title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Within the PRC, further character simplification became associated with the leftists of the Cultural Revolution, culminating with the second-round simplified characters, which were promulgated in 1977. In part due to the shock and unease felt in the wake of the Cultural Revolution and Mao's death, the second round of simplifications was poorly received. In 1986, the authorities retracted the second round completely. Later in the same year, the authorities promulgated a final list of simplifications, which is identical to the 1964 list except for six changes (including the restoration of three characters that had been simplified in the first round: , , ; note that the form is used instead of in regions using traditional Chinese). In 1965, the PRC published the "Yinshua tongyong hanzi zixing biao" () ("List of commonly used characters for printing"), which included the standardized printing forms of 6196 characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: There had been simplification initiatives aimed at eradicating characters entirely and establishing the Hanyu Pinyin romanization as the official written system of the PRC, but the reform never gained quite as much popularity as the leftists had hoped. After the retraction of the second round of simplification, the PRC stated that it wished to keep Chinese orthography stable. Years later in 2009, the Chinese government released a major revision list which included 8,300 characters. No new simplifications were introduced. However, six characters previously listed as "traditional" characters that have been simplified, as well as 51 other "variant" characters, were restored to the standard list. In addition, orthographies (e.g., stroke shape) for 44 characters were proposed to be modified slightly to fit traditional calligraphic rules. Also, the practice of unrestricted simplification of rare and archaic characters by analogy using simplified radicals or components is now discouraged. A State Language Commission official cited "oversimplification" as the reason for restoring some characters. The language authority declared an open comment period until August 31, 2009 for feedback from the public. The proposed orthographic changes to 44 characters were not implemented due to overwhelmingly negative public opinion.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The officially promulgated version of the "Table of General Standard Chinese Characters", announced in 2013, contained 45 newly recognized standard characters that were previously considered variant forms, as well as official approval of 226 characters that had been simplified by analogy and had seen wide use but were not explicitly given in previous lists or documents.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification, eventually arriving at the same set of simplified characters as mainland China.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The first round, consisting of 498 simplified characters from 502 traditional characters, was promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 1969. The second round, consisting of 2287 simplified characters, was promulgated in 1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the mainland China system; those were removed in the final round in 1976. In 1993, Singapore adopted the six revisions made by mainland China in 1986. However, unlike in mainland China where personal names may only be registered using simplified characters, parents have the option of registering their children's names in traditional characters in Singapore.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Malaysia promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, which were also completely identical to the simplified characters used in mainland China. Chinese-language schools use these.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Traditional characters are still often seen on shop signs, calligraphy, and some newspapers in both countries.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: A small group called Dou Zi Sei () or Dou Zi Wui () attempted to introduce a special version of simplified characters using romanizations in the 1930s. Today, however, traditional characters remain dominant in Hong Kong.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: After World War II, Japan also simplified a number of Chinese characters ("kanji") used in the Japanese language. The new forms are called "shinjitai". Compared to Chinese, the Japanese reform was more limited, simplifying only a few hundred characters. Further, the list of simplifications was exhaustive, unlike Chinese simplification – thus analogous simplifications of not explicitly simplified characters ("extended shinjitai") are not approved, and instead standard practice is to use the traditional forms.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The number of characters in circulation was also reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. The overall effect was to standardize teaching and the use of kanji in modern literature and media.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: All characters simplified this way are enumerated in Chart 1 and Chart 2 in the . Characters in both charts are structurally simplified based on similar set of principles. They are separated into two charts to clearly mark those in Chart 2 as 'usable as simplified character components', based on which Chart 3 is derived.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Based on 132 characters and 14 components listed in Chart 2 of the , the 1,753 'derived' characters found in the non-exhaustive Chart 3 can be created by systematically simplifying components using Chart 2 as a conversion table. While exercising such derivation, following rules should be observed:


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The "Series One Organization List of Variant Characters" reduces the number of total standard characters. First, amongst each set of variant characters sharing identical pronunciation and meaning, one character (usually the simplest in form) is elevated to the standard character set, and the rest are obsoleted. Then amongst the chosen variants, those that appear in the "Complete List of Simplified Characters" are also simplified in character structure accordingly. Some examples follow:


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In some instance, the chosen variant is actually more complex than eliminated ones. An example is the character which is eliminated in favor of the variant form . Note that the "hand" radical , with three strokes, on the left of the eliminated is now "seen" as more complex, appearing as the "tree" radical , with four strokes, in the chosen variant .


