Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he ever had—who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel taken part in the Volpini exhibition.
It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea.
De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. Every summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as "the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on the former's return from Martinique in 1887.
To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti.
Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).
The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of what induced him to take this decision.[1] He chanced to attend, or to read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him there, all the better—his isolation would then be complete.[2]
The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece entitled Loss Of Maidenhood, which has fortunately vanished, and an etching representing Mallarmé with Poe's Raven in the background. Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday.
At all events Gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A banquet was held at the Café Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally a benefit performance was given by the Théâtre d'Art for the departing artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of his last years.[3]