Meghan L. Howard '08 graduated from Woodbridge High School in June of 2004. It was upon reading The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham during her freshman year in high school that she first became interested in the works of Paul Gauguin during his time in Tahiti. The interest began as an extreme distaste for Gauguin and his works and simmered until she rediscovered Gauguin's Tahitian works while taking "Impressionism and the Making of Modern Art" four years later during her first semester of college, at which time the interest in Gauguin developed into a deep confusion.

Meghan is currently a freshman at Princeton University. She has no real plans regarding a course of studies or future career, having discovered that she does not have what it takes to be a math geek, much to her dismay. In her spare time, Meghan plays on the Princeton University Women's Rugby Football Club, trains for rugby, and fundraises for rugby. She is also a member of Agape Christian fellowship. She is presently honing her procrastination skills through large amounts of time spent in the Forbes dining hall, pool room, lobby, and laundry room. She has recently augmented her ability to put off doing real work by going overboard on "About the Author" biographies…

While not at Princeton, Meghan resides in Woodbridge, New Jersey with her parents, younger sister Andi, and dog. Prior to matriculating at Princeton in the fall of 2004 Meghan - known to most as "Howie" in her pre-Princeton days - over-extended herself across a myriad of activities â€" from captaining her high school tennis team to heading the school newspaper and literary magazine. Her Future Problem Solving team placed 2nd at the International Conference in Kentucky in June of 2004. Throughout high school she was involved in her church's youth group and drama team. Basically, Meghan was your typical high school over-achiever, but is working on changing her ways.

Being an enthusiastic person, Meghan tends to be very passionate about certain things. She loves to watch tennis and the Pittsburgh Steelers and has been known to rearrange her study schedule so as not to miss her favorite TV show, "Alias." (Her parents and friends have tried to tell her that she cannot actually be Sydney Bristow, but Meghan continues to dream.) Meghan loves to read - although her choice of reading material is not often categorized as Good Literature - and is compulsive about writing in her journal. When she is back home in Woodbridge, her mother quite willingly hands over her apron, which Meghan quite willingly accepts, as Meghan is undeniably the best cook in her family and the kitchen is probably the room of the house that Meghan misses most while she is at school. Because of her heritage, Meghan is partial to Italian cooking and has been known to command "Mangia!" while serving a new dish that she made from her trusty authentic Italian cookbook. Meghan also loves baking - and eating - chocolate chip cookies, which also makes her family and friends quite happy. Her family and friends are not so thrilled with her habit of randomly breaking out into song without warning, but they keep her around for the chocolate chip cookies.

I would like to thank Nina Cronan and Emily Turner for their feedback on my original research paper Gauguin's Garden of Eden? The Contradiction of Gauguin's Words by His Works in Tahiti and Ioannis Avramides and Amelia Salyers for their feedback on this website. I would also like to thank Professor Kay Chubbuck for all of her feedback throughout the writing process and Kati Lovasz of the Princeton Office of Information Technology for all of her technological help on this project.

I. Paintings

Gauguin, Paul. Be Be (The Nativity). 1896. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Gauguin, Paul. The Day of the God. 1896. The Art Institute of Chicago.

Gauguin, Paul. Ia Orana Maria (We Greet Thee, Mary). 1891-2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Gauguin, Paul. The Poor Fisherman. 1896. Museu de Arte de Syo Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.

Gauguin, Paul. Te Nave Nave Fenua (The Delightful Land). 1892. Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan.

Gauguin, Paul. Te Tamari No Atua (Birth of Christ Son of God). 1896. Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

Gauguin, Paul. Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1897. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.

II. Other Sources

Aldrich, Robert. The French Presence in the South Pacific 1842-1940. London: The Macmillan Press LTD, 1990.

Amishai-Maisels, Ziva. Gauguin's Religious Themes. New York : Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985.

Buser, Thomas. "Gauguin's Religion." Art Journal v. 27 no. 4, 1968: 375-380.

Danielsson, Bengt. Gauguin in the South Seas. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966.

Denvir, Bernard. Gauguin: Letters from Brittany and the South Seas: The Search for Paradise. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1992.

Edmond, Rod. Representing the South Pacific. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Eisenman, Stephen F. Gauguin's Skirt. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1997.

