power to call for new elections in a local government in case of a political crisis.

Demographics

The indigenous Tahitians are of Polynesian ancestry comprising 70% of the population alongside Europeans, East Asians (mostly Chinese) and people of mixed heritage sometimes referred to as Demis. They make up the largest population in French Polynesia. Most people from metropolitan France live in Papeete and its suburbs, notably Punaauia where they make up almost 20% of the population.

Historical population

Administrative divisions

The island consists of 12 communes, which, along with Moorea-Maiao, make up the Windward Islands administrative subdivision.

The capital is Pape'ete and the largest commune by population is Fa'a'ā while Taiarapu-Est has the largest area.

Communes of Tahiti 

The following is a list of communes and their subdivisions sorted alphabetically: 

Economy

Tourism is a significant industry.

In July, the Heivā festival in Papeete celebrates Polynesian culture and the commemoration of the storming of the Bastille in Paris.
After the establishment of the CEP (Centre d'Experimentation du Pacifique) in 1963, the standard of living in French Polynesia increased considerably and many Polynesians abandoned traditional activities and emigrated to the urban centre of Pape'ete. Even though the standard of living is elevated (due mainly to French foreign direct investment), the economy is reliant on imports. At the cessation of CEP activities, France signed the Progress Pact with Tahiti to compensate the loss of financial resources and assist in education and tourism with an investment of about US$150 million a year from the beginning of 2006.

The main trading partners are France for about 40% of imports and about 25% of exports, the other main trading partners are the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Tahitian pearl (Black pearl) farming is also a substantial source of revenues, most of the pearls being exported to Japan, Europe and the US. Tahiti also exports vanilla, fruits, flowers, monoi, fish, copra oil, and noni. Tahiti is also home to a single winery, whose vineyards are located on the Rangiroa atoll. 

Unemployment affects about 13% of the active population, especially women and unqualified young people.

Tahiti’s currency, the French Pacific Franc (CFP, also known as XPF), is pegged to the Euro at 1 CFP = EUR .00838 (approx. 106 CFP to the US Dollar in January 2015). Hotels and financial institutions offer exchange services.

Sales tax in Tahiti is called Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutée (TVA or value added tax (V.A.T.) in English). V.A.T. 2009 on tourist services is 10% and V.A.T. 2009 on hotels, small boarding houses, food and beverages is 6%. V.A.T. on the purchase of goods and products is 16%.

Energy and electricity

French Polynesia imports its petroleum and has no local refinery or production. Daily consumption of imported oil products was 7,430 barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. 

Culture

Tahitian cultures included an oral tradition that involved the mythology of gods, such as 'Oro and beliefs, as well as ancient traditions such as tattooing and navigation. The annual Heivā Festival in July is a celebration of traditional culture, dance, music and sports including a long distance race between the islands of French Polynesia, in modern outrigger canoes (va'a).

The Paul Gauguin Museum is dedicated to the life and works of French artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) who painted famous works such as Two Tahitian Women, Tahitian Women on the Beach and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?.

The Musée de Tahiti et des Îles (Museum of Tahiti and the Island) is in Punaauia. It is an ethnographic museum that was founded in 1974 to conserve and restore Polynesian artifacts and cultural practices.

The Robert Wan Pearl Museum is the world's only museum dedicated to pearls. The Papeete Market sells local arts and crafts.

Dance

One of the most widely recognized images of the islands is the world famous Tahitian dance. The 'ote'a (sometimes written as otea) is a traditional dance from Tahiti, where the dancers, standing in several rows, execute figures. This dance, easily recognized by its fast hip-shaking and grass skirts, is often confused with the Hawaiian hula, a generally slower more graceful dance which focuses more on the hands and storytelling than the hips.

The ʻōteʻa is one of the few dances which existed in pre-European times as a male dance. On the other hand, the hura (Tahitian vernacular for hula), a dance for women, has disappeared, and the couple's dance 'upa'upa is likewise gone but may have reemerged as the tamure. Nowadays, the ʻōteʻa can be danced by men (ʻōteʻa tāne), by women (ʻōteʻa vahine), or by both genders (ʻōteʻa ʻāmui = united ʻō.). The dance is with music only, drums, but no singing. The drum can be one of the types of the tōʻere, a laying log of wood with a longitudinal slit, which is struck by one or two sticks. Or it can be the pahu, the ancient Tahitian standing drum covered with a shark skin and struck by the hands or with sticks. The rhythm from the tōʻere is fast, from the pahu it is slower. A smaller drum, the faʻatete, can be used.

The dancers make gestures, reenacting daily occupations of life. For the men the themes can be chosen from warfare or sailing, and then they may use spears or paddles.

For women the themes are closer to home or from nature: combing their hair or the flight of a butterfly, for example. More elaborate themes can be chosen, for example, one where the dancers end up in a map of Tahiti, highlighting important places. In a proper ʻōteʻa the story of the theme should pervade the whole dance.

The group dance called 'Aparima is often performed with the dancers dressed in pareo and maro. There are two types of ʻaparima: the ʻaparima hīmene (sung handdance) and the ʻaparima vāvā (silent handdance), the latter being performed with music only and no singing.

Newer dances include the hivinau and the pa'o'a.

Navigation

The indigenous Tahitians are Polynesians, part of the greater family of Oceanic peoples, noted in their history and culture for their navigation skills, essential for trade and communications in their maritime environs.

Sport

The Tahitian national sport is Va'a. In English, this paddle sport is also known as outrigger canoe. The Tahitians consistently achieve record-breaking and top times as world champion in this sport.

Major sports in Tahiti include rugby union and association football and the island has fielded a national basketball team, which is a member of FIBA Oceania.

Another sport is surfing, with famous surfers such as Malik Joyeux and Michel Bourez.  Teahupo'o is one of the deadliest surf breaks in the world.

Rugby union in Tahiti is governed by the Fédération Tahitienne de Rugby de Polynésie Française which was formed in 1989. The Tahiti national rugby union team has been active since 1971 but have only played 12 games since then.

Football in Tahiti is administered by the Fédération Tahitienne de Football and was founded in 1938. The Tahiti Division Fédérale is the top division on the island and the Tahiti Championnat Enterprise is the second tier. Some of the major clubs are AS Manu-Ura, who play in Stade Hamuta, AS Pirae, who play in the Stade Pater Te Hono Nui and AS Tefana, who play in the Stade Louis Ganivet. Lesser clubs include Matavai and Tubuia. In 2012, the national team won the OFC Nations Cup qualifying for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil and becoming the first team other than Australia or New Zealand to win it.

The Tahiti Cup is the islands' premier football knockout tournament and has been played for since 1938. The winner of the Tahiti Cup goes on to play the winner of the Tahiti Division Fédérale in the Tahiti Coupe des Champions.

In 2010, Tahiti was chosen as the host of the 2013 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, which was held in September 2013.

In 2011, Tahiti was accepted into as a member of the Asia-Pacific Rugby League Federation. Tahiti join as new members along with India, Philippines, Tokelau and American Samoa in a meeting of the federation in Auckland over December 5–6. This is a sign of the growing popularity of Rugby League in the Pacific Islands.

Tahiti has also been represented at the World Championship of Pétanque. They are the pre-eminent country in the Oceania region for Pétanque, undoubtably due to their strong connections to France.

Education

Tahiti is home to the University of French Polynesia (Université de la Polynésie Française). It is a growing university, with 3,200 students and 62 researchers. Many courses are available such as law, commerce, science, and literature. There is also the Collège La Mennais located in Papeete.

Transport

Air

Faa'a International Airport is located 5 km from Papeete in the commune of Faaa and is the only international airport in French Polynesia. Because of limited level terrain, rather than levelling large stretches of sloping agricultural land, the airport is built primarily on reclaimed land on the coral reef just off-shore.

International destinations such as Auckland, Hanga Roa, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Sydney and Tokyo are served by Air France, Air New Zealand, Air Tahiti Nui French Polynesia's flag carrier, Hawaiian Airlines and LAN Airlines.

Flights within French Polynesia and to New Caledonia are available from Aircalin and Air Tahiti; Air Tahiti has their headquarters at the airport.

Ferry

The Mo'orea Ferry operates from Papeete and takes about 45 minutes to travel to Moorea. Other ferries are the Aremiti 5 and the Aremiti 7 and these two ferries sail to Moorea in about half an hour. There are also several ferries that transport people and goods throughout the islands. The Bora Bora cruiseline sails to Bora Bora about once a week. The main hub for these ferries is the Papeete Wharf.

Roads

Tahiti has a freeway that runs across the west coast. This freeway starts in Arue and continues across the Papeete urban area. Then it continues along the west coast of Tahiti Nui through smaller villages. The freeway turns east toward Taravao where Tahiti Nui meets Tahiti Iti. Tahiti's west coast freeway keeps going until Teahupo'o where the freeway becomes a thin paved road. Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (;; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as assisting in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris.   Many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector Sergei Shchukin  as well as other important collections.

He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with color led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.  

Biography 

Early life 

Gauguin was born in Paris, France, to journalist Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal, daughter of the proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan, a feminist precursor whose father was part of an influential Peruvian family. In 1850,  the family left Paris for Peru, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving 18-month-old Paul, his mother and sister, to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima with Paul's maternal uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Gauguin in his art. It was in Lima that Gauguin encountered his first art. His mother admired Pre-Columbian pottery, collecting Inca pots that some colonists dismissed as barbaric. Later in life and due to his fascination with ancient Peruvian cultures, Gauguin would create more than 20 works of art inspired by a Peruvian, pre-Incan mummy. 

One of Gauguin's few early memories of his mother was of her wearing the traditional costume of Lima, one eye peeping from behind her manteau, the mysterious one-eye veil that all women in Lima went out in. […] He was always drawn to women with a 'traditional' look. This must have been the first of the colourful female costumes that were to haunt his imagination." 

At the age of seven, Gauguin and his family returned to France, moving to Orléans to live with his paternal grandfather. The Gauguins came originally from the area and were market gardeners and greengrocers: gauguin means "walnut-grower". His father had broken with family tradition to become a journalist in Paris.  Gauguin soon learned French, though his first and preferred language remained Peruvian Spanish.