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Not all characters standardised in the simplified set consists of fewer strokes. For instance, the traditional character , with 11 strokes is standardised as , with 12 strokes, which is a variant character. Such characters do not constitute simplified characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The new standardized character forms ( ) started in the "List of character forms of General Used Chinese characters for Publishing" and revised through the "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese" tend to adopt vulgar variant character forms. Since the new forms take vulgar variants, many characters now appear slightly simpler compared to old forms, and as such are often mistaken as structurally simplified characters. Some examples follow:


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: A commonly cited example of the irregularity of simplification involves characters that share the "hand" component , which is used in many simplified characters. While there is an observable pattern involving the replacement of 𦰩 with 又 as seen in → , → , → , → , → , etc., when observing that → , → , → , (not simplified) and (not simplified), an inconsistency arises. This is due to the fact that in the Complete List of Simplified Characters, → appears in Chart 1 while → is listed in Chart 2 and → as a derived character in the non-exhaustive list in Chart 3. Therefore, is defined as a 'simplified character component' according to the standard, while is not. Based on , is simplified to , and to . Since both → and → appear in Chart 1, they are not defined as derived characters. There are therefore no characters or components found in Chart 2 usable for derivation of and . Further investigation reveals that these two characters do not appear in Chart 1 nor in "Series One Organization List of Variant Characters". Thus they remain unchanged from traditional forms in the "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese".


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The People's Republic of China and Singapore generally use simplified characters. They appear very sparingly in printed text produced in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities, although they are becoming more prevalent as China opens to the world. Conversely, the mainland is seeing an increase in the use of traditional forms, where they are often used on signs, and in logos, blogs, dictionaries, and scholarly works.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The Law of the People's Republic of China on the National Common Language and Characters implies simplified Chinese as the standard script, with traditional Chinese being used for purposes such as ceremonies, cultural purposes (e.g. calligraphy), decoration, publications and books on ancient literature and poetry, and research purposes. Traditional Chinese remains ubiquitous on buildings predating the promotion of simplified characters, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese is also often used for commercial purposes, such as shopfront displays and advertisements.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: As part of the one country, two systems model, the PRC has not attempted to force Hong Kong or Macau into using simplified characters. The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, it prints versions of the "People's Daily" in traditional characters and both the "People's Daily" and Xinhua websites have versions in traditional characters using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters on their displays and packaging to communicate with consumers (the reverse is true as well).