Gauguin, Paul. Letters to His Wife and Friends. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1949.

Gauguin, Paul. Noa Noa. Translated by O.F. Theis. New York: Nicholas L. Brown, 1919.

Goldwater, Robert. Paul Gauguin. New York: Harry M. Abrams, Inc., 1928.

Hanson, Lawrence and Elisabeth. Noble Savage: The Life of Paul Gauguin. New York: Random House, 1955.

Rapetti, Rodolphe. "Paul Gauguin." Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, Accessed 27 December 2004. http://www.groveart.com

Thomson, Belinda. Gauguin. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.

Ia Orana Maria (We Greet Thee, Mary) (1891-2)
Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

















































Te Nave Nave Fenua (The Delightful Land) (1892)
Oil on Canvas
Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan

Be Be (The Nativity) (1896)
Oil on canvas
The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Te Tamari No Atua (Birth of Christ Son of God) (1896)
Oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897)
Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Captain James Cook made a voyage between 1772 and 1775 that dispelled the myth â€" leftover from the Renaissance â€" that there must be a large landmass located south of Asia and east of Africa (Edmond 6) . What Cook discovered instead of this expected landmass was an extensive chain of archipelagos and other smaller, more isolated islands scattered throughout the South Pacific to its southern boundary â€" Antarctica. These islands make up what we know today as 'Oceania.'

Although missionaries were far from being the only group to influence the peoples and cultures of Oceania during the nineteenth century, these religious folk undoubtedly had a significant impact on the islands of Oceania that they evangelized. Oceania was proselytized by both Catholic and Protestant missionaries and although missionaries likely had similar goals, they differed in their methods of ministering to the natives. Robert Aldrich addresses some of the debates among the missionaries in Oceania in his book The French Presence in the South Pacific, 1842-1940, including: "How much Christian doctrine should be taught? Which groups should be evangelised first? Could the priests administer sacraments if they were unsure of the real faith of the converts?" (Aldrich 44). And varying strategies for converting the natives were often the least of the missionaries' problems. Missionaries had to deal with the heathen lifestyle of the native Tahitians. As Aldrich writes, "Practices accepted in Oceanic societies, such as polygamy and infanticide, scandalised the priests. Even everyday features of Pacific life, such as scant clothing and dances, shocked the young men accustomed to the life of French villages and Catholic seminaries" (Aldrich 43-4). And beyond these moral setbacks, the missionaries also faced very real challenges in terms of their basic needs. The missionaries "lacked basic provisions," had to find ways to feed and house themselves, and faced constant attacks from the islanders (Aldrich 42). But despite the challenges faced by the missionaries, they indeed had a very real impact on the native Tahitians. The missions provided the natives with medical care and educational opportunities, both as social services and to attract converts (Aldrich 45). This impact was not always positive, though, as the missionaries also used tobacco products as means of proselytizing to the Tahitians. But positive or negative, the amount of the impact of the missionaries was great. As Aldrich writes, "The missionaries' influence was considerable: they directly or indirectly represented French interests, even when at loggerheads with the state, and they were major agents in the socialisation of Polynesians and Melanesians into a Europeanised way of life" (Aldrich 34). French foreign policy in the South Pacific was often shaped by the Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the area, and Tahiti was no exception to this.

Catholic Missions in Tahiti

Protestant Missions in Tahiti

Gauguin did not even become an artist in the traditional fashion. He was born in 1848 to Aline Chazal and Clovis Gauguin. After a childhood spent in Peru, Orléans, Paris, and aboard a cargo ship traveling between Le Havre and Rio de Janeiro, Gauguin finally settled down in 1871 when he received a position as a stockbroker. In 1873 he married Mette-Sophie Gad and the couple went on to have five children (Grove Art Online). But Gauguin had already begun cultivating a deep interest in art and painting and although his wife considered her husband a "Sunday painter" and his new interest just a hobby (Hanson 26), his interest was gradually pulling him away from the life he had as a family man and stockbroker.