Education and first job 

After attending a couple of local schools, Gauguin was sent to the prestigious Catholic boarding school Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin.  He spent three years at the school. At age fourteen, he entered the Loriol Institute in Paris, a naval preparatory school, before returning to Orléans to take his final year at the Lycée Jeanne D'Arc. Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine. Three years later, he joined the French navy in which he served for two years.  His mother died on 7 July 1867, but he did not learn of it for several months until a letter from his sister Marie caught up with him in India.  

In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. A close family friend, Gustave Arosa, got him a job at the Paris Bourse; Gauguin was 23. He became a successful Parisian businessman and remained one for the next 11 years. In 1879 he was earning 30,000 francs a year (about $125,000 in 2008 US dollars) as a stockbroker, and as much again in his dealings in the art market.   But in 1882 the Paris stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Gauguin's earnings deteriorated sharply and he eventually decided to pursue painting full-time.  

Marriage 

In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad (1850–1920). Over the next ten years, they had five children: Émile (1874–1955); Aline (1877–1897); Clovis (1879–1900); Jean René (1881–1961); and Paul Rollon (1883–1961). By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he pursued a business career as a tarpaulin salesman. It was not a success: He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins.
Mette became the chief breadwinner, giving French lessons to trainee diplomats. 

His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin was driven to paint full-time. He returned to Paris in 1885, after his wife and her family asked him to leave because he had renounced the values they shared.   Gauguin's last physical contact with them was in 1891, Mette eventually breaking with him decisively in 1894.  

First paintings 

In 1873, around the same time as he became a stockbroker, Gauguin began painting in his free time.  His Parisian life centred on the 9th arrondissement of Paris.  Gauguin lived at 15, rue la Bruyère.   Nearby were the cafés frequented by the Impressionists.  Gauguin also visited galleries frequently and purchased work by emerging artists. He formed a friendship with Camille Pissarro and visited him on Sundays to paint in his garden. Pissarro introduced him to various other artists. In 1877 Gauguin "moved downmarket and across the river to the poorer, newer, urban sprawls" of Vaugirard. Here, on the third floor at 8 rue Carcel, he had the first home in which he had a studio. His close friend Émile Schuffenecker, a former stockbroker who also aspired to become an artist, lived close by. Gauguin showed paintings in Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882 – (earlier a sculpture, of his son Émile, had been the only sculpture in the 4th Impressionist Exhibition of 1879.) His paintings received dismissive reviews, although several of them, such as The Market Gardens of Vaugirard, are now highly regarded.  

In 1882, the stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' primary art dealer, was especially affected by the crash and for a period of time stopped buying pictures from painters such as Gauguin. Gauguin's earnings contracted sharply and over the next two years he slowly formulated his plans to become a full-time artist.  The following two summers, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne. In October 1883, he wrote to Pissarro saying that he had decided to make his living from painting at all cost and asked for his help, which Pissarro at first readily provided. The following January, Gauguin moved with his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply and where he thought he had discerned opportunities when visiting Pissarro there the previous summer. However, the venture proved unsuccessful, and by the end of the year Mette returned to Copenhagen, Gauguin following shortly after in November 1884, bringing with him his art collection, which subsequently remained in Copenhagen.  

Life in Copenhagen proved equally difficult and their marriage grew strained. At Mette's urging, supported by her family, Gauguin returned to Paris the following year. 

File:Paul Gauguin 064.jpg|The Market Gardens of Vaugirard, 1879, Smith College Museum of Art
File:Paul Gauguin 059.jpg|Winter Landscape, 1879, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
File:Paul Gauguin 097.jpg|Portrait of Madame Gauguin, c. 1880–81, Foundation E.G. Bührle, Zürich
File:Paul Gauguin 060.jpg|Garden in Vaugirard (Painter's Family in the Garden in Rue Carcel), 1881, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

France 1885–86 

Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, accompanied by his six-year-old son Clovis. The other children remained with Mette in Copenhagen, where they had the support of family and friends while Mette herself was able to get work as a translator and French teacher. Gauguin initially found it difficult to re-enter the art world in Paris and spent his first winter back in real poverty, obliged to take a series of menial jobs. Clovis eventually fell ill and was sent to a boarding school, Gauguin's sister Marie providing the funds.   During this first year, he produced very little art. He exhibited nineteen paintings and a wood relief at the eighth (and last) Impressionist exhibition in May 1886.  Most of these paintings were earlier work from Rouen or Copenhagen and there was nothing really novel in the few new ones, although his Baigneuses à Dieppe ("Women Bathing") introduced what was to become a recurring motif, the woman in the waves. Nevertheless, Félix Bracquemond did purchase one of his paintings. This exhibition also established Georges Seurat as leader of the avant-garde movement in Paris. Gauguin contemptuously rejected Seurat's Neo-Impressionist Pointillist technique and later in the year broke decisively with Pissarro, who from that point on was rather antagonistic towards Gauguin.  

Gauguin spent the summer of 1886 in the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. He was attracted in the first place because it was cheap to live there. However, he found himself an unexpected success with the young art students who flocked there in the summer. His naturally pugilistic temperament (he was both an accomplished boxer and fencer) was no impediment in the socially relaxed seaside resort. He was remembered during that period as much for his outlandish appearance as for his art. Amongst these new associates was Charles Laval, who accompanied Gauguin the following year to Panama and Martinique. Thomson pp. 42–49

That summer, he executed some pastel drawings of nude figures in the manner of Pissarro and those by Degas exhibited at the 1886 eighth Impressionist exhibition. He mainly painted landscapes such as La Bergère Bretonne ("The Breton Shepherdess"), in which the figure plays a subordinate role. His Jeunes Bretons au bain ("Young Breton Boys Bathing"), introducing a theme he returned to each time he visited Pont-Aven, is clearly indebted to Degas in its design and bold use of pure color. The naive drawings of the English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, used to illustrate a popular guide-book on Brittany, had caught the imagination of the avant-garde student artists at Pont-Aven, anxious to free themselves from the conservatism of their academies, and Gauguin consciously imitated them in his sketches of Breton girls.  These sketches were later worked up into paintings back in his Paris studio. The most important of these is Four Breton Women, which shows a marked departure from his earlier Impressionist style as well as incorporating something of the naive quality of Caldecott's illustration, exaggerating features to the point of caricature. 

Gauguin, along with Émile Bernard, Charles Laval, Émile Schuffenecker and many others, re-visited Pont-Aven after his travels in Panama and Martinique. The bold use of pure color and Symbolist choice of subject matter distinguish what is now called the Pont-Aven School. Disappointed with Impressionism, Gauguin felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan (Japonism). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX.

File:Gauguin Women Bathing.jpg| Women Bathing, 1885,  National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
File:Paul Gauguin - La bergère bretonne.jpg|La Bergère Bretonne, 1886, Laing Art Gallery
File:Gauguin - Bretonne.jpg| Breton Girl, 1886,  Burrell Collection, Glasgow
File:Gauguin - Badende Bretonin- 1887.jpg| Breton Bather, 1886, Art Institute of Chicago

Cloisonnism and synthetism 

Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin's work evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic Édouard Dujardin in response to Émile Bernard's method of painting with flat areas of color and bold outlines, which reminded Dujardin of the Medieval cloisonné enameling technique. Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in his art.
In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure color separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of color, thereby dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards Synthetism in which neither form nor color predominate but each has an equal role.

File:Gauguin Il Cristo giallo.jpg|The Yellow Christ (Le Christ jaune), 1889, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
File:Gauguin, Paul - Still Life with Profile of Laval - Google Art Project.jpg|Still Life with Profile of Laval, 1886, Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Martinique 

In 1887, after visiting Panama, Gauguin spent several months near Saint Pierre in Martinique, accompanied by his friend the artist Charles Laval. Paul Gauguin spent approximately 6 months on the island of Martinique in June to November 1887. His thoughts and experiences during this time are recorded in his letters to his wife Mette and his artist friend Emile Schuffenecker.  He arrived in Martinique by way of Panama where he had found himself broke and without a job. At the time France had a policy of repatriation where if a citizen became broke or stranded on a French colony, the state would pay for the boat ride back. Upon leaving Panama protected by the repatriation policy, Gauguin and Laval decided to get off the boat at the Martinique port of St. Pierre. Scholars are in disagreement if Gauguin intentionally or spontaneously decided to stay on the island. At first, the 'negro hut' in which they lived suited him, and he enjoyed watching people in their daily activities.  However, the weather in the summer was hot and the hut leaked in the rain. Gauguin also suffered dysentery and marsh fever. While in Martinique, he produced between 10 and 20 works (12 being the most common estimate), traveled widely and apparently came into contact with a small community of Indian immigrants; a contact that would later influence his art through the incorporation of Indian symbols. During his stay, the writer Lafcadio Hearn was also on the island.  His account provides an historical comparison to accompany Gauguin's images.

Gauguin finished 11 known paintings during his stay in Martinique, many of which seem to be derived from his hut. His letters to Schuffenecker express an excitement about the exotic location and natives represented in his paintings. Gauguin asserted that four of his paintings on the island were better than the rest.  The works as a whole are brightly colored, loosely painted, outdoor figural scenes. Even though his time on the island was short, it surely was influential. He recycled some of his figures and sketches in later paintings, like the motif in Among the Mangoes  which is replicated on his fans. Rural and indigenous populations remained a popular subject in Gauguin's work after he left the island.

File:Gauguin Huttes sous les arbres.jpg|Huttes sous les arbres, 1887, Private collection, Washington
File:Paul Gauguin 089.jpg|Bord de Mer II, 1887, Private collection, Paris
File:At The Pond.jpg|At the Pond, 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
File:Gauguin Conversation Tropiques.jpg|Conversation Tropiques (Négresses Causant), 1887, Private collection, Dallas
File:Paul Gauguin 087.jpg|Among the Mangoes (La Cueillette des Fruits), 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Gauguin and Van Gogh 

Gauguin's Martinique paintings were exhibited at his color merchant Arsène Poitier's gallery. There they were seen and admired by Vincent van Gogh and his art dealer brother Theo van Gogh, whose firm Goupil & Cie had dealings with Portier. Theo purchased three of Gauguin's paintings for 900 francs and arranged to have them hung at Goupil's, thus introducing Gauguin to wealthy clients. At the same time Vincent and Gauguin became close friends (on van Gogh's part it amounted to something akin to adulation) and they corresponded together on art, a correspondence that was instrumental in Gauguin formulating his philosophy of art.   The arrangement with Goupil's continued past Theo's death in January 1891.

