George T. M. Shackelford， a specialist in French painting of the nineteenth century， is Chair of the Art of Europe at the Museum of Fine Arts， Boston. He has written or contributed to numerous books， including Van Gogh Foce to Face: The Portraits， also published by Thames & Hudson.

Claire Freches-Thory is chief curator at the Musee d’Orsay， Paris.Among her previous books are Impressionist ond Post-lmpressionist gAosterpieces ot the Musee d’Orsoy and The Nabis，both published byThames & Hudson.

Was Paul Gauguin a self-promoting faux-sauvage’always poaching on someone else’s land’，as former friend Pissarro thought? Or was he an aesthetic trailblazer who introduced generations of European artists to the rich resources of non-western cultures?

Gouguin Tahiti offers an in-depth study of the artist’s fabled Polynesian years that have so defined our image of the painter. Alongside essays by leading American and French critics on every aspect of Gauguin’s art， from the legendary canvases to his sculptures， ceramics and innovative graphic works， are discussions ofthe~Dolynesian society， culture and religion that helped shape them; an in-depth biographical narrative of the artist’s life， with the many epiphanies，frustrations and discoveries that make his time in the South Seas one of the most mythologically potent episodes in the history of Western art; and a chronicle of his changing fortunes in the century since his death.At the centre of it all is Gauguin’s 1897 masterpiece， Where Do We Come From?What Are We? Where Are We Going?， the summation and crowning glory of his mature career， presented with unprecedented depth and authority.

Over one hundred years after his death， Gauguin remains one of the most enigmatic and attractive figures of nineteenth-century art， the very pivot of modernism; Gauguin Tahiti portrays this crucial period of his life in all its colour and drama.

Director’s Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction GeorgeT. M. Shackelford

Ⅰ: The First Polynesian Sojourn， June 1891-June 1893

The Paintings of the First Polynesian Sojourn Claire Freches-Thory

Gauguin: Artist and Ethnographer Philippe Peltier

Sculpture of the First Voyage Anne Pingeot

Ⅱ: The Return to France， August 1893-June 1895

The Exhibition at Durand-Ruel Claire Freches-Thory

Noa Noa: The Voyage to Tahiti Isabelle Cahn

“Shapes and Harmonies of Another World” Barbara Stern Shapiro

Ovir Anne Pingeot

Ⅲ: The Second Polynesian Soiourn， September 189s-May 19o3

The Return to Paradise: Tahiti， 1895-1897 George T. M. Shackelford

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? George T. M. Shackelford

“I Have Everything a Modest Artist Could Wish” Barbara Stern Shapiro

“Catholicism and the Modern Mind”: The Painter as Writer in Late Career Elizabeth C. Childs

Splendor and Misery: Gauguin in the Marquesas Islands George T. M. Shackelford

IV: AFter 1903

The House of Pleasure Anne Pingeot

Koke and Tepeva: Victor Segalen in Gauguin’s Footsteps Gilles Manceron

Belated Recognition: Gauguin and France in the Twentieth Century， 19o3-1949 Isabelle Cahn

V: Appendixes

Gauguin in the Vollard Archives Suzanne Diffre and Marie-Josephe Lesieur

Notes

Chronology of Gauguin’s Life， 1848-19o3 Isabelle Cahn and Gloria Groom

Checklist and Figure Illustrations

Index