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Textbooks, official statements, newspapers, including the PRC-funded media, show no signs of moving to simplified Chinese characters. However, some students may opt to use the simplified form when taking notes or doing test papers to write faster.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: It is common for Hong Kong people to learn traditional Chinese characters in school, and some simplified Chinese in passing (either through reading mainland-published books or other media). For use on computers, however, people tend to type Chinese characters using a traditional character set such as Big5. In Hong Kong, as well as elsewhere, it is common for people who use both sets to do so because it is much easier to convert from the traditional character set to the simplified character set because of the usage of the aforementioned methods 8 and 9 of simplification.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Simplified Chinese characters are not officially used in governmental and civil publications in Taiwan. However, it is legal to import simplified character publications and distribute them. Certain simplified characters that have long existed in informal writing for centuries also have popular usage, while those characters simplified originally by the Taiwanese government are much less common in daily appearance.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In all areas, most handwritten text will include informal simplifications (alternative script) which are not the same as the simplifications officially promulgated by the PRC and are often instead influenced by the "shinjitai" used in Japan. The informal simplification of the first character of "Taiwan", "Taipei", etc., from to rivals its orthodox form in commonality, even in print and in answers to school exams. This is because the adoption of simplified characters has been gradual and predates the Chinese Civil War by several decades and some are used beyond mainland China to some extent.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In Singapore, where Mandarin Chinese is one of the official languages, simplified characters are the official standard and are generally used in all official publications as well as the government-controlled press. While simplified characters are taught exclusively in schools and are generally used in all official publications, the government does not officially discourage the use of traditional characters and still allow parents to choose whether to have their child's Chinese name registered in simplified or traditional characters. Furthermore, traditional characters are widely used by older generations and are widespread on signboards, stall menus, and decorations, among others.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In Malaysia, Chinese is not an official language, but over 90% of ethnic-Chinese students are educated in Chinese schools, which have taught simplified characters since 1981. Likewise, traditional characters are also widely used by older generations and are widespread on signboards, etc., albeit more common than in Singapore. Most of Malaysia's Chinese newspapers compromise by retaining traditional characters in article headlines but using simplified characters for content.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: As there is no restriction of the use of traditional characters in the mass media, television programmes, books, magazines and music CD's that have been imported from Hong Kong or Taiwan are widely available, and these almost always use traditional characters. Most karaoke discs, being imported from Hong Kong or Taiwan, have song lyrics in traditional characters as well. Many shop signs continue to be written in traditional characters. Menus in hawker centres and coffee shops are also commonly seen in traditional characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In general, schools in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore use simplified characters exclusively, while schools in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan use traditional characters exclusively.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Today, simplified Chinese characters predominate among college and university programs teaching Chinese as a foreign language outside of China, such as those in the United States.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In December 2004, Ministry of Education authorities rejected a proposal from a Beijing Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) political conference member that called for elementary schools to teach traditional Chinese characters in addition to the simplified ones. The conference member pointed out that many, especially young people, have difficulties with traditional Chinese characters; this is especially important in dealing with non-mainland communities such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. The educational authorities did not approve the recommendation, saying that it did not fit in with the "requirements as set out by the law" and it could potentially complicate the curricula. A similar proposal was delivered to the first plenary session of the 11th CPPCC in March 2008.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Most, if not all, Chinese language textbooks in Hong Kong are written in traditional characters. Before 1997, the use of simplified characters was generally discouraged by educators. After 1997, while students are still expected to be proficient and utilize traditional characters in formal settings, they may sometimes adopt a hybrid written form in informal settings to speed up writing. With the exception of open examinations, simplified Chinese characters are considered acceptable by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority for their speed.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Chinese textbooks in Singapore and Malaysia are written exclusively in simplified characters, and only simplified characters are taught in school. Traditional characters are usually only taught to those taking up calligraphy as a co-curricular activity or Cantonese as an elective course at school.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: As the source of many Mandarin Chinese textbooks is mainland China, the majority of textbooks teaching Chinese are now based on simplified characters and Hanyu Pinyin – although there are textbooks originating in China which have a traditional version. For practical reasons, universities and schools prepare students who will be able to communicate with mainland China, so their obvious choice is to use simplified characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In places where a particular set is not locally entrenched, such as Europe and the United States, instruction is now mostly simplified, as the economic importance of mainland China increases, and also because of the availability of textbooks printed in mainland China. Teachers of international students often recommend learning both systems.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In the United Kingdom, universities mainly teach Mandarin Chinese at the undergraduate level using the simplified characters coupled with pinyin. However, they will require the students to learn or be able to recognise the traditional forms if they are studying in Taiwan or Hong Kong (such as taking Cantonese courses). In Australia and New Zealand, schools, universities and TAFEs use predominantly simplified characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Russia and most East European nations are traditionally oriented on the education of the PRC's system for teaching Chinese, which uses simplified characters but exposes the learners to both systems.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In South Korea, universities have used predominantly simplified characters since 1990s. In high school, Chinese is one of the selective subjects. By the regulation of the national curricula standards, MPS I and traditional characters had been originally used before (since the 1940s), but by the change of regulation, pinyin and simplified characters have been used to pupils who enter the school in 1996 or later. Therefore, MPS I and traditional characters disappeared after 1998 in South Korean high school Chinese curriculum.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In Japan there are two types of schools. Simplified Chinese is taught instead of traditional Chinese in pro-mainland China schools. They also teach Pinyin, a romanization system for standard Chinese, while the Taiwan-oriented schools teach Zhuyin, which uses phonetic symbols. However, the Taiwan-oriented schools are starting to teach simplified Chinese and Pinyin to offer a more well-rounded education.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In the Philippines, the use of simplified characters has become increasingly popular. Before the 1970s, Chinese schools in the Philippines were under the supervision of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China. Hence, most books were using traditional characters. Traditional characters remained prevalent until the early 2000s. Institutions like the Confucius Institute, being the cultural arm of the People's Republic of China, are strong proponents of the use of simplified characters. Also, many schools are now importing their Mandarin textbooks from Singapore instead of Taiwan.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Public universities such as the Linguistics and Asian Languages Department of the University of the Philippines use simplified characters in their teaching materials. On the other hand, private schools such as Chiang Kai Shek College and Saint Jude Catholic School remain major proponents of the usage of traditional characters. Some private universities, such as the Ateneo de Manila University, also use simplified characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In computer text applications, the GB encoding scheme most often renders simplified Chinese characters, while Big5 most often renders traditional characters. Although neither encoding has an explicit connection with a specific character set, the lack of a one-to-one mapping between the simplified and traditional sets established a de facto linkage.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Since simplified Chinese conflated many characters into one and since the initial version of the GB encoding scheme, known as GB 2312-80, contained only one code point for each character, it is impossible to use GB 2312 to map to the bigger set of traditional characters. It is theoretically possible to use Big5 code to map to the smaller set of simplified character glyphs, although there is little market for such a product. Newer and alternative forms of GB have support for traditional characters. In particular, mainland authorities have now established GB 18030 as the official encoding standard for use in all mainland software publications. The encoding contains all East Asian characters included in Unicode 3.0. As such, GB 18030 encoding contains both simplified and traditional characters found in Big-5 and GB, as well as all characters found in Japanese and Korean encodings.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Unicode deals with the issue of simplified and traditional characters as part of the project of Han unification by including code points for each. This was rendered necessary by the fact that the linkage between simplified characters and traditional characters is not one-to-one. While this means that a Unicode system can display both simplified and traditional characters, it also means that different localization files are needed for each type.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The Chinese characters used in modern Japanese (called Kanji characters) have also undergone simplification, but generally to a lesser extent than with simplified Chinese. It is worth mentioning that Japan's writing system utilizes a reduced number of Chinese characters in daily use, resulting partly from the Japanese language reforms; thus, a number of complex characters are written phonetically. Reconciling these different character sets in Unicode became part of the controversial process of Han unification. Not surprisingly, some of the Chinese characters used in Japan are neither 'traditional' nor 'simplified'. In this case, these characters cannot be found in traditional/simplified Chinese dictionaries.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: In font filenames and descriptions, the acronym SC is used to signify the use of simplified Chinese characters to differentiate fonts that use TC for traditional Chinese characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: The World Wide Web Consortium's Internationalization working group recommends the use of the language tag as a language attribute value and Content-Language value to specify web-page content in simplified Chinese characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: There are ongoing disputes among users of Chinese characters related to the introduction of simplified Chinese characters.


