. Paul Gauguin, his life and art . d. 110 PAUL GAUGUIN At this period he was known to his artisticfriends in Paris as the captain, and hadbeen introduced to Gauguin by Schuffen-ecker, on the formers return from Martin-ique in 1887. To this man all lovers of Gauguins artowe an immense debt. Whether it was dueto the independent and roving disposition,shared by both, or to their common love andexperience of the sea, or to the fact that botliwere painters (de Monfreids experiencesin the Mediterranean had made of him agood colorist), or to a certain bond of sav-age frankness and nomad primitiveness
. Paul Gauguin, his life and art . d. 110 PAUL GAUGUIN At this period he was known to his artisticfriends in Paris as the captain, and hadbeen introduced to Gauguin by Schuffen-ecker, on the formers return from Martin-ique in 1887. To this man all lovers of Gauguins artowe an immense debt. Whether it was dueto the independent and roving disposition,shared by both, or to their common love andexperience of the sea, or to the fact that botliwere painters (de Monfreids experiencesin the Mediterranean had made of him agood colorist), or to a certain bond of sav-age frankness and nomad primitiveness towhich all the rest of their common tasteswere due, is unknown. The fact remainsthat the friendship between them was of thatideal kind that is never broken: the friend-ship between the creator and helper, whichall artists long for and to which so few at-tain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguinexperienced almost the last stroke of goodfortune that he was to have in life. The laststroke of all came a little afterwards when, tr pn HINA MARURU (FEAST TO HINA) HIS LIFE AND ART ill in the year after accepting de Monfreidshospitality, he suddenly decided to leaveEurope for Tahiti. The happy discovery of a letter whichGauguin wrote at this time to a Danishpainter, AVillemsen by name, clears up thelong-vexed point of what induced him totake this decision/ He chanced to attend,or to read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti,given by a certain Van der Veere. Van derVeere apparently pitched the tone of his dis-course to suit the tastes of a fashionable au-dience. He pictmed Tahiti as a terrestrialparadise where money was unknown. Un-der a sky without winter, upon an earth of amarvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only tolift his hands to gather in his food; so henever works. For him life means singingand making love. It is easy to picture theeffect of such phrases on the mind of a bornlover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti heldout the hope that Martinique had failed torealize; the hope tha
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