Gauguin's relationship with Vincent proved fraught. In 1888, at Theo's instigation, Gauguin and Vincent spent nine weeks painting together at Vincent's Yellow House in Arles. Their relationship deteriorated and eventually Gauguin decided to leave. On the evening of 23 December 1888 according to a much later account of Gauguin's, van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade. Later the same evening, Van Gogh cut off the bottom portion of lobe from his left ear. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and handed it to a prostitute, and asked her to "keep this object carefully." Van Gogh was hospitalized the following day and Gauguin left Arles.  They never saw each other again, but they continued to correspond and in 1890 Gauguin went so far as to propose they form an artist studio in Antwerp.  An 1889 sculptural self-portrait Jug in the form of a Head, Self-portrait appears to reference Gauguin's traumatic relationship with van Gogh.

Gauguin later claimed to have been instrumental in influencing van Gogh's development as a painter at Arles. While van Gogh did briefly experiment with Gauguin's theory of painting from the imagination in paintings such as Memory of the Garden at Etten, it did not suit him and he quickly returned to painting from nature. 

Gauguin and Degas 

Although Gauguin made some of his early strides in the world of art under Pissarro, Edgar Degas was Gauguin's most admired contemporary artist and a great influence on his work from the beginning, with his figures and interiors as well as a carved and painted medallion of singer Valérie Roumi.  He had a deep reverence for Degas' artistic dignity and tact.  It was Gauguin's healthiest, longest lasting friendship, spanning his entire artistic career until his death.

In addition to being one of his earliest supporters, including buying Gauguin's work and persuading dealer Paul Durand-Ruel to do the same, there was never a public support for Gauguin more unwavering than from Degas.  Gauguin also purchased work from Degas in the early to mid-1870's and his own monotyping predilection was probably influenced by Degas' advancements in the medium.  Gauguin's Durand-Ruel exhibition in November 1893, which Degas chiefly organized, received mixed reviews. Among the mocking were Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and former friend Pissarro. Degas, however, praised his work, purchasing ' and admiring the exotic sumptuousness of Gauguin's conjured folklore.    In appreciation, Gauguin presented Degas with The Moon and the Earth, one of the exhibited paintings that had attracted the most hostile criticism. Gauguin's late canvas Riders on the Beach (two versions) recalls Degas' horse pictures which he started in the 1860s, specifically Racetrack and Before the Race, testifying to his enduring effect on Gauguin.  Degas later purchased two paintings at Gauguin's 1895 auction to raise funds for his final trip to Tahiti. These were Vahine no te vi (Woman with a Mango) and Gauguin's copy of Manet's  Olympia.Ann Dumas (ed.)  

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.Thomson p. 125 The auction had been greatly helped by a flattering review from Octave Mirbeau, courted by Gauguin through Camille Pissarro. 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.  His avowed intent was to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional".   Nevertheless, he took care to take with him a collection of visual stimuli in the form of photographs, drawings and prints.Thomson p. 143

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, ', was not well liked.  He decided to set up his studio in Mataiea, Papeari, some forty-five kilometres 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  (Ave Maria), the latter to become his most prized Tahitian painting. 

Many of his finest paintings date from this period. His first portrait of a Tahitian model is thought to be  (Woman with a Flower). The painting is notable for the care with which it delineates 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.  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. 

Gauguin was lent copies of  1837 Voyage aux îles du Grand Océan and  1855 État de la société tahitienne à l'arrivée des Européens, containing full accounts of Tahiti's forgotten culture and religion. He was fascinated by the accounts of Arioi society and their god 'Oro. Because these accounts contained no illustrations and the Tahitian models were 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, , is preserved in the Louvre and was published in facsimile form in 1951.   

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.   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. 

Gauguin later wrote a travelogue (first published 1901) titled ', 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.   In it he revealed that he had at this time taken a thirteen-year-old girl as native wife or vahine (the 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.   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 now in the Musée d'Orsay. 

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

Return to France 

In August 1893, Gauguin returned to France, where he continued to execute paintings on Tahitian subjects such as  (Day of the God) and  (Sacred spring, sweet dreams).   An exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in November 1894 was a moderate success, selling at quite elevated prices eleven of the forty paintings exhibited. He set up an apartment at 6 rue Vercingétorix on the edge of the Montparnasse district frequented by artists, and began to conduct a weekly salon. He affected an exotic persona, dressing in Polynesian costume, and conducted a public affair with a young woman still in her teens, "half Indian, half Malayan", known as .  

Despite the moderate success of his November exhibition, he subsequently lost Durand-Ruel's patronage in circumstances that are not clear. Mathews characterises this as a tragedy for Gauguin's career. Amongst other things he lost the chance of an introduction to the American market.  The start of 1894 found him preparing woodcuts using an experimental technique for his proposed travelogue Noa Noa. He returned to Pont-Aven for the summer. The following year he attempted an auction of his paintings in Paris, similar to the one he had held in 1891, but this was not a success. The dealer Ambroise Vollard, however, showed his paintings at his gallery in March 1895, but they unfortunately did not come to terms at that date. 

He submitted a large ceramic sculpture he called Oviri he had fired the previous winter to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts 1895 salon opening in April. There are conflicting versions of how it was received: his biographer and Noa Noa collaborator, the Symbolist poet , contended( 1920) the work was "literally expelled" from the exhibition, while Vollard said (1937) the work was only admitted when Chaplet threatened to withdraw all his own work.  In any case, Gauguin took the opportunity to increase his public exposure by writing an outraged letter on the state of modern ceramics to Le Soir. 

By this time it had become clear that he and his wife Mette were irrevocably separated. Although there had been hopes of a reconciliation, they had quickly quarrelled over money matters and neither visited the other. Gauguin initially refused to share any part of a 13,000-franc legacy from his uncle Isidore he had come into shortly after returning. Mette was eventually gifted 1,500 francs, but she was outraged and from that point on kept in contact with him only through Schuffenhecker, doubly galling for Gauguin as his friends thus knew the true extent of his betrayal.

File:Gauguin, Paul - Sacred Spring, Sweet Dreams (Nave nave moe).jpg|Nave nave moe (Sacred spring, sweet dreams), 1894, Hermitage Museum
File:Paul Gauguin 004.jpg|Annah the Javanese, (1893), Private collection 
File:Annah la Javanaise by Mucha.jpg|Paul Gauguin, Alfons Mucha, Luděk Marold, and Annah the Javanese at Mucha's studio, 1893
File:Paul Gauguin - Nave Nave Fenua from the Noa Noa Series - Google Art Project.jpg|Nave Nave Fenua (Delightful Land), woodcut in Noa Noa series, 1894, Art Gallery of Ontario

Residence in Tahiti 

Gauguin set out for Tahiti again on 28 June 1895. His return is characterised by Thomson as an essentially negative one, his disillusionment with the Paris art scene compounded by two attacks on him in the same issue of Mercure de France;   one by Emile Bernard, the other by Camille Mauclair. Mathews remarks that his isolation in Paris had become so bitter that he had no choice but to try to reclaim his place in Tahiti society.  

He arrived in September 1895 and was to spend the next six years living, for the most part, an apparently comfortable life as an artist-colon near, or at times in, Papeete. During this time he was able to support himself with an increasingly steady stream of sales and the support of friends and well-wishers, though there was a period of time 1898–1899 when he felt compelled to take a desk job in Papeete, of which there is not much record. He built a spacious reed and thatch house at Punaauia in an affluent area ten miles east of Papeete, settled by wealthy families, in which he installed a large studio, sparing no expense. Jules Agostini, an acquaintance of Gauguin's and an accomplished amateur photographer, photographed the house in 1896.    Later a sale of land obliged him to build a new one in the same neighbourhood.  

He maintained a horse and trap, so was in a position to travel daily to Papeete to participate in the social life of the colony should he wish. He subscribed to the Mercure de France (indeed was a shareholder), by then France's foremost critical journal, and kept up an active correspondence with fellow artists, dealers, critics, and patrons in Paris.  During his year in Papeete and thereafter, he played an increasing role in local politics, contributing abrasively to a local journal opposed to the colonial government, Les Guêpes (The Wasps), that had recently been formed, and eventually edited his own monthly publication Le Sourire: Journal sérieux (The Smile: A Serious Newspaper), later titled simply Journal méchant (A Wicked Newspaper).  A certain amount of artwork and woodcuts from his newspaper survive.  In February 1900 he became the editor of Les Guêpes itself, for which he drew a salary, and he continued as editor until he left Tahiti in September 1901. The paper under his editorship was noted for its scurrilous attacks on the governor and officialdom in general, but was not in fact a champion of native causes, although perceived as such nevertheless. Danielsson (1965) pp. 223–6

For the first year at least he produced no paintings, informing Monfreid that he proposed henceforth to concentrate on sculpture. Few of his wooden carvings from this period survive, most of them collected by Monfreid. Thomson cites Oyez Hui Iesu (Christ on the Cross), a wooden cylinder half a metre tall featuring a curious hybrid of religious motifs. The cylinder may have been inspired by similar symbolic carvings in Brittany, such as at Pleumeur-Bodou, where ancient menhirs have been Christianised by local craftsmen.  When he resumed painting, it was to continue his long-standing series of sexually charged nudes in paintings such as Te tamari no atua (Son of God) and O Taiti (Nevermore). Thomson observes a progression in complexity.  Mathews notes a return to Christian symbolism that would have endeared him to the colonists of the time, now anxious to preserve what was left of native culture by stressing the universality of religious principles. In these paintings, Gauguin was addressing an audience amongst his fellow colonists in Papeete, not his former avant-garde audience in Paris.  

His health took a decided turn for the worse and he was hospitalised several times for a variety of ailments. While he was in France, he had his ankle shattered in a drunken brawl on a seaside visit to Concarneau.  The injury, an open fracture, never healed properly. Now painful and debilitating sores that restricted his movement were erupting up and down his legs. These were treated with arsenic. Gauguin blamed the tropical climate and described the sores as "eczema", but his biographers agree this must have been the progress of syphilis. 