Although he likely would have made the transition from banking to art without any outside help, this transition was sped-up by the banking crash of 1882, which resulted in unemployment for Gauguin and many others in the industry. It was at this time that Gauguin began shaping in his mind the idea of supporting himself and his family by the sale of his artwork. Unfortunately, the general public had different ideas, and Gauguin's early attempts at being a professional artist were, for the most part, failures. His artistic career reaching a point of stagnation, Gauguin took the advice of an artist friend and headed to Pont-Aven to observe and paint the religious community of the Breton people. It was during his time in Pont-Aven that Gauguin moved away from the Impressionist art style that he had first been introduced to and matured as an artist, developing his Symbolist style of painting (Grove Art Online).

According to the Grove Dictionary of Art, in 1888, Theo van Gogh sought Gauguin's assistance with his brother Vincent whose mental health was steadily failing. Gauguin went to live with Vincent van Gogh in Arles and at first the duo lived under the same roof and discussed artistic theories. But after a placid beginning, the arrangement ended in tragedy, with van Gogh first threatening Gauguin with a razor and then cutting off his own ear. Gauguin returned to Paris shortly after this incident (Grove Art Online).

Between 1889 and 1891 Gauguin made frequent trips to Pont-Aven and the primitive community that had first stimulated his artistic individuality. By this time, he was living the life of a forty-year-old bachelor and had not seen his family in five years (Hanson 153). His wife made several valiant attempts to convince her wayward husband to abandon his pursuit of artistic fame and return to his family, but by this time Gauguin had begun to consider himself a slave to his art, and his previous life and family merely sacrifices in his quest for artistic martyrdom.

In 1891, Gauguin traveled to the South Pacific for the first time. Although the idea of leaving Europe for Tahiti had first formed in Gauguin's mind some years earlier, he did not set sail until April of 1891 after raising enough money for the trip from a successful auction of his art. By the time he left, he had achieved some degree of fame and his art was more appreciated by the European community than ever before. According to the Grove Dictionary of Art, Gauguin could have hoped for a triumphant return to France after a temporary stay in Tahiti (Grove Art Online).

But something about Tahiti changed Gauguin. According to Bengt Danielsson in Gauguin in the South Seas, the name of Paul Gauguin "always recalls Tahiti rather than Paris, Brittany, Martinique, Arles, or any of the other places where he also lived and worked" (Danielsson 19). Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson state in The Noble Savage that, upon arriving in Papeete (the capital of Tahiti) in June of 1891, Gauguin was received warmly, given a name by the people, and a girl "attached herself to him" (Hanson 201).

But he was not happy in Papeete for long, finding it to have been too thoroughly colonized by the French. Just a month after arriving in Tahiti, Gauguin wrote to his wife of the death of the Tahitian king, saying "I heard of the death of King Pomare with keen regret. The Tahitian soil is becoming quite French, and the old order is gradually disappearing" (Gauguin Letters 163). Gauguin decided that to discover the Tahiti he sought, he needed to head to the Tahitian countryside. After a bout of illness, Gauguin found life in the countryside to be a pleasant existence, with friendly neighbors and a beautiful landscape. For the early part of his first stay in Tahiti Gauguin was largely just an observer of life around him, but in 1892 he took a young Tahtian girl â€" named Tehura â€" as a wife and it was her presence in his life that caused him to start painting again (Hanson 206-208). His artwork became an assimilation of his own style and primitive influences as he experimented with woodcutting and he began to use native subject matter and bright colors unbelievable to European observers. He was happy during this time of his life, but his habit of running through money and his health problems caused him to leave Tahiti in 1893 and return to France in an attempt to sell his artwork to raise funds for a return to Tahiti.

But upon his return to France, Gauguin did not find the fame and fortune that he had hoped for. He was seen as "theatrical" by most of civilized Europe according to the Grove Dictionary of Art and his art was therefore dismissed by the people he hoped to sell it to (Grove Art Online). His final auction, held in 1895, sold only nine of its forty-seven paintings. With this last insult, Gauguin left Europe for good, returning to the primitive Tahiti that had captured him and made him such a pariah in Europe. This was not just a departure from Europe, but a permanent farewell to the European lifestyle. Upon arriving once again in Papeete, Gauguin quickly found himself once again in dire straits â€" low on money and in poor health. Indeed, this was how he spent much of these last years of his life. It was, however, during this time that Gauguin produced many of his most famous works of art, including Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897). In 1897, after painting Where Do We Come From?, a dejected Gauguin attempted suicide through arsenic poisoning, but the copious amount of arsenic that he ingested made even his suicide a failure. After his failed suicide attempt, Gauguin took an office job in Papeete and gave up painting for some time. He left Tahiti in late 1901 for the wilder island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas (Grove Art Online). He spent the remainder of his life on this remote island, resigned to the fact that he would never be a famous artist that changed the world with his art. He died in 1903. It was only in death that he was vindicated, and today he is remembered as a father of the artistic Symbolist movement.

