e again sent Gauguin back to Tahiti. Once he returned, he found that Teha’amana had found another husband and no longer wanted to associate with him. Gauguin soon took in fourteen-year-old Pahura in. His health was rapidly declining and he began to drink in heavy amounts. Gauguin’s paintings begin to turn dark and dreary. Pahura bore a child, which only made financial problems worse for the struggling artist. Then Gauguin received news that his daughter, Aline, had died of pneumonia. At the point of receiving this message, Gauguin gave up hope. “I have lost a daughter. I do not love God anymore,” Gauguin said (Harmon 5). He became suicidal and even set a date for his own death.At his lowest point, a pregnant Pahura, then sixteen left him alone. He quickly packed his belongings and moved to Marquesas Island. Fourteen-year-old Marie-Rose Vaeoho, soon came to live with him and bore a child to him. Gauguin stayed in trouble with the French authorities and Marie-Rose left Gauguin as quickly as she had come. Despite his misfortune, Gauguin continued to paint.Gauguin lived his final days on the remote Marquesas Islands (Cleaver 299). On May 8, 1903, Gauguin died alone of syphilis. He was fifty-five-years-old. When Gauguin died, he was very much in debt. Many of his possessions, including many of his paintings, were auctioned off for small sums of money used to pay on his debts.Although Paul Gauguin never found the paradise of Peru that he searched for, he was able to capture Tahiti in his paintbrush. His paintings preserve the true nature of the Tahitian peoples and their way of life. His paintings stand as imagery of the South Pacific (Harmon 7).Even though Gauguin wanted to find respect and acceptance in France, this would not happen during his lifetime. Critics at a major exhibition in Paris discovered Gauguin’s work three years after his death. Today he is recognized as the most audacious...