In April 1897 he received word that his favourite daughter Aline had died tragically from pneumonia. This was also the month he learned he had to vacate his house because its land had been sold. He took out a bank loan to build a much more extravagant wooden house with beautiful views of the mountains and sea. But he overextended himself in so doing, and by the end of the year faced the real prospect of his bank foreclosing on him.  Failing health and pressing debts brought him to the brink of despair. At the end of the year he completed his monumental Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, which he regarded as his masterpiece and final artistic testament (in a letter to Monfreid he explained that he tried to kill himself after finishing it).    The painting was exhibited at Vollard's gallery in November the following year, along with eight thematically related paintings he had completed by July.  This was his first major exhibition in Paris since his Durand-Ruel show in 1893 and it was a decided success, critics praising his new serenity. Where do we come from?, however, received mixed reviews and Vollard had difficulty selling it. He eventually sold it in 1901 for 2,500 francs (about $10,000 in year 2000 US dollars) to , of which Vollard's commission was perhaps as much as 500 francs.

Georges Chaudet, Gauguin's Paris dealer, died in the fall of 1899. Vollard had been buying Gauguin's paintings through Chaudet and now made an agreement with Gauguin directly.   The agreement provided Gauguin a regular monthly advance of 300 francs against a guaranteed purchase of at least 25 unseen paintings a year at 200 francs each, and in addition Vollard undertook to provide him with his art materials. There were some initial problems on both sides, but Gauguin was finally able to realise his long cherished plan of resettling in the Marquesas Islands in search of a yet more primitive society. He spent his final months in Tahiti living in considerable comfort, as attested by the liberality with which he entertained his friends at that time.   

Gauguin was unable to continue his work in ceramics in the islands for the simple reason that suitable clay was not available.  Similarly, without access to a printing press (Le Sourire was hectographed),  he was obliged to turn to the monotype process in his graphic work. Surviving examples of these prints are rather rare and command very high prices in the saleroom. 

Gaugin's vahine during all this time was Pahura (Pau'ura) a Tai, the daughter of neighbours in Punaauia and aged fourteen and a half when he took her in.  She gave him two children, of which a daughter died in infancy. The other, a boy, she raised herself. His descendants still inhabited Tahiti at the time of Mathews' biography. Paa'ura refused to accompany Gauguin to the Marquesas away from her family in Punaauia (earlier she had left him when he took work in Papeete just 10 miles away).  When the English writer Willam Somerset Maugham visited her in 1917, she could offer him no useful memory of Gauguin and chided him for visiting her without bringing money from Gauguin's family. 

File:Paul Gauguin - Oyez Hui Iesu (Christ on the Cross).jpg|Oyez Hui Iesu (Christ on the Cross), rubbing (reverse print) from an 1896 wooden cylinder, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
File:Paul Gauguin 091.jpg|O Taiti (Nevermore), 1897, Courtauld Institute
File:Paul Gauguin, Eve (The Nightmare), 1899–1900 monotype.jpg|Eve (The Nightmare), 1899–1900, monotype, J. Paul Getty Museum

Marquesas Islands 

Gauguin had nurtured his plan of settling in the Marquesas ever since seeing a collection of intricately carved Marquesan bowls and weapons in Papeete during his first months in Tahiti.  However, he found a society that, as in Tahiti, had lost its cultural identity. Of all the Pacific island groups, the Marquesas were the most affected by the import of Western diseases (especially tuberculosis). An eighteenth century population of some 80,000 had declined to just 4,000.  Catholic missionaries held sway and, in their effort to control drunkenness and promiscuity, obliged all native children to attend missionary schools into their teens. French colonial rule was enforced by a gendarmerie noted for its malevolence and stupidity, while traders, both western and Chinese, exploited the natives appallingly.  

Gauguin settled in Atuona on the island of Hiva-Oa, arriving 16 September 1901. This was the administrative capital of the island group, but considerably less developed than Papeete although there was an efficient and regular steamer service between the two. There was a military doctor but no hospital. The doctor was relocated to Papeete the following February and thereafter Gauguin had to rely on the island's two health care workers, the Vietnamese adventurer Nguyen Van Cam (Ky Dong), who had settled on the island but had no formal medical training, and the Protestant pastor Paul Vernier, who had studied medicine in addition to theology. Mathews p. 235-6 Both of these were to become close friends. 

He bought a plot of land in the center of the town from the Catholic mission, having first ingratiated himself with the local bishop by attending mass regularly. This bishop was Monseigneur Joseph Martin, initially well disposed to Gauguin because he was aware that Gauguin had sided with the Catholic party in Tahiti in his journalism. 

Gauguin built a sturdy two-floor house on his plot, sturdy enough to survive a later cyclone which washed away most other dwellings in the town. He was helped in the task by the two best Marquesan carpenters on the island, one of them called Tioka, tattooed from head to toe in the traditional Marquesan way (a tradition suppressed by the missionaries). Tioka was a deacon in Vernier's congregation and became Gauguin's neighbour after the cyclone when Gauguin gifted him a corner of his plot. The ground floor was open-air and used for dining and living, while the top floor was used for sleeping and as his studio. The door to the top floor was decorated with a polychrome wood-carved lintel and jambs that still survive in museums. The lintel named the house as Maison du Jouir (i.e. House of Pleasure), while the jambs echoed his earlier 1889 wood-carving Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses (i.e. Be in Love, You Will Be Happy). The walls were decorated with, amongst other things, his prized collection of forty-five pornographic photographs he had purchased in Port Said on his way out from France.  In the early days at least, until Gauguin found a vahine, the house drew appreciative crowds in the evenings from the natives, who came to stare at the pictures and party half the night away.  Needless to say, all this did not endear Gauguin to the bishop, still less when Gauguin erected two sculptures he placed at the foot of his steps lampooning the bishop and a servant reputed to be his mistress,  and yet still less when Gauguin later attacked the unpopular missionary school system.  The sculpture of the bishop, Père Paillard, is to be found at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, while its pendant piece Thérèse realized a record $30,965,000 for a Gauguin sculpture at a Christie's London 2015 sale. These were among at least eight sculptures that adorned the house according to a posthumous inventory, most of which are lost today. Together they represented a very public attack on the hypocrisy of the church in sexual matters.  

State funding for the missionary schools had ceased as a result of the 1901 Associations Bill promulgated throughout the French empire.web Catholic encyclopaedia   The schools continued with difficulty as private institutions, but these difficulties were compounded when Gauguin established that attendance at any given school was only compulsory within a catchment area of some two and a half miles radius. This led to numerous teenage daughters being withdrawn from the schools (Gauguin called this process "rescuing"). He took as vahine one such girl, Vaeoho (also called Marie-Rose), the fourteen-year-old daughter of a native couple who lived in an adjoining valley six miles distant.  This can scarcely have been a pleasant task for her as Gauguin's sores were by then extremely noxious and required daily dressing. Nevertheless, she lived willingly with him and the following year gave birth to a healthy daughter whose descendants continue to live on the island. 

By November he had settled into his new home with Vaeoho, a cook (Kahui), two other servants (nephews of Tioka), his dog, Pegau (a play on his initials PG), and a cat. The house itself, although in the center of the town, was set amongst trees and secluded from view. The partying ceased and he began a period of productive work, sending twenty canvases to Vollard the following April.  He had thought he would find new motifs in the Marquesas, writing to Monfreid:Szech p. 148  In fact his Marquesas work for the most part can only be distinguished from his Tahiti work by experts or by their dates,  paintings such as Two Women remaining uncertain in their location.  For Anna Szech, what distinguishes them is their repose and melancholy, albeit containing elements of disquiet. Thus, in the second of two versions of Cavaliers sur la Plage (Riders on the Beach), gathering clouds and foamy breakers suggest an impending storm while the two distant figures on grey horses echo similar figures in other paintings that are taken to symbolise death.

Gauguin chose to paint landscapes, still lifes, and figure studies at this time, with an eye to Vollard's clientele, avoiding the primitive and lost paradise themes of his Tahiti paintings.Childs p. 312 But there is a significant trio of pictures from this last period that suggest deeper concerns. The first two of these are Jeune fille à l'éventail (Young Girl with Fan) and  Le Sorcier d'Hiva Oa (Marquesan Man in a Red Cape). The model for Jeune fille was the red-headed Tohotaua, the daughter of a chieftain on a neighbouring island. The portrait appears to have been taken from a photograph that Vernier later sent to Vollard. The model for Le sorcier may have been Haapuani, an accomplished dancer as well as a feared magician, who was a close friend of Gauguin's and, according to Danielsson, married to Tohotau.  Szech notes that the white color of Tohotau's dress is a symbol of power and death in Polynesian culture, the sitter doing duty for a Maohi culture as a whole threatened with extinction. Le Sorcier appears to have been executed at the same time and depicts a long-haired young man wearing an exotic red cape. The androgynous nature of the image has attracted critical attention, giving rise to speculation that Gauguin intended to depict a māhū (i.e. a third gender person) rather than a taua or priest.   The third picture of the trio is the mysterious and beautiful Contes barbares (Primitive Tales) featuring Tohotau again at the right. The left figure is Jacob Meyer de Haan, a painter friend of Gaugin's from their Pont-Aven days who had died a few years previously, while the middle figure is again androgynous, identified by some as Haapuani. The Buddha-like pose and the lotus blossoms suggests to Elizabeth Childs that the picture is a meditation on the perpetual cycle of life and the possibility of rebirth. As these paintings reached Vollard after Gauguin's sudden death, nothing is known about Gauguin's intentions in their execution. 

In March 1902, the governor of French Polynesia, , arrived in the Marquesas to make an inspection. He was accompanied by Édouard Charlier as head of the judicial system. Charlier was an amateur painter who had been befriended by Gauguin when he first arrived as magistrate at Papeete in 1895.  However their relationship had turned to enmity when Charlier refused to prosecute Gauguin's then vahine Pau'ura for a number of trivial offences, allegedly housebreaking and theft, she had committed at Punaauia while Gauguin was away working in Papeete. Gauguin had gone so far as to publish an open letter attacking Charlier about the affair in Les Guêpes.  Petit, presumably suitably forewarned, refused to see Gauguin to deliver the settlers' protests (Gauguin their spokesman) about the invidious taxation system, which saw most revenue from the Marquesas spent in Papeete.  Gauguin responded in April by refusing to pay his taxes and encouraging the settlers, traders and planters, to do likewise. 

