In My Isolation I Can Grow

Written during Gauguin's first stay in Tahiti (1891–1893) and incorporated into Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal, this passage describes the creative conditions he had sought by leaving France. The "isolation" was partly geographical and partly self-willed: Gauguin moved away from Papeete, the French colonial capital, to live in a rural Maori district, learning the language and documenting local customs. He told his wife Mette in letters that distance from the artistic hierarchies of Paris allowed him to work with a directness impossible in Europe — a conviction that shaped the 66 canvases he produced in Tahiti before poverty forced his return.