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Author Liu Shahe was an outspoken critic of the simplification of Chinese characters. He wrote a dedicated column entitled "Simplified Characters are Unreasonable" (简化字不讲理) in the Chinese edition of the "Financial Times".


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Traditional Chinese supporters sometimes refer to simplified Chinese as 殘體字 ( – 'crippled characters').


title: Simplified Chinese characters

text: Criticism of the simplifications does not necessarily imply sympathy for restoration of the traditional spelling since alternative simplifications are possible.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Tana Marie Mongeau ( , born June 24, 1998) is an American Internet personality. She is known to make "storytime" videos and similar content posted to her YouTube channel.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Tana Mongeau was born on June 24, 1998, to Rick and Rebecca Mongeau in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she was raised. While on "MTV No Filter: Tana Turns 21", Tana said that her parents lacked parenting skills which caused her to have a strained childhood.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Mongeau's most famous videos are her "storytime" videos. On February 10, 2017, Mongeau posted on her Snapchat that she was being investigated by the FBI after someone hacked into her emails and "sent a bombing and shooting threat to McCarran International Airport."


title: Tana Mongeau

text: On January 24, 2017, Mongeau posted a video titled "The N Word" which has received over 7 million views. In the video, she describes an encounter where a person on her tour (later revealed to be YouTuber iDubbbz) told her "say nigger", in response to a tweet posted by Mongeau to iDubbbz, telling him to kill himself for his comedic use of the word in his YouTube videos. iDubbbz, in turn, made a video outlining her hypocrisy, pointing out examples where she had previously and publicly used the word in a derogatory manner. On February 17, 2017, Mongeau posted a video in which she apologized for using the word.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Mongeau's debut single, "Hefner", was released in November 2017. The music video featured Bella Thorne. That same month, Mongeau was featured on an episode of "Maury". Mongeau collaborated with Lil Phag and Dr. Woke on a song titled "Deadahh" that was released on December 15, 2017. She released her second solo single, "W", on March 1, 2018. Her third solo single, "Fuck Up", was released on August 31, 2018.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Mongeau announced on May 26, 2018, that she would be hosting her own convention, titled TanaCon, at the same time and in the same city as VidCon 2018, from June 22–23. Mongeau intended TanaCon to be an alternative to VidCon after the VidCon 2017 organizers failed to give Mongeau the rights at the convention of a "featured creator". TanaCon took place in Anaheim, California, at the Anaheim Marriott Suites, on June 22, 2018, and was canceled the same day. Over 80 creators were set to hold panels at the event including Bella Thorne, Shane Dawson, Casey Neistat, Miranda Sings, Ricky Dillon, Elijah Daniel, Jenn McAllister, Gabbie Hanna, Trevi Moran, Lisa Schwartz, and Jack Baran. Despite Mongeau's claims that 20,000 people tried to attend the convention, 4,000 to 5,000 people attended at most, and the Marriott was not capable of holding even that many people. Those who attended or lined up to attend complained of lack of food and water and standing for hours in the sun. It was reported that many people were sunburned and that some people passed out because of the heat. The event had received much attention and criticism. "The Verge" said that fans were comparing it to Fyre Festival, and attendees were yelling "refund" after the event. Dawson said that agreeing to appear at TanaCon was the "worst decision [he] ever made." Mongeau later apologized and said that refunds would be issued. Dawson later released a three-part documentary style series of YouTube videos that shared Mongeau and other people involved in the convention's perspectives on the event. TanaCon was organized in collaboration with actor and producer Michael Weist.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: It was announced on April 29, 2019, that Mongeau will be starring on her own MTV reality series titled "MTV No Filter: Tana Turns 21" premiering Summer 2019. Mongeau's fourth solo single, "FaceTime", was released on May 18, 2019, alongside its music video. In May 2019, VidCon said that Mongeau would be a featured creator at the convention. VidCon cofounder Hank Green had said in 2018 that he had "100% screwed up" in not inviting Mongeau to VidCon 2017 as a featured creator.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Mongeau is openly bisexual. At the start of her YouTube career, Mongeau was in a relationship with Somer Hollingsworth and he was featured in many of her vlogs before the couple broke up in June 2017. Mongeau was in a relationship with Bella Thorne from the summer of 2017 to February 2019, including a period in which she, Thorne, and singer Mod Sun were a throuple.


title: Tana Mongeau

text: Mongeau began dating social media personality Jake Paul in April 2019. In June 2019, the couple announced that they were engaged, although many fans and commentators did not believe that the engagement was legitimate. On July 28 of that year, Paul and Mongeau exchanged vows in Las Vegas. "InTouch" later reported that the couple had not obtained a marriage license prior to the ceremony and that the officiant was also not licensed by the state of Nevada. As a result, the marriage was not legally binding. "Buzzfeed" reported that Paul and Mongeau left the ceremony separately. The ceremony, which was available on pay-per-view for $50, was recorded for "MTV No Filter: Tana Turns 21". On an episode of the show, Mongeau stated that the ceremony was something "fun and lighthearted that we're obviously doing for fun and for content." The couple announced their breakup in January 2020.