At around the same time, Gauguin's health began to deteriorate again, revisited by the same familiar constellation of symptoms involving pain in the legs, heart palpitations, and general debility. The pain in his injured ankle grew insupportable and in July he was obliged to order a trap from Papeete so that he could get about town. By September the pain was so extreme that he resorted to morphine injections. However he was sufficiently concerned by the habit he was developing to turn his syringe set over to a neighbour, relying instead on laudanum. His sight was also beginning to fail him, as attested by the spectacles he wears in his last known self-portrait. This was actually a portrait commenced by his friend Ky Dong that he completed himself, thus accounting for its uncharacteristic style.  It shows a man tired and aged, yet not entirely defeated.  For a while he considered returning to Europe, to Spain, to get treatment. Monfreid advised him:  

In July 1902, Vaeoho, by then seven months pregnant, left Gauguin to return home to her neighbouring valley of Hekeani to have her baby amongst family and friends. She gave birth the following September, but did not return. Gauguin did not subsequently take another vahine. It was at this time that his quarrel with Bishop Martin over missionary schools reached its height. The local gendarme Désiré Charpillet, at first friendly to Gauguin, wrote a report to the administrator of the island group, who resided on the neighbouring island of Nuku Hiva, criticising Gauguin for encouraging natives to withdraw their children from school as well as encouraging settlers to withhold payment of their taxes. As luck would have it, the post of administrator had recently been filled by François Picquenot, an old friend of Gauguin's from Tahiti and essentially sympathetic to him. Picquenot advised Charpillet not to take any action over the schools issue, since Gauguin had the law on his side, but authorised Charpillet to seize goods from Gauguin in lieu of payment of taxes if all else failed.  Possibly prompted by loneliness, and at times unable to paint, Gauguin took to writing.  

In 1901, the manuscript of Noa Noa that Gauguin had prepared along with woodcuts during his interlude in France was finally published with Morice's poems in book form in the La Plume edition (the manuscript itself is now lodged in the Louvre museum). Sections of it (including his account of Teha'amana) had previously been published without woodcuts in 1897 in La Revue Blanche, while he himself had published extracts in Les Guêpes while he was editor. The La Plume edition was planned to include his woodcuts, but he withheld permission to print them on smooth paper as the publishers wished.  In truth he had grown disinterested in the venture with Morice and never saw a copy, declining an offer of one hundred complimentary copies.  Nevertheless, its publication inspired him to consider writing other books.  At the beginning of the year (1902), he had revised an old 1896–97 manuscript L'Esprit Moderne et le Catholicisme (The Modern Spirit and Catholicism) on the Roman Catholic church, adding some twenty pages containing insights gleaned from his dealings with Bishop Martin. He sent this text to Bishop Martin, who responded by sending him an illustrated history of the church. Gauguin returned the book with critical remarks he later published in his autobiographical reminisces.   He next prepared a witty and well-documented essay Racontars de Rapin (Tales of a Dabbler) on critics and art criticism, which he sent for publication to André Fontainas, art critic at the Mercure de France whose favourable review of Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? had done much to restore his reputation. Fontainas, however, replied that he dared not publish it. It was not subsequently published until 1951. Danielsson (1965) p. 262   

On 27 May that year, the steamer service Croix du Sud was shipwrecked off the Apataki atoll and for a period of three months the island was left without mail or supplies.   When mail service resumed, Gauguin penned an angry attack on Governor Petit in an open letter, complaining amongst other things about the way they had been abandoned following the shipwreck. The letter was published by L'Indepéndant, the successor newspaper to Les Guêpes, that November in Papeete. Petit had in fact followed an independent and pro-native policy, to the disappointment of the Roman Catholic Party, and the newspaper was preparing an attack on him. Gauguin also sent the letter to Mercure de France, which published a redacted version of it after his death. He followed this with a private letter to the head of the gendarmerie in Papeete, complaining about his own local gendarme Charpillet's excesses in making prisoners labour for him. Danielsson notes that, while these and similar complaints were well-founded, the motivation for them all was wounded vanity and simple animosity. As it happened, the relatively supportive Charpillet was replaced that December by another gendarme Jean-Paul Claverie from Tahiti, much less well disposed to Gauguin and who in fact had fined him in his earliest Mataiea days for public indecency, having caught him bathing naked in a local stream following complaints from the missionaries there. 

His health further deteriorated in December to the extent that he was scarcely able to paint. He began an autobiographical memoir he called Avant et après (Before and After) (published in translation in the US as Intimate Journals), which he completed over the next two months.  The title was supposed to reflect his experiences before and after coming to Tahiti and as tribute to his own grandmother's unpublished memoir Past and Future. His memoir proved to be a fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, his own life, and comments on literature and paintings. He included in it attacks on subjects as diverse as the local gendarmerie, Bishop Martin, his wife Mette and the Danes in general, and concluded with a description of his personal philosophy conceiving life as an existential struggle to reconcile opposing binaries.  Mathews notes two closing remarks as a distillation of his philosopy: He sent the manuscript to Fontainas for editing, but the rights reverted to Mette after Gauguin's death and it was not published until 1918 (in a facsimile edition), the American translation appearing in 1921. 

Death 

At the beginning of 1903, Gauguin engaged in a campaign designed to expose the incompetence of the island's gendarmes, Jean-Paul Claverie, taking the side of the natives directly in a case involving the alleged drunkenness of a group of them.  Claverie, however, escaped censure. At the beginning of February, Gauguin wrote to the administrator, François Picquenot, alleging corruption by one of Claverie's subordinates. Picquenot investigated the allegations but could not substantiate them. Claverie responded by filing a charge of libeling a gendarme against Gauguin, who was subsequently fined 500 francs and sentenced to three months' imprisonment by the local magistrate on 27 March 1903. Gauguin immediately filed an appeal in Papeete and set about raising the funds to travel to Papeete to hear his appeal. 

At this time he was very weak and in great pain. He resorted once again to using morphine. He died suddenly on the morning of 8 May 1903.
  

File:Paul Gauguin 106.jpg|Cavaliers sur la Plage [II] (Riders on the Beach), 1902, Private collection
File:Paul Gauguin - Landscape with a Pig and a Horse (Hiva Oa) - Google Art Project.jpg|Landscape with a Pig and a Horse (Hiva Oa), 1903,  Ateneum, Helsinki
File:Gauguin Nature morte aux oiseaux exotiques I.jpg| Still life with Exotic Birds, 1902, Pushkin Museum
File:Paul Gauguin - Jeune fille à l'éventail - Folkwang G53.jpg| Jeune fille à l'éventail (Young Girl with a Fan), 1902, Museum Folkwang
File:Paul Gauguin - Contes barbares - Folkwang G54.jpg| Contes barbares (Primitive Tales), 1902, Museum Folkwang
 Earlier, he had sent for his pastor Paul Vernier, complaining of fainting fits. They had chatted together and Vernier had left, believing him in a stable condition. However Gauguin's neighbour Tioka found him dead at 11 o'clock, confirming the fact in the traditional Marquesan way by chewing his head in an attempt to revive him. By his bedside was an empty bottle of laudanum, which has given rise to speculation that he was the victim of an overdose.  Vernier believed he died of a heart attack. 

Gauguin was buried in the Catholic Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva 'Oa, at 2 p.m. the next day. In 1973, a bronze cast of his Oviri figure was placed on his grave, as he had indicated was his wish.  Ironically his nearest neighbour in the cemetery is Bishop Martin, his grave surmounted by a large white cross.  Vernier wrote an account of Gauguin's last days and burial, reproduced in O'Brien's edition of Gauguin's letters to Monfreid. 

Word of Gauguin's death did not reach France (to Monfreid) until 23 August 1903. In the absence of a will, his less valuable effects were auctioned in Atuona while his letters, manuscripts and paintings were auctioned in Papeete on 5 September 1903. Mathews notes that this speedy dispersal of his effects led to the loss of much valuable information about his later years. Thomson notes that the auction inventory of his effects (some of which were burned as pornography) revealed a life that was not as impoverished or primitive as he had liked to maintain.  Mette Gauguin in due course received the proceeds of the auction, some 4,000 francs.  One of the paintings auctioned in Papeete was Maternité II, a smaller version of Maternité I in the Hermitage Museum. The original was painted at the time his then vahine Pau'ura in Punaauia gave birth to their son Emile. It is not known why he painted the smaller copy. It was sold for 150 francs to a French naval officer, Commandant Cochin, who said that Governor Petit himself had bid up to 135 francs for the painting. It was sold at Sotheby's for US$39,208,000 in 2004. 

The Paul Gauguin Cultural Center at Atuona has a reconstruction of the Maison du Jouir. The original house stood empty for a few years, the door still carrying Gauguin's carved lintel. This was eventually recovered, four of the five pieces held at the Musée D'Orsay and the fifth at the Paul Gauguin Museum in Tahiti. 

In 2014, forensic examination of four teeth found in a glass jar in a well near Gauguin's house threw into question the conventional belief that Gauguin had suffered from syphilis. DNA examination established that the teeth were almost certainly Gauguin's, but no traces were found of the mercury that was used to treat syphilis at the time, suggesting either that Gauguin did not suffer from syphilis or that he was not being treated for it. 

Children 

Gauguin outlived three of his children; his favorite daughter Aline died of pneumonia, his son Clovis died of a blood infection following a hip operation,Harrison Swain "Emile Gauguin Honor Guest at Artists' Ball" in The Evening Independent 26 January 1965, pp. 15 and a daughter, whose birth was portrayed in Gauguin's painting of 1896 Te tamari no atua, the child of Gauguin's young Tahitian mistress Pau'ura, died only a few days after her birth on Christmas Day 1896. His son Émile Gauguin worked as a construction engineer in the U.S. and is buried in Lemon Bay Historical Cemetery, in Florida. Another son, Jean René, became a well-known sculptor and a staunch socialist. He died on 21 April 1961 in Copenhagen. Pola (Paul Rollon) became an artist and art critic and wrote a memoir, My Father, Paul Gauguin (1937). Gauguin had several other children by his mistresses: Germaine (born 1891) with Juliette Huais (1866–1955); Émile Marae a Tai (born 1899) with Pau'ura; and a daughter (born 1902) with Mari-Rose. There is some speculation that the Belgian artist Germaine Chardon was Gauguin's daughter. Emile Marae a Tai, illiterate and raised in Tahiti by Pau'ura, was brought to Chicago in 1963 by the French journalist Josette Giraud and was an artist in his own right, his descendants still living in Tahiti as of 2001. 

