ge in career, his wife left for Denmark and took the children, leaving Gauguin alone.The freedom Gauguin now had allowed him to concentrate on his paintings completely. His works never even sparked interest in Paris, a rejection that left Gauguin still unsatisfied and longing for his home in Peru. He desperately longed for his own paradise. Gauguin soon decided that Tahiti would be the place where he could capture the freedom of paradise that he remembered from Peru. As Gauguin reached Tahiti he was terribly disappointed. Missionaries had forbidden a majority of the natural traditions and rituals of the Tahitians. Gauguin wrote to Mette, saying, “[They] are sweeping away…the poetry,”(Harmon 4). Nonetheless, Gauguin realized that the missionaries had failed to tame the savageness of the women. He took one of these females, a thirteen- year -old girl, as his wife. Teha’amana, or Tehura, as she was also known, brought great happiness to Gauguin’s life and bore a child. During this time in Tahiti, Gauguin produced such works as “The Moon and the Earth” and “The Spirit of the Dead Watching” which expressed the mystery and imaginative lives of these native people. Despite his happiness and success in Tahiti, Gauguin soon left Teha’amana and Tahiti behind in search of still something more (Cleaver, 299).Back in France, Gauguin set up a studio in the hopes of promoting the sell of his paintings. He also took a new wife, a thirteen- year –old Javanese girl named Anna. While visiting Brittany with Anna, Gauguin was attacked by several locals over a fight in which the locals called Anna a witch. The attack caused Gauguin to break his ankle. While he was hospitalized, Anna vandalized his studio and was never seen again. To complicate matters for Gauguin, his ankle never completely healed and he was suffering from secondary syphilis (Harmon 5).Rejection in France onc...