Paul Gauguin was a man of many contradictions. He began his adult life as a prosperous stockbroker and died as a penniless artist. He was a man who deeply loved his children, yet abandoned them for years. He praised the primitive beauty of Tahiti but longed for France and a more familiar life prior to his return to Europe in 1893. He was a man who first longed for fame and fortune, then resigned himself to relative anonymity but was more famous posthumously than even he likely would have dreamt of. Gauguin the writer condemned the missionary presence in Tahiti while Gauguin the artist praised the harmony of Christianity in the native Tahitian landscape. It is natural to either love Gauguin or hate him, but most find this man of mysterious contradictions very difficult to dismiss.

Paintings (from top to bottom):
Self Portrait: Les Miserables (1888), Oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum; Self-portrait with Halo (1889), Oil on wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Self Portrait (1893-4), Oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay

The Day of the God (1894)
Oil on canvas
The Art Institute of Chicago

The Day of the God is the first of these paintings. Created in 1894, the painting at first glance is undeniably Tahitian in its religious overtones. The idol in the center of the picture is certainly not a European figure; not the Judeo-Christian God. As Robert Goldwater notes, the figure is "Taaroa, central figure of the Maori pantheon" and that the two women in white are bringing gifts in Taaroa's honor while the two women in orange dance for the idol (Goldwater 126) . Clearly there is a Tahitian religious influence in this piece. The setting itself â€" from the people to the landscape â€" is Tahitian and the bright colors suggest the exotic lands of the South Pacific. But upon more careful consideration, we see that there is also a very Biblical reference in this piece, a reference to the Old Testament Story of Noah, the ark, and the great flood. In the painting, there are people â€" native Tahitians by appearance â€" seeming to emerge from the water surrounding them onto this colorful land. They are worshipping the god that sits in the center of the land, brining him praise and offerings. The fact that the god that Gauguin chooses to depict is of little matter; it is the parallel of this painting with the Biblical story of Noah that is notable. In this painting, Gauguin delicately inserts a Christian reference into this scene of a seeming Tahitian utopia.

The Poor Fisherman (1896)
Oil on canvas
Museu de Arte de Syo Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

The Poor Fisherman, painted by Gauguin in 1896, is a little less subtle in its Christian references. The title of the piece alone conjures up thoughts of the New Testament of the Bible and Jesus' call for his disciples to be "fishers of men" and to give up earthly possessions. In this piece, Gauguin places a native Tahitian man beside a small fishing boat, gaze directed downward. In the background waves crash against the rocks of an exotic looking shore an there is a straw lean-to on the beach. Once again, Gauguin has crafted a scene with subtle Biblical references in an obviously Tahitian setting.

Although Ia Orana Maria - which is translated to We Greet Thee, Mary - is the first example of Gauguin's use of Christian symbolism in his Tahitian works as well as one of his earliest Tahitian works, it was not the first time that Gauguin used religious symbolism in his art. His curiosity with Christian symbolism in particular became evident during his time spent in Pont-Aven and Brittany between 1886 and 1888.