Historical significance 

Primitivism was an art movement of late 19th-century painting and sculpture, characterized by exaggerated body proportions, animal totems, geometric designs and stark contrasts. The first artist to systematically use these effects and achieve broad public success was Paul Gauguin.  The European cultural elite discovering the art of Africa, Micronesia, and Native Americans for the first time were fascinated, intrigued and educated by the newness, wildness and the stark power embodied in the art of those faraway places. Like Pablo Picasso in the early days of the 20th century, Gauguin was inspired and motivated by the raw power and simplicity of the so-called Primitive art of those foreign cultures. 

Gauguin is also considered a Post-Impressionist painter. His bold, colorful and design oriented paintings significantly influenced Modern art. Artists and movements in the early 20th century inspired by him include Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Fauvism, Cubism and Orphism, among others. Later he influenced Arthur Frank Mathews and the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

John Rewald, recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art, wrote a series of books about the Post-Impressionist period, including Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956) and an essay, Paul Gauguin: Letters to Ambroise Vollard and André Fontainas (included in Rewald's Studies in Post-Impressionism, 1986), discusses Gauguin's years in Tahiti, and the struggles of his survival as seen through correspondence with the art dealer Vollard and others. 

Influence on Picasso 

Gauguin's posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on the French avant-garde and in particular Pablo Picasso's paintings. In the autumn of 1906, Picasso made paintings of oversized nude women, and monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive art. Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture, painting and his writing as well. The power evoked by Gauguin's work led directly to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907.

According to Gauguin biographer David Sweetman, Picasso as early as 1902 became a fan of Gauguin's work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio (1875–1940), in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris. After they met, Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic pieces and gave Picasso a first La Plume edition of Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin.  In addition to seeing Gauguin's work at Durrio's, Picasso also saw the work at Ambroise Vollard's gallery where both he and Gauguin were represented.

Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso, John Richardson wrote,  The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology, symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and 1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor. 

Both David Sweetman and John Richardson point to the Gauguin sculpture called Oviri (literally meaning 'savage'), the gruesome phallic figure of the Tahitian goddess of life and death that was intended for Gauguin's grave, exhibited in the 1906 retrospective exhibition that even more directly led to Les Demoiselles. Sweetman writes, "Gauguin's statue Oviri, which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." 

According to Richardson, Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesome Oviri. Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the Demoiselles. Although just under 30 inches high , Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his cubist head. Has it been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to Primitivism. 

Technique and style 

Gauguin's initial artistic guidance was from Pissarro, but the relationship left more of a mark personally than stylistically. Gauguin's masters were Giotto, Raphael, Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Manet, Degas and Cézanne.    His own beliefs, and in some cases the psychology behind his work, were also influenced by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and poet Stéphane Mallarmé. 

Gauguin, like some of his contemporaries such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, employed a technique for painting on canvas known as peinture à l'essence. For this, the oil (binder) is drained from the paint and the remaining sludge of pigment is mixed with turpentine. He may have used a similar technique in preparing his monotypes, using paper instead of metal, as it would absorb oil giving the final images a matte appearance he desired.  He also proofed some of his existing drawings with the aid of glass, copying an underneath image onto the glass surface with watercolour or gouache for printing. Gauguin's woodcuts were no less innovative, even to the avant-garde artists responsible for the woodcut revival happening at that time. Instead of incising his blocks with the intent of making a detailed illustration, Gauguin initially chiseled his blocks in a manner similar to wood sculpture, followed by finer tools to create detail and tonality within his bold contours. Many of his tools and techniques were considered experimental. This methodology and use of space ran parallel to his painting of flat, decorative reliefs. 

Starting in Martinique, Gauguin began using analogous colours in close proximity to achieve a muted affect.  Shortly after this he also made his breakthroughs in non-representational colour, creating canvases that had an independent existence and vitality all their own.  This gap between surface reality and himself displeased Pissarro and quickly led to the end of their relationship.  His human figures at this time are also a reminder of his love affair with Japanese prints, particularly gravitating to the naivety of their figures and compositional austerity as an influence on his primitive manifesto. For that very reason, Gauguin was also inspired by folk art. He sought out a bare emotional purity of his subjects conveyed in a straightforward way, emphasizing major forms and upright lines to clearly define shape and contour.  Gauguin also used elaborate formal decoration and colouring in patterns of abstraction, attempting to harmonize man and nature.  His depictions of the natives in their natural environment are frequently evident of serenity and a self-contained sustainability.  This complimented one of Gauguin's favourite themes, which was the intrusion of the supernatural into day-to-day life, in one instance going so far as to recall ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs with Her Name is Vairaumati and Ta Matete. 

In an interview with L'Écho de Paris published on 15 March 1895, Gauguin explains that his developing tactical approach is reaching for synesthesia.  He states:
Every feature in my paintings is carefully considered and calculated in advance. Just as in a musical composition, if you like. My simple object, which I take from daily life or from nature, is merely a pretext, which helps me by the means of a definite arrangement of lines and colours to create symphonies and harmonies. They have no counterparts at all in reality, in the vulgar sense of that word; they do not give direct expression to any idea, their only purpose is to stimulate the imagination—just as music does without the aid of ideas or pictures—simply by that mysterious affinity which exists between certain arrangements of colours and lines and our minds. 

In an 1888 letter to Schuffenecker, Gauguin explains the enormous step he had taken away from Impressionism and that he was now intent on capturing the soul of nature, the ancient truths and character of its scenery and inhabitants. Gauguin wrote:
Don't copy nature too literally. Art is an abstraction. Derive it from nature as you dream in nature's presence, and think more about the act of creation than the outcome. 

Other mediums 

Gauguin began making prints in 1889, highlighted by a series of zincographs commissioned by Theo van Gogh known as the Volpini Suite, which also appeared in the Cafe des Arts show of 1889. Gauguin didn't waver from his printing inexperience and made a number of provocative and unorthodox choices, such as a zinc plate instead of limestone (lithography), wide margins and large sheets of yellow poster paper.   The result was vivid to the point of garish, but foreshadows his more elaborate experiments with colour printing and intent to elevate monochromatic images. His first masterpieces of printing were from the Noa Noa Suite of 1893–94 where he essentially reinvented the medium of woodcutting, bringing it into the modern era. He started the series shortly after returning from Tahiti, eager to reclaim a leadership position within the avant-garde and share pictures based on his French Polynesia excursion. These woodcut prints were shown at his unsuccessful 1893 show at Paul Durand-Ruel's, and most were directly related to paintings of his in which he had revised the original composition. They were shown again at a small show in his studio in 1894, where he garnered rare critical praise for his exceptional painterly and sculptural effects. Gauguin's emerging preference for the woodcut was not only a natural extension of his wood reliefs and sculpture, but may have also been provoked by its historical significance to medieval artisans and the Japanese. 

Gauguin started watercolour monotyping in 1894, likely overlapping his Noa Noa woodcuts, perhaps even serving as a source of inspiration for them. His techniques remained innovative and it was an apt medium for him as it didn't require elaborate equipment, such as a printing press. Despite often being a source of practice for related paintings, sculptures or woodcuts, his monotype innovation offers a distinctly ethereal aesthetic; ghostly afterimages that may express his desire to convey the immemorial truths of nature. His next major woodcut and monotype project wasn't until 1898–99, known as the Vollard Suite. He completed this enterprising series of 475 prints from some twenty different compositions and sent them to dealer Ambroise Vollard, despite not compromising to his request for salable, conformed work. Vollard was unsatisfied and made no effort to sell them. Gauguin's series is starkly unified with black and white aesthetic and may have intended the prints to be similar to a set of myriorama cards, in which they may be laid out in any order to create multiple panoramic landscapes.  This activity of arranging and rearranging was similar to his own process of repurposing his images and motifs, as well as a symbolism tendency.  He printed the work on tissue-thin Japanese paper and the multiple proofs of gray and black could be arranged on top of one another, each transparency of colour showing through to produce a rich, chiaroscuro effect. 

In 1899 he started his radical experiment: oil transfer drawings. Much like his watercolour monotype technique, it was a hybrid of drawing and printmaking. The transfers were the grand culmination of his quest for an aesthetic of primordial suggestion, which seems to be relayed in his results that echo ancient rubbings, worn frescos and cave paintings. Gauguin's technical progress from monotyping to the oil transfers is quite noticeable, advancing from small sketches to ambitiously large, highly finished sheets. With these transfers he created depth and texture by printing multiple layers onto the same sheet, beginning with graphite pencil and black ink for delineation, before moving to blue crayon to reinforce line and add shading. He would often complete the image with a wash of oiled-down olive or brown ink. The practice consumed Gauguin until his death, fueling his imagination and conception of new subjects and themes for his paintings. This collection was also sent to Vollard who remained unimpressed. Gauguin prized oil transfers for the way they transformed the quality of drawn line. His process, nearly alchemical in nature, had elements of chance by which unexpected marks and textures regularly arose, something that fascinated him. In metamorphosing a drawing into a print, Gauguin made a calculated decision of relinquishing legibility in order to gain mystery and abstraction.  

He worked in wood throughout his career, particularly during his most prolific periods, and is known for having achieved radical carving results before doing so with painting. Even in his earliest shows, Gauguin often included wood sculpture in his display, from which he built his reputation as a connoisseur of the so-called primitive. A number of his early carvings appear to be influenced by Gothic and Egyptian art.  In correspondence, he also asserts a passion for Cambodian art and the masterful colouring of Persian carpet and Oriental rug. 