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: Stuart Bruce Greenwood (born August 12, 1956) is a Canadian actor and producer. He is known for his role as the American president John F. Kennedy in "Thirteen Days," for which he won the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, and as Captain Christopher Pike in J. J. Abrams's "Star Trek" reboot series. He has been nominated for three Canadian Screen Awards, once for Best Actor (for "Elephant Song") and twice for Best Supporting Actor (for "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Being Julia"). In television, he starred as Gil Garcetti in "", and has appeared in "Mad Men", "St. Elsewhere", "Knots Landing", and "John from Cincinnati". He currently stars as Dr. Randolph Bell in the Amy Holden Jones-created medical drama "The Resident".


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: He has appeared in supporting roles in such films as "", "", "Hollywood Homicide", "Double Jeopardy", "Déjà Vu", "I, Robot", "Dinner for Schmucks", "Capote", "The Post" and as the motion-capture alien dubbed "Cooper" in "Super 8". He is also a voice actor; his voice roles include Chiron in the Canadian animated series "Class of the Titans" and Bruce Wayne / Batman in "", "Young Justice", "" and "".


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: Greenwood was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, the son of Mary Sylvia (née Ledingham), a nurse who worked in an extended care unit, and Hugh John Greenwood, a Vancouver-born geophysicist and professor who taught at Princeton University.


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: Greenwood is known in the United States for his appearances in "Star Trek"; "I, Robot"; "Double Jeopardy"; "The Core"; "Thirteen Days" as president John F. Kennedy; "Capote" as Jack Dunphy, Truman Capote's lover; "Eight Below" as Professor Davis McClaren; and "Firehouse Dog". He is also known for his role in the video game "" as the voice of Overlord.


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: He had prominent roles in the award-winning Atom Egoyan films "Exotica", "The Sweet Hereafter", and "Ararat". He appeared in the 1980s teen cult film "The Malibu Bikini Shop" and starred in "". He played a role in "The World's Fastest Indian" and also featured in the Bob Dylan biographical film "I'm Not There". He appeared in "Dinner for Schmucks" as the cruel executive who hosts a dinner for "idiots".


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: On television, Greenwood has appeared on "St. Elsewhere" (Dr. Seth Griffin, 1986–88) and "Knots Landing" (Pierce Lawton, 1991–92), and starred in the UPN series "Nowhere Man" (Thomas Veil, 1995–96). He also guest-starred in one episode of the popular Canadian show "Road to Avonlea", for which he won a Gemini Award for "Best Guest Performance in a Series by an Actor".


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: On June 10, 2007, HBO's "John from Cincinnati" premiered, starring Greenwood. He also appears as the President of the United States in "". He played Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson in "Summer Dreams: Story of the Beach Boys". In 2009, he worked with Australian director Bruce Beresford, playing the part of Ben Stevenson (artistic director of Houston Ballet), in the critically acclaimed film "Mao's Last Dancer". He voiced Bruce Wayne / Batman in the animated film "", the animated series "Young Justice", and the animated short film "".


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: He played the lead role in the horror thriller "Cell 213". He was the lead for the Steven Spielberg produced 2012 ABC series "The River," and reprised his role as Admiral Christopher Pike for J. J. Abrams' "Star Trek Into Darkness". In 2015, he had a recurring role in the last season of "Mad Men" as Richard Burghoff, a romantic interest for Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks).


title: Bruce Greenwood

text: Greenwood is married to Susan Devlin. They live in Pacific Palisades, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1973 by guitarist Rick Nielsen, bassist Tom Petersson, lead vocalist Robin Zander and drummer Bun E. Carlos. The current lineup of the band consists of Zander, Nielsen and Petersson.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick released their self-titled debut album in 1977 and, later that year, found success in Japan with the release of their second album, "In Color". The band would achieve mainstream popularity in the United States in 1979 with their breakthrough album "Cheap Trick at Budokan". Cheap Trick reached the Top 10 in the US charts in 1979 with the "Budokan" live version of "I Want You to Want Me" and topped the charts in 1988 with "The Flame".