As Thomas Buser points out in his article entitled "Gauguin's Religion," is that â€" unlike the majority of his contemporaries, Gauguin was intrigued by religion. Buser states "for Gauguin…religion played an important role in his art and in his life" (Buser 375) . In his art, this religious questioning was evident long before his journeys to Tahiti. He painted Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) in 1888, The Yellow Christ, Christ on the Mount of Olives, Green Christ Breton Calvary, and Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ in 1889. He portrays Christ and the crucifixion in varying ways in these pieces, illustrating Gauguin's tumultuous relationship with Christianity and questioning nature toward it. Gauguin's feelings regarding Christianity become even hazier when we consider that, as Ziva Amishai-Maisels points out in Gauguin's Religious Themes, Gauguin identifies himself with Christ in a series of paintings. She states that Gauguin related his " 'martyrdom' for his art" with Christ's own martyrdom (Amishai-Maisels 74). It was this parallel that caused Gauguin to pictorially represent himself as Christ. And yet, recognizing his imperfection, he also created Self-Portrait with a Halo and Soyez Amoureuses. Amishai-Maisels continues her evaluation of Gauguin's Christianity by arguing that in these two pieces, Gauguin is identifying with the devil (Amishai-Maisels 133). What makes this contradiction perhaps more interesting is that the pieces in which Gauguin identifies with Christ and the ones in which he identifies with Satan were all created in the same span of two years, from 1888-1890. Clearly Gauguin's complicated relationship with Christianity was thriving during the part of his life spent in Europe, long before his arrival in Tahiti in 1891.

Paintings, clockwise from top:

Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) (1888), Oil on Canvas, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; The Yellow Christ (1889), Oil on canvas, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ (1889), Oil on canvas,Private collection; Green Christ (The Breton Calvary) (1889), Oil on canvas, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

In the end, if we are to give equal weight to Gauguin's artwork and his written word, then perhaps Gauguin's true feelings on the influence of Christian missionaries in Tahiti at the turn of the twentieth century would never be a known certainty. Obviously his artistic works and his writings contradict each other in their depictions of Christianity in Tahiti, with his words relaying the opinion that Christianity was a blemish on an otherwise picturesque Tahiti and his paintings illustrating a Tahiti that was made more beautiful by the presence of Christian symbolism. Thus, the question remains: which one should we believe? Did Gauguin's true feelings show in his harmonious artwork or in his vengeful written commentary? This would be difficult to say were it not for Gauguin's own views on his artwork. He considered artwork his calling and himself a martyr for the cause of art, as he described in a letter he wrote to his wife in March of 1892: "I am indeed a great artist…I am a great artist, and I know it. It is because I am what I am that I have to endure so much suffering" (qtd. Denvir 65). This passage show that Gauguin clearly put great stock in his art, giving his painting greater emphasis than he put on his written opinion. Therefore, if Gauguin has more faith in himself as an artist, than we, too, should more highly value the opinion depicted on canvas than in words. He went on to say that "the center of my art world is in my head, not anywhere else, and I am strong because I am never sidetracked by others and I do what is inside me" (qtd. Denvir 65). In his own words, Gauguin painted what was in his head. His opinions were what ended up on his harmonious canvases. Gauguin the artist might have struggled with Gauguin the writer in terms of his own opinion on Christianity in Tahiti, but in the end, when we look at Gauguin's art in the context of his words, we are able to see that it is his artwork that more truly represents how he felt about Christianity in Tahiti. In Gauguin's paintings, we see a Christian influence that enhanced the exotic Tahitian world. In this way, Tahiti became Gauguin's personal Garden of Eden because of the Christian influences, not in spite of them.

Gauguin most clearly suggests an enhancement of Tahiti by the Christian missionaries in his harmonious masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, a painting that strikingly conflicts with Gauguin's written commentary on Christianity in Tahiti The painting is described by Stephen F. Eisenman in his book Gauguin's Skirt as being "a work which recast Genesis" (Eisenman 15) . Similarly, Amishai-Maisels comments on the Christian symbolism of this piece, asserting that it represents the "three stages of the Biblical Fall." She dissects the painting in this context, describing each section in terms of its relation to the Biblical story of man's fall from grace:

On the right is the relaxed pre-Fall state, the beginning of life in Paradise. In the center is the Fall, 'the man of instinct asks himself what all this means,' plucks and eats the fruit. On the left is the post-Fall state, which includes religion (the idol) and death (the old woman) (Amishai-Maisels 228-229).

Amishai-Maisels recognizes the obvious Christian symbolism in this painting â€" referencing the Biblical story of Adam and Eve when she talks about "the Fall" â€" yet still notes the Tahitian context of the painting when she comments on the religion represented by the Tahitian idol. The painting â€" a panorama portraying the different stages of life â€" is stitched together in a way that suggests many different sketches rather than a single scene. In the right of the mural is the representation of birth â€" Where Do We Come From? â€" in the women gathered around the little baby. As we move toward the center of the painting â€" What Are We? â€" we encounter the coming-of-age and the questioning of one's purpose. The two women in pink discuss life and the man with arms extended upward in the very center is picking a piece of fruit, fruit that could represent either life or death. As we move toward the left of the picture the tone becomes more somber as the subject of death enters the painting â€" Where Are We Going? However, it is not just death that Gauguin addresses, but what comes after death. In this question, Gauguin blends the tenants of Christianity with the beliefs of the native Tahitian religion, both of which believe in a life after physical death. Thus, although Gauguin lamented the Christian belief system as being imposed upon the Tahitians, he asserts in Where Are We Going? that it was natural for the Tahitians to look toward Christianity in the hope of an afterlife. In this way, Gauguin contradicts his words in his letters and Noa Noa by asserting that this hope granted to the native Tahitians by the Christian missionaries was an enhancement to the life the Tahitians lived before the arrival of the missionaries, and painted the scene accordingly. It is in this painting that we see the completion of Gauguin's progression from depicting an integration of Christianity in Tahiti to painting a Tahitian landscape enhanced by the presence of Christian missionaries, showing his belief that Christianity enhanced rather than detracted from the Tahitian culture.

In his paintings, however, Gauguin portrays the Christian missionary influence as first an integrated aspect of the Tahitian culture and then, gradually, as an enhancement to the old way of life in Tahiti, rather than depicting his Eden as a place destroyed by the missionary presence. For example, Gauguin described Ia Orana Maria (We Greet Thee, Mary), painted in 1891 and 1892, in this way in a letter dated March 1892: "An angel with yellow wings points out to two Tahitian women Mary and Jesus, also Tahitians" (qtd. Goldwater 100). In this case, Gauguin's writing is congruent with his art. Indeed there is a Tahitian Mary and Jesus in the left of the painting, halos around their heads to symbolize their holiness. In the background, two half-naked Tahitian women are informed by an angel of the presence of the holy mother and child and they fold their hands in a Christian act of adoration. The Tahitian setting is as obvious as the Christian symbolism â€" the bright colors, the various amounts of clothing worn by the native women, the exotic fruit, and the tropical foliage. Bernard Denvir notes this blending in his book Gauguin: Letters from Brittany and the South Seas when he describes Ia Orana Maria as "a joyous and colorful fusion of Christian and Eastern symbolism" (Denvir 66). For Denvir, in this painting, the Christian symbolism and the natural Tahitian landscape are harmoniously integrated, a harmony unlikely to have been created by someone who felt that Christianity was destroying Tahiti, as Gauguin expressed in his writings.

Gauguin continued this harmonious integration in Te Nave Nave Fenua, painted in 1892, which further expresses the harmony of Christian symbolism into the natural beauty of the Tahitian landscape. In this painting, a Tahitian woman is depicted surrounded by the bright colors and tropical foliage visible in Ia Orana Maria. Set in Gauguin's Eden, the Tahitian woman depicted in this painting can best be described as Gauguin's version of Eve. Her arm is extended and fingers poised to pluck the forbidden fruit. The lizard with red wings speaking into her ear is representative of Satan, who in the Bible story encouraged Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. The setting and figures are still Tahitian yet the Biblical storyline remains. As was true of Ia Orana Maria, Gauguin paints a Tahiti where Christianity exists in harmony with native Tahitian culture rather than in opposition to it.

Moreover, in 1896, Gauguin began to suggest an enhancement of Tahitian culture by the Christian missionary presence that went beyond the way he had simply integrated Christianity and the Tahitian landscape in previous pieces or condemned it in his writings. Specifically, Gauguin depitcts a Tahitian nativity scene in both Be Be (The Nativity) and Te Tamari No Atua (Birth of Christ Son of God). In the former, the Tahitian Mary is holding Jesus as an angel looks over them in a stable filled with hay and animals, a scene quite reminiscent of the first Christmas except for the race of the characters. The simplicity of the surrounding intimates both the first Christmas and Gauguin's Tahitian environment, suggesting an uncanny parallel between the two places. But the second painting varies more from the original nativity scene depicted in the Bible. In this painting, Tahitian Mary lies on a bed, seemingly exhausted from the labors of childbirth. Beside her are two other women, one holding the baby Jesus, yet there are still animals visible in the background, much like in the previous Tahitian nativity scene. In both paintings, Gauguin crafted a scene that brought the heart of Christianity â€" the birth of Christ â€" to a Tahitian setting, pictorially depicting the function of the missionaries in Tahiti â€" bringing Christ to the Tahitians â€" in a harmonious manner rather than in the disruptive way suggested by Gauguin's writings. It is important to note how this exposure of the Tahitians to Christ varies in these two paintings. In Be Be, the scene is distinctly a Biblical one with the only truly Tahitian figures being the figures of Mary, Jesus, and the angel. But in Te Tamari No Atua, the scene has changed. In this piece, the seamless blending of the Biblical scene into the background of a modern-day Tahiti suggests that the introduction of the Christian missionary influence in Tahiti was a seamless one with a smooth transition, a change that enhanced Tahiti rather than destroying it.

If we begin by examining Gauguin's words, we see that the written word played an important role during his life in Tahiti. Gauguin did a significant amount of writing during this time spent in Tahiti â€" from letters to his wife, friends, and colleagues to a book entitled Noa Noa. (In fact, for his first few months in Tahiti, Gauguin's only communication was by words, as he did not paint until he had been in Tahiti for several months.) Interspersed throughout these works we find a scathing commentary on the Christian missionary presence on the island of Tahiti. From the beginning of his time on the island, Gauguin lamented the destruction of Tahiti by the local French missionaries. It seems that if Gauguin was to have decided the fate of the Tahitian people, French missionaries would never have landed on the island. But the influence of the French missionaries in Tahiti was undeniable, and â€" for Gauguin â€" unacceptable. In a letter Gauguin wrote to his wife shortly after his arrival in Tahiti, Gauguin censures the Protestant missionaries in particular, stating that they "have already introduced a new element of Protestant hypocrisy and are destroying the sense of poetry" (qtd. Denvir 63). Gauguin left Europe for Tahiti to seek this "sense of poetry" and when he arrived he discovered that the Tahiti he sought had been blemished by the influence of the Christian missionaries. Indeed, his words for the Catholic Church were no kinder, saying in a letter to Charles Morice written in November of 1897 that "now the Church never forgives" (Gauguin Letters 211), a harsh commentary on a religion that includes the sacrament of reconciliation.

In his published works, written for a wider audience, Gauguin was perhaps more subtle in his criticism of the Christian missionary influence in Tahiti, but in the end was no less harsh in his commentary, presented most overtly in Noa Noa. If Gauguin was shouting out his distaste in his private letters, then his more public commentary in Noa Noa can be equated with a stage whisper â€" much quieter with a hint of subtlety, yet still intended for a very wide audience. For example, in Noa Noa, Gauguin describes the wedding of a half-white schoolmistress and her "genuine Maori" husband that he attended as an externally celebratory affair whose Tahitian ritual had been ruined by Christian tradition. His criticism of the Christian missionaries' hypocrisy continues in this account, but more subtle than in other descriptions. He says that Protestant bishop who presided over the marriage "had taken an interest" in the bride and "had personally interceded to bring about this wedding which many regarded as a little hurried" (Gauguin Noa Noa 87-88). Gauguin declares that "out here, the will of the missionary is the will of God" and later insinuates that the bride was pregnant, not with her husbands' but with the bishop's child at the time of the wedding (Gauguin Noa Noa 88, 91). This commentary on the Christianized marriage of the two young Tahitians highlights Gauguin's disgust at what he perceived as Christian hypocrisy. If Gauguin wrote things as he saw them, he saw a Tahiti that was being gradually destroyed by this Christian influence. According to Gauguin's writings, Tahiti when left untouched by Christian missionaries was a paradise that served as Gauguin's own personal Eden, an Eden destroyed by the hypocrisy of the French Christian missionaries.

Cover from Noa Noa, illustrated by Gauguin