Legacy 

The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale, their prices reaching tens of millions of US dollars in the saleroom when they are offered. His 1892 Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) became the world's most expensive artwork when its owner, the family of Rudolf Staechelin, sold it privately for US$300 million in February 2015. The buyer is believed to be the Qatar Museums. 
*Gauguin's life inspired W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence. Mario Vargas Llosa based his 2003 novel The Way to Paradise on Gauguin's life, and that of his grandmother Flora Tristan.
*Gauguin is also the subject of at least two operas: Federico Elizalde's Paul Gauguin (1943); and Gauguin (a synthetic life) by Michael Smetanin and Alison Croggon. Déodat de Séverac wrote his Elegy for piano in memory of Gauguin.
*The Danish-produced film Oviri (1986) is a biographical film. It follows the painter from the time he returns to Paris in 1893 after a two-year stay in Tahiti and must confront his wife, his children, and his former lover. It ends when he returns to Tahiti two years later.

The Japanese styled Gauguin Museum, opposite the Botanical Gardens of Papeari in Papeari, Tahiti, contains some exhibits, documents, photographs, reproductions and original sketches and block prints of Gauguin and Tahitians. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center opened in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands.

In 2014 the painting Fruits sur une table ou nature au petit chien  (1889), with an estimated value of between €10m and €30m (£8.3m to £24.8m), which had been stolen in London in 1970, was discovered in Italy. The painting, together with a work by Pierre Bonnard, had been bought by a Fiat employee in 1975, at a railway lost property sale, for 45,000 lira (about £32). 

Gallery 

For a comprehensive list of paintings by Gauguin, see List of paintings by Paul Gauguin.

File:Gauguin Stillleben mit Fruchtschale und Zitronen.jpg|Still-Life with Fruit and Lemons (c. 1880)
File:Gauguin.swineherd.750pix.jpg|The Swineherd, Brittany (1888)
File:Paul Gauguin 085.jpg|Les Alyscamps (1888)
File:Paul Gauguin 137.jpg|Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the angel) (1888)
File:Paul Gauguin 072.jpg|Night Café at Arles, (Mme Ginoux) (1888)
File:Paul Gauguin 121.jpg|Still Life with Japanese Woodcut (1889)
File:Paul Gauguin 056.jpg|Tahitian Women on the Beach (1891)
File:Paul Gauguin - Delightful Land (Te Nave Nave Fenua) - Google Art Project.jpg|Delightful Land (Te Nave Nave Fenua) (1892)
File:Paul Gauguin (French - Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) - Google Art Project.jpg|Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) (1892)
File:Paul Gauguin 031.jpg|The Moon and the Earth (Hina tefatou) (1893)
File:Paul Gauguin 039.jpg|Watermill in Pont-Aven (1894)
File:Paul Gauguin 044.jpg|The Midday Nap (1894)
File:Paul Gauguin 090.jpg|Maternity (1899)
File:Paul Gauguin - Deux Tahitiennes.jpg|Two Tahitian Women (1899)
File:Paul Gauguin - Two Women.jpg|Two Women (1901 or 1902)

Self-portraits:

File:Paul Gauguin 200.jpg|Self-portrait, 1875–1877, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
File:Self-Portrait by Paul Gauguin, 1885.jpg|Self-portrait, 1885, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
File:Paul Gauguin 112.jpg|Self-portrait, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
File:Paul Gauguin - Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake.jpg|Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake, 1889, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
File:Paul Gauguin - Christ and the Garden of Olives.jpg|Christ in the Garden of Olives (Gauguin's self-portrait) 1889, Norton Museum of Art
File:Paul Gauguin - Jug in the Form of a Head.jpg|Jug in the form of a Head, Self-portrait, 1889. Kunstindustrimuseet, Copenhagen
File:Gauguin portrait 1889.JPG|Self-portrait, 1889–1890, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:Paul Gauguin 111.jpg|Self-portrait, 1893, Musée d'Orsay
File:Paul Gauguin, Self-portrait, c.1893, Detroit Institute of Arts.jpg|Self-portrait, c. 1893, Detroit Institute of Arts
File:Paul Gauguin 110.jpg|Self-portrait, 1896, São Paulo Museum of Art
File:Gauguin- Selbstbildnis dem Freund Daniel gewidmet -1896.jpg|Self-portrait (for my friend Daniel), 1896, Musée d'Orsay French Polynesia (; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of the French Republic;  (COM), sometimes unofficially referred to as an overseas country;  (POM). It is composed of 118 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over an expanse of more than 2000 km in the South Pacific Ocean. Its total land area is 4167 km2.

French Polynesia is divided into five groups of islands: The Society Islands archipelago composed of the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands, the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Gambier Islands, the Marquesas Islands and the Austral Islands. Among its 118 islands and atolls, 67 are inhabited. Tahiti, which is located within the Society Islands, is the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the collectivity, Pape'ete. It has more than 68% of the population of the islands in 2012. Although not an integral part of its territory, Clipperton Island was administered from French Polynesia until 2007.

Following the Great Polynesian Migration, European explorers visited the islands of French Polynesia on several occasions. Traders and whaling ships also visited. In 1842, the French took over the islands and established a French protectorate they called Etablissements des français en Océanie (EFO) (French Establishments/Settlements in Oceania).

In 1946, the EFOs became an overseas territory under the constitution of the French Fourth Republic, and Polynesians were granted the right to vote through citizenship. In 1957, the EFOs were renamed French Polynesia. Since 28 March 2003, French Polynesia has been an overseas collectivity of the French Republic under the constitutional revision of article 74, and later gained, with law 2004-192 of 27 February 2004, an administrative autonomy; two symbolic manifestations of which are the title of the President of French Polynesia and its additional designation as an overseas country. 

History 

French Polynesia as we know it today was one of the last places on Earth to be settled by humans. Scientists believe the Great Polynesian Migration happened around 1500 BC as Austronesian people went on a journey using celestial navigation to find islands in the South Pacific ocean. The first islands of French Polynesia to be settled were the Marquesas Islands in about 200 BC. The Polynesians later ventured southwest and discovered the Society Islands around AD 300.

European communication began in 1521 when Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing in the service of the Spanish Crown, sighted Puka-Puka in the Tuāmotu-Gambier Archipelago. In 1772, Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen came across Bora Bora in the Society Islands.

British explorer Samuel Wallis visited Tahiti in 1767. The French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville visited Tahiti in 1768, while the British explorer James Cook visited in 1769. In 1772, The Spanish Viceroy of Peru Don Manuel de Amat ordered a number of expeditions to Tahiti under the command of Domingo de Bonechea who was the first European to explore all of the main islands beyond Tahiti.  A short-lived Spanish settlement was created in 1774. and for a time some maps bore the name Isla de Amat after Viceroy Amat. Christian missions began with Spanish priests who stayed in Tahiti for a year. Protestants from the London Missionary Society settled permanently in Polynesia in 1797.

King Pōmare II of Tahiti was forced to flee to Mo'orea in 1803; he and his subjects were converted to Protestantism in 1812. French Catholic missionaries arrived on Tahiti in 1834; their expulsion in 1836 caused France to send a gunboat in 1838. In 1842, Tahiti and Tahuata were declared a French protectorate, to allow Catholic missionaries to work undisturbed. The capital of Papeetē was founded in 1843. In 1880, France annexed Tahiti, changing the status from that of a protectorate to that of a colony. The island groups were not officially united until the establishment of the French protectorate in 1889.

In the 1880s, France claimed the Tuamotu Archipelago, which formerly belonged to the Pōmare Dynasty, without formally annexing it. Having declared a protectorate over Tahuata in 1842, the French regarded the entire Marquesas Islands as French. In 1885, France appointed a governor and established a general council, thus giving it the proper administration for a colony. The islands of Rimatara and Rūrutu unsuccessfully lobbied for British protection in 1888, so in 1889 they were annexed by France. Postage stamps were first issued in the colony in 1892. The first official name for the colony was Établissements de l'Océanie (Establishments in Oceania); in 1903 the general council was changed to an advisory council and the colony's name was changed to Établissements Français de l'Océanie (French Establishments in Oceania).

In 1940, the administration of French Polynesia recognised the Free French Forces and many Polynesians served in World War II. Unknown at the time to the French and Polynesians, the Konoe Cabinet in Imperial Japan on 16 September 1940 included French Polynesia among the many territories which were to become Japanese possessions, as part of the "Eastern Pacific Government-General" in the post-war world.  However, in the course of the war in the Pacific the Japanese were not able to launch an actual invasion of the French islands.

In 1946, Polynesians were granted French citizenship and the islands' status was changed to an overseas territory; the islands' name was changed in 1957 to Polynésie Française (French Polynesia). In 1962, France's early nuclear testing ground of Algeria became independent and the Moruroa atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago was selected as the new testing site; tests were conducted underground after 1974. In 1977, French Polynesia was granted partial internal autonomy; in 1984, the autonomy was extended. French Polynesia became a full overseas collectivity of France in 2003. 

In September 1995, France stirred up widespread protests by resuming nuclear testing at Fangataufa atoll after a three-year moratorium. The last test was on 27 January 1996. On 29 January 1996, France announced that it would accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no longer test nuclear weapons.

Governance 

Under the terms of Article 74 of the French constitution and the Organic Law 2014-192 on the statute of autonomy of French Polynesia, politics of French Polynesia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic French overseas collectivity, whereby the President of French Polynesia is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Assembly of French Polynesia (the territorial assembly).

Political life in French Polynesia has been marked by great instability since the mid-2000s. On 14 September 2007, the pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru, was elected president of French Polynesia for the third time in three years (with 27 of 44 votes cast in the territorial assembly).   He replaced former president Gaston Tong Sang, opposed to independence, who lost a no-confidence vote in the Assembly of French Polynesia on 31 August after the longtime former president of French Polynesia, Gaston Flosse, hitherto opposed to independence, sided with his long enemy Oscar Temaru to topple the government of Gaston Tong Sang. Oscar Temaru, however, had no stable majority in the Assembly of French Polynesia, and new territorial elections were held in February 2008 to solve the political crisis.

The party of Gaston Tong Sang won the territorial elections, but that did not solve the political crisis: the two minority parties of Oscar Temaru and Gaston Flosse, who together have one more member in the territorial assembly than the political party of Gaston Tong Sang, allied to prevent Gaston Tong Sang from becoming president of French Polynesia. Gaston Flosse was then elected president of French Polynesia by the territorial assembly on 23 February 2008 with the support of the pro-independence party led by Oscar Temaru, while Oscar Temaru was elected speaker of the territorial assembly with the support of the anti-independence party led by Gaston Flosse. Both formed a coalition cabinet. Many observers doubted that the alliance between the anti-independence Gaston Flosse and the pro-independence Oscar Temaru, designed to prevent Gaston Tong Sang from becoming president of French Polynesia, could last very long. 

At the French municipal elections held in March 2008, several prominent mayors who are member of the Flosse-Temaru coalition lost their offices in key municipalities of French Polynesia, which was interpreted as a disapproval of the way Gaston Tong Sang, whose party French Polynesian voters had placed first in the territorial elections the month before, had been prevented from becoming president of French Polynesia by the last minute alliance between Flosse and Temaru's parties. Eventually, on 15 April 2008 the government of Gaston Flosse was toppled by a constructive vote of no confidence in the territorial assembly when two members of the Flosse-Temaru coalition left the coalition and sided with Tong Sang's party. Gaston Tong Sang was elected president of French Polynesia as a result of this constructive vote of no confidence, but his majority in the territorial assembly is very narrow. He offered posts in his cabinet to Flosse and Temaru's parties which they both refused. Gaston Tong Sang has called all parties to help end the instability in local politics, a prerequisite to attract foreign investors needed to develop the local economy.

Relations with France

Despite a local assembly and government, French Polynesia is not in a free association with France, like the Cook Islands with New Zealand. As a French overseas collectivity, the local government has no competence in justice, university education, security and defense.  Services in these areas are directly provided and administered by the Government of France, including the National Gendarmerie (which also polices rural and border areas in European France), and French military forces.  The collectivity government retains control over primary and secondary education, health, town planning, and the environment.   The highest representative of the State in the territory is the High Commissioner of the Republic in French Polynesia ().

French Polynesia also sends three deputies to the French National Assembly, one representing the Leeward Islands administrative subdivision and the south-western suburbs of Papeete, another one representing Papeete and its north-eastern suburbs, plus the commune (municipality) of Mo'orea-Mai'ao, the Tuāmotu-Gambier administrative division, and the Marquesas Islands administrative division, and the last one representing the rest of Tahiti and the Austral Islands administrative subdivision. French Polynesia also sends two senators to the French Senate.

French Polynesians vote in the French presidential elections and at the 2007 French presidential election, in which the pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru openly called to vote for the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal while the parties opposed to independence generally supported the center-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, the turnout in French Polynesia was 69.12% in the first round of the election and 74.67% in the second round in favour of Nicolas Sarkozy ahead in both rounds of the election expressing their will to remain in the French Republic. (versus in Metropolitan France in the 2nd round: Nicolas Sarkozy 51.9%; Ségolène Royal 48.1%). 

Administration 

Between 1946 and 2003, French Polynesia had the status of an overseas territory (French: territoire d'outre-mer, or TOM). In 2003, it became an overseas collectivity (French: collectivité d'outre-mer, or COM). Its statutory law of 27 February 2004 gives it the particular designation of overseas country inside the Republic (, or POM), but without legal modification of its status.

Administrative divisions

French Polynesia has five administrative subdivisions ():

* Marquesas Islands ( or officially )
* Leeward Islands ( or officially ) (the two ' Windward Islands and Leeward Islands are part of the Society Islands)
* Windward Islands ( or officially ) (the two ' Windward Islands and Leeward Islands are part of the Society Islands)
* Tuāmotu-Gambier ( or officially ') (the Tuamotus and the Gambier Islands)
* Austral Islands ( or officially ) (including the Bass Islands)

Geography 

The islands of French Polynesia make up a total land area of 3521 km2, scattered over more than 2000 km of ocean. There are 118 islands in French Polynesia. The highest point is Mount Orohena on Tahiti.

It is made up of 5 groups of islands. The largest and most populated island is Tahiti, in the Society Islands.

The island groups are:
* Marquesas Islands
* Society Islands
* Tuamotu Archipelago
* Gambier Islands sometimes considered part of the Tuamotu Archipelago
* Austral Islands
* Bass Islands often considered part of the Austral Islands

Aside from Tahiti, some other important atolls, islands, and island groups in French Polynesia are: Ahē, Bora Bora, Hiva 'Oa, Huahine, Mai'ao, Maupiti, Meheti'a, Mo'orea, Nuku Hiva, Raiatea, Taha'a, Tetiaroa, Tupua'i, and Tūpai.

Economy 

The legal tender of French Polynesia is the CFP Franc which has a fixed exchange rate with the Euro. The GDP of French Polynesia in 2008 was 7.14 billion US dollars at market exchange rates, the sixth-largest economy in Oceania after Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and Papua New Guinea. The GDP per capita was $27,352 in 2008 (at market exchange rates, not at PPP), lower than in Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, but higher than all the independent insular states of Oceania.

French Polynesia has a moderately developed economy, which is dependent on imported goods, tourism, and the financial assistance of mainland France. Tourist facilities are well developed and are available on the major islands. Main agricultural productions are coconuts (copra), vegetables and fruits. French Polynesia exports noni juice, a high quality vanilla, and the famous black Tahitian pearls which accounted for 55% of exports (in value) in 2008.

French Polynesia's seafloor contains rich deposits of nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper that are not exploited.

In 2008, French Polynesia's imports amounted to 2.2 billion US dollars and exports amounted to 0.2 billion US dollars.  

Demographics 

Total population at the August 2012 census was 268,270 inhabitants. At the 2012 census, 68.5% of the population of French Polynesia lived on the island of Tahiti alone. The urban area of Papeete, the capital city, has 133,627 inhabitants (2012 census).

At the 2007 census, 87.3% of people living in French Polynesia were born in French Polynesia, 9.3% were born in metropolitan France, 1.4% were born in overseas France outside of French Polynesia, and 2.0% were born in foreign countries.  At the 1988 census, the last census which asked questions regarding ethnicity, 66.5% of people were ethnically unmixed Polynesians, 7.1% were ethnically mixed Polynesians, 11.9% were Europeans (mostly French), 9.3% were people of mixed French and Polynesian descent, the so-called Demis (literally meaning "Half"), and 4.7% were East Asians (mainly Chinese).

Chinese, Demis, and the white populace are essentially concentrated on the island of Tahiti, particularly in the urban area of Papeetē, where their share of the population is thus much greater than in French Polynesia overall. Despite a long history of ethnic mixing, ethnic tensions have been growing in recent years, with politicians using a xenophobic discourse and fanning the flame of nationalism. 

Historical population

Languages

French is the only official language of French Polynesia.  An organic law of 12 April 1996 states that "French is the official language, Tahitian and other Polynesian languages can be used." At the 2007 census, among the population whose age was 15 and older, 68.5% of people reported that the language they spoke the most at home was French, 24.2% reported that the language they spoke the most at home was Tahitian, 2.6% reported Marquesan, 1.5% reported Tuamotuan, 1.3% reported any of the Austral languages, 1.0% reported a Chinese dialect (half of which is still Hakka), and 0.9% another language.

At the same census, 94.7% of people whose age was 15 or older reported that they could speak, read and write French, whereas only 2.0% reported that they had no knowledge of French. 86.4% of people whose age was 15 or older reported that they had some form of knowledge of at least one Polynesian language, whereas 13.6% reported that they had no knowledge of any of the Polynesian languages.

Religion

Christianity is the main religion of the islands: a majority (54%) belong to various Protestant churches and a large minority (30%) are Roman Catholic. Slightly more than 50% of French Polynesia's population belongs to the Maói Protestant Church, the largest Protestant denomination. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had 21,884 members .  There were about 3,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Tahiti . 

Sports 

Va'a 

The Polynesian traditional sport va'a is practiced in all the islands. French Polynesia hosts the  an international race between Tahiti, Huahine and Bora Bora.

Surfing 

French Polynesia is famous for its reef break waves. Teahupo'o is probably the most renowned, regularly ranked in the best waves of the world.  This site hosts the annual Billabong Pro Tahiti surf competition, the 7th stop of the World Championship Tour.

Kitesurfing 

There are many spots to practice kitesurfing in French Polynesia. Tahiti, Moorea, Bora-Bora, Maupiti and Raivavae are the most iconic spots. 

Diving 

French Polynesia is internationally known for diving. Each archipelago offers opportunities for divers. Rangiroa and Fakarava in the The Tuamotu islands are the most famous spots in the area. 

Transportation 

There are 53 airports in French Polynesia; 46 are paved. The Faaa International Airport is the only international airport in French Polynesia. Each island has its own airport that serves flights to other islands. Air Tahiti is the main airline that flies around the islands.

Notable people 

* Taïna Barioz (born 1988), World Champion skier representing France.
*Cheyenne Brando (1970–1995), model, daughter of Marlon Brando and Tarita Teriipaia
*Tuki Brando (born 1990), model, son of Cheyenne Brando
* Jacques Brel (1929–1978), Belgian musician who lived in French Polynesia near the end of his life.
* Jean Gabilou, singer (born 1944), represented France in the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest.
* Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), French impressionist painter who spent the last years of his life in French Polynesia.
* Maréva Georges, model, former Miss Tahiti 1990 and Miss France 1991.
*Vaitiare Hirson-Asars (born 1964), actress
* Pouvāna'a 'Ō'opa (1895–1977), politician and Tahitian nationalist.
* Henri Hiro (1944–1991), film director and script writer, poet, ecologist, activist.
* Ella Koon (born 1979), singer, actor and model.
*Karina Lombard (born 1969), French-American model
* Marco Namouro (1889–1968), writer.
* Fabrice Santoro (born 1972), professional tennis player.
* Tarita Teriipaia (born 1941), actress, third wife of Marlon Brando
* Marama Vahirua (born 1980), footballer, cousin of Pascal Vahirua.
* Pascal Vahirua (born 1966), French former international footballer.
* Célestine Hitiura Vaite (born 1966), writer.

Music 

French Polynesia came to the forefront of the world music scene in 1992, with the release of The Tahitian Choir's recordings of unaccompanied vocal Christian music called himene tārava, recorded by French musicologist Pascal Nabet-Meyer. This form of singing is common in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, and is distinguished by a unique drop in pitch at the end of the phrases, which is a characteristic formed by several different voices; it is also accompanied by steady grunting of staccato, nonsensical syllables.
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Paul Gauguin
 which French painter led and worked into Heidi. 

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