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick has performed live more than 5,000 times and sold more than 20 million albums. Over the course of its career, the band has experienced several resurgences of popularity and built a dedicated cult following. Cheap Trick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: Cheap Trick

text: In 1967, Rick Nielsen formed Fuse with Tom Peterson (later known as Tom Petersson), who had played in another Rockford, Illinois, band called The Bo Weevils. With Bun E. Carlos joining on drums, Fuse moved to Philadelphia in 1971. From 1972 to 1973, they called themselves Sick Man of Europe. After a European tour in 1973, Nielsen and Petersson returned to Rockford and reunited with Carlos. According to "Rolling Stone", the band adopted the name Cheap Trick on August 15, 1973. The name was inspired by the band's attendance at a Slade concert, where Petersson commented that the band used "every cheap trick in the book" as part of their act.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Randy "Xeno" Hogan was the original lead singer for Cheap Trick. He left the band shortly after its formation and was replaced by Robin Zander.


title: Cheap Trick

text: With Robin Zander now on vocals, the band recorded a demo in 1975 and played in warehouses, bowling alleys, and various other venues around the midwestern United States. The band was signed to Epic Records in early 1976. The band released its first album, "Cheap Trick", in early 1977. While favored by critics, the album did not sell well. The album's lone single, "Oh, Candy", failed to chart, as did the album. Their second album, "In Color", was released later that year. The singles "I Want You To Want Me" and "Southern Girls" failed to chart. However, in 2012, "In Color" was ranked No. 443 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.


title: Cheap Trick

text: When Cheap Trick toured in Japan for the first time in April 1978, they were received with a frenzy reminiscent of Beatlemania. During the tour, Cheap Trick recorded two concerts at the Nippon Budokan. Ten tracks taken from both shows were compiled and released as a live album entitled "Cheap Trick at Budokan", which was intended to be exclusive to Japan.


title: Cheap Trick

text: The band's third studio album, "Heaven Tonight" was released in May 1978. The lead-off track "Surrender" was Cheap Trick's first single to chart in the United States, peaking at No. 62. It has gone on to become one of the band's signature songs.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Demand for "Cheap Trick at Budokan" became so great that Epic Records finally released the album in the U.S. in February 1979. "Cheap Trick at Budokan" launched the band into international stardom, and the album went triple platinum in the United States. The first single from the album was the live version of "I Want You to Want Me", which had originally been released on "In Color". It reached No. 7 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and became Cheap Trick's best-selling single to date. The second single, "Ain't That A Shame", peaked at No. 35. "Need Your Love" had already been recorded for the forthcoming "Dream Police" album that had already been finished, but after the unprecedented success of "Cheap Trick at Budokan", Epic postponed the album's release.


title: Cheap Trick

text: "Dream Police" was released later in 1979, and was their third album in a row produced by Tom Werman. The title track of the album was a hit single, as was "Voices". "Dream Police" also found the band taking its style in a more experimental direction by incorporating strings and dabbling in heavy metal on tracks like "Gonna Raise Hell". By 1980, Cheap Trick was headlining arenas.


title: Cheap Trick

text: On August 26, 1980, Petersson left the group to record a solo album with his wife Dagmar, using the band name Another Language. Jon Brant became Petersson's steady replacement, after a year of Cheap Trick touring and recording with Peter Comita.


title: Cheap Trick

text: "All Shook Up" (1980), produced by former Beatles producer George Martin, reached No. 24 on the charts and was certified gold. However, the album's high-class background did not save it from descriptions like "Led Zeppelin gone psycho".


title: Cheap Trick

text: In July 1981, CBS Inc. sued Cheap Trick and their manager Ken Adamany for $10 million, alleging they were attempting to coerce CBS into re-negotiating their contract and had refused to record any new material for the label since October 1980. The lawsuit was settled in early 1982 and work commenced on the next album: "One on One". The album spawned two minor hits with the power ballad "If You Want My Love" (which peaked at no. 45) and the innuendo-laced rocker "She's Tight" (which peaked at no. 65).


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick released "Next Position Please" in 1983. The album's two singles, "Dancing the Night Away" and "I Can't Take It," failed to chart.


title: Cheap Trick

text: In 1984, the band recorded the title track to the Tim Matheson comedy "Up The Creek", which Nielsen later called "one of the worst" songs he'd ever written.


title: Cheap Trick

text: The band released "Standing on the Edge" in 1985. This album was called their "best collection of bubblegum bazooka rock in years". The album's first single, "Tonight It's You", reached No. 8 on "Billboard"s Top Rock Tracks chart.


title: Cheap Trick

text: In 1986, the band recorded "Mighty Wings", the end-title cut for the film "Top Gun". They then released "The Doctor" in the fall. The album's lone single, "It's Only Love", failed to chart. The music video for "It's Only Love" made history as the first music video to use captioning for hearing-impaired persons. "The Doctor" turned out to be the band's final album with Jon Brant as bassist.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Petersson rejoined the group in 1987 and helped record 1988's "Lap of Luxury", produced by Richie Zito. Due to the band's commercial decline, Epic Records insisted that the band collaborate with professional songwriters on the album. Nielsen said, ""Lap of Luxury" was a tough record to make. We could lie to you and tell you it was all wonderful and great. It wasn't. It was tough working with other writers. But it was a lesson for us."


title: Cheap Trick

text: "The Flame", a ballad, was issued as the first single from the album, and became the band's first-ever No. 1 hit. The second single, a cover of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel", peaked at no. 4. The other singles from the album were "Ghost Town", "Never Had a Lot to Lose", and "Let Go"; "Ghost Town" and "Never Had a Lot to Lose" also charted. "Lap of Luxury" went platinum and became recognized as the band's comeback album. "Billboard" commented: "After a long hitless streak, Cheap Trick brings it all back home. This is the quartet's punchiest effort since its mid-'70s heyday."


title: Cheap Trick

text: "Busted" was released in 1990. The band was allowed more creative control, and professional songwriters were only used on a handful of songs. The first single, "Can't Stop Falling Into Love", reached on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and on the Album Rock Tracks chart. The second single, the Diane Warren-penned "Wherever Would I Be", reached on the charts. The single "If You Need Me" was not successful, although the track "Back 'n Blue" reached on the U.S. "Billboard" Album Rock Tracks chart.


title: Cheap Trick

text: The group left Epic after the disappointing sales of "Busted" to sign with Warner Bros. Records. In 1994, the band released "Woke Up With A Monster". The album's title track was issued as the first single and reached No. 16 on the US Mainstream Rock charts. The album's sales were poor, and it peaked at only No. 123.


title: Cheap Trick

text: In 1997, Cheap Trick signed with indie label Red Ant Records and released "Cheap Trick". The band attempted to re-introduce themselves to a new generation, as the album was self-titled and the artwork was similar to their first album which had been released twenty years before. The album was critically acclaimed and hailed as a return to form. Eleven weeks after the release, Red Ant's parent company Alliance Entertainment Corporation declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The single "Say Goodbye" only reached No. 119 on the charts, and the band again found themselves without a record label. Two other singles were released from the album, "Baby No More" and "Carnival Game".


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick began to rebuild in 1998. The band toured behind the release of "Cheap Trick at Budokan: The Complete Concert", and the remastered re-issues of the band's first three albums. One of the multi-night stands from this tour resulted in "Music for Hangovers", a live album that featured members of the Smashing Pumpkins on two tracks. In 1999, the band recorded a cover of Big Star's 1972 song "In The Street" that was used as the theme song for the hit sitcom "That '70s Show". Cheap Trick ended the song with the lyric "We're all all right," which was drawn from their own 1978 song "Surrender".


title: Cheap Trick

text: After spending much of 2001 writing songs and about six weeks in pre-production, Cheap Trick went into Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York in March 2002, where they recorded their first studio album in six years, "Special One" in May 2003.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick released "Rockford" on Cheap Trick Unlimited/Big3 Records in 2006. The first single from the album was "Perfect Stranger" (produced by Linda Perry and co-written by Cheap Trick and Perry). The band also appeared in a McDonald's advertising campaign called "This Is Your Wake-Up Call" featuring the band.


title: Cheap Trick

text: In 2007, officials of Rockford, Illinois honored Cheap Trick by reproducing the "Rockford" album cover art on that year's city vehicle sticker. On June 19, 2007, the Illinois Senate passed Senate Resolution 255, which designated April 1 of every year as Cheap Trick Day in the State of Illinois. In August of that year, Cheap Trick honored the 40th anniversary of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by playing the album in its entirety with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, conducted by Edwin Outwater, along with guest vocalists including Joan Osborne and Aimee Mann.


title: Cheap Trick

text: On April 24, 2008, Cheap Trick performed at the Budokan arena for the 30th anniversary of the 1978 album "Cheap Trick at Budokan".


title: Cheap Trick

text: Bun E. Carlos stopped touring and recording with the band in 2010. Rick Nielsen's son Daxx, who had filled in for Bun E. while he was recovering from back surgery in 2001, became the band's touring drummer.


title: Cheap Trick

text: On July 17, 2011, at the Bluesfest in Ottawa, a thunderstorm blew through the festival area 20 minutes into the band's set. The band and crew were on the stage when, without warning, the 40-ton roof fell. It fell away from the audience and landed on the band's truck, which was parked alongside the back of the stage, the van broke the fall and allowed everyone about 30 seconds to escape.


title: Cheap Trick

text: Carlos filed a lawsuit against his former bandmates in 2013. He claimed that even though they claimed that he was departed from Cheap Trick, he was not being allowed to participate in band-related activities, including recording. The remaining three members of Cheap Trick filed a countersuit, seeking a legal affirmation of their removal of Carlos. Their lawsuit was dismissed in late 2013. The legal dispute was eventually settled. Following the settlement, Carlos did not record or tour with them. However, the three remaining members decided they would continue Cheap Trick as a trio.


title: Cheap Trick

text: On April 1, 2016, the band released its first album in five years, "Bang, Zoom, Crazy... Hello". They released a single, "No Direction Home," as a teaser for the album. The album was the band's first record on a major label in 22 years. Daxx Nielsen played drums on the album.


title: Cheap Trick

text: On June 16, 2017, the band released the album "We're All Alright!". Daxx Nielsen played drums on the album. In August 2017, the band appeared on Insane Clown Posse's single "Black Blizzard". On October 20, 2017, the band released a Christmas album, "Christmas Christmas".


title: Cheap Trick

text: On January 29, 2021, Cheap Trick released the single "Light Up The Fire" in the run up to their album "In Another World", due for release on April 9, 2021.


title: Cheap Trick

text: The band was announced as part of the 2021 Australian concert series, Under the Southern Stars, alongside Bush and Stone Temple Pilots. They replaced original headliners Live on the bill. In April 2021, the concert series was postponed to 2022.


title: Cheap Trick

text: When Petersson was sidelined from touring in 2021 due to open heart surgery, Zander's son Robin Taylor Zander filled in for him on tour.


title: Cheap Trick

text: In 2016, Cheap Trick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony was held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on April 8, and the band was introduced by Kid Rock. Zander, Nielsen, Petersson, and Carlos were in attendance; with Carlos on drums, the band performed "I Want You to Want Me", "Dream Police", "Surrender" and "Ain't That a Shame".


title: Cheap Trick

text: Cheap Trick have been cited as an influence on several artists in the alternative rock and power pop genre, including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: Frances Ruth Shand Kydd (previously Spencer, "née" Roche; 20 January 1936 – 3 June 2004) was the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales. She was the maternal grandmother of William, Prince of Wales and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, respectively first and fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. Following her divorce from Viscount Althorp in 1969, and Diana's death in 1997, Shand Kydd devoted the final years of her life to Catholic charity work.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: She was born Frances Ruth Roche at Park House, on the royal estate at Sandringham, Norfolk, on 20 January 1936. Her birth was on the same day as the death of George V. Her father was Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy, a friend of George VI and the elder son of the American heiress Frances Ellen Work and her first husband, the 3rd Baron Fermoy. Her mother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, a daughter of Colonel William Smith Gill, was a confidante and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother). Since birth, she held the style of "The Honourable" as the daughter of a baron.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: On 1 June 1954, she married John Spencer, Viscount Althorp (later the 8th Earl Spencer), at Westminster Abbey. Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family attended the wedding ceremony. She was 18 years old and became the youngest woman wed in Westminster Abbey in the last five decades.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: Her marriage to Viscount Althorp was not a happy one and, in 1967, she left him to be with Peter Shand Kydd, an heir to a wallpaper fortune in Australia, whom she had met the year before. His half-brother was the former champion amateur jockey William Shand Kydd (1937–2014), who was the brother-in-law of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan. Subsequently, she was called "the other woman" in Janet Shand Kydd's divorce action against her husband. Frances lived with her two youngest children, Diana and Charles, in London during the separation in 1967, but during that year's Christmas holidays, Viscount Althorp refused to let his children return to London with their mother. He was granted custody of their children by the courts after his former mother-in-law, Lady Fermoy, testified against her own daughter Frances.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: Frances and Peter Shand Kydd were married on 2 May 1969 and lived on the Scottish island of Seil, where they bought an 18th-century farmhouse called Ardencaple, 10 kilometres from Oban. She divided her time between London, Seil and another sheep farm in Yass, New South Wales. On 14 July 1976, John Spencer, now the 8th Earl Spencer, married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, daughter of the novelist Dame Barbara Cartland. Although Frances lived a quiet life, she was forced into public view following the engagement of her daughter Diana to Prince Charles on 24 February 1981. Frances and her second husband Peter separated in June 1988. In 1993 Shand Kydd married Marie-Pierre Palmer ("née" Bécret),<ref name="standard/7231369"></ref><ref name="thefreelibrary/a0117653046"></ref> a French woman who ran a champagne-importing business in London. which lasted until April 1995.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: In 1996, she was banned from driving after being convicted of drunk-driving, but denied she had a problem with alcohol. She and Diana quarrelled in May 1997, after she told "Hello!" magazine that Diana was happy to lose her style of "Royal Highness" following her controversial divorce from Prince Charles. She was reportedly not on speaking terms with her daughter by the time of Diana's death.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: She spent her later years in solitude on Seil. She became a Roman Catholic and devoted herself to Catholic charities. She eventually became involved with HCPT - The Hosanna House and Children's Pilgrimage Trust, the Royal National Mission for Deep Sea Fishermen, the Mallaig and Northwest Fishermen's Association, and the National Search and Rescue Dogs Association.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: In October 2002, when Frances left her Scottish home to give testimony at the trial of Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, burglars targeted her house and stole her jewellery.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: Frances died at her home in Scotland at the age of 68 on 3 June 2004, following a long illness that included Parkinson's disease and brain cancer. Her funeral at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Oban on 10 June was attended by her children and grandchildren, including prince William (who gave a reading) and Harry. Their father, her former son-in-law, Prince Charles, did not attend because he was travelling to Washington to lead the British delegation at the state funeral of the former US President Ronald Reagan the following day. Frances was buried in Pennyfuir Cemetery in Oban, Argyll and Bute.


title: Frances Shand Kydd

text: In 2004, Maxine Riddington published a biographical book about her, entitled "Frances: The Remarkable Story of Princess Diana's Mother".


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Toward the end of his life, he spent ten years in French Polynesia. The paintings from this time depict people or landscapes from that region.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: His work was influential on the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and he is well known for his relationship with Vincent and Theo van Gogh. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career and assisted in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way for Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential practitioner of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin was born in Paris to Clovis Gauguin and Aline Chazