Tahiti
Timeline
- 3 June 1769 - Captain James Cook, Charles Green the other official observer, and two others recorded the six hour-long Transit of Venus using clocks, quadrants and telescopes from a location in Matavai Bay, Tahiti.
- 25 October 1788 - HMS Bounty, commanded by Captain William Bligh, arrived at Tahiti.
- 1 April 1891 - Gauguin sailed from Marseilles for Tahiti at the expense of the French government.
- August 1893 - After spending two years in Tahiti, Gauguin returned to France arriving in Marseilles with very little money. He was under the impression that as his friends in Paris and Copenhagen had written to him of their enthusiasm for his latest batch of Tahitian paintings he would have the prospect of a substantial income. Gauguin borrowed money to pay for his passage to Paris only to find that his dealers Boussod and Valadon had not sold any of his works.
- November 1896 - Ambrose Vollard exhibited Gauguin's Tahitian paintings as well as earlier paintings and sculpture.
- February 1917 - Somerset Maugham arrived in Tahiti, apparently seeking to retrace the steps of Gauguin. He was able to progress research remarkably quickly, and furthermore was able to uncover a Gauguin painting on the glass panes of a native's hut in the district of Mataiea:
"I found the wooden frame dwelling, hidden in thick foliage on the southern coast of the island. When I saw the painting, strangely executed on the upper glass panes of a door, I was spellbound. An original Gauguin! How it had escaped not being carried away by a collector, I could not understand. However, it was a good thing I came along when I did and bought it. There had been other doors in the front of the hut painted by Gauguin, but the children of the Anani family had scraped them mostly away with their fingernails. Had I left the remaining painting where it was, it would have been shortly destroyed, also. I gave the native man two hundred francs and he was very happy with the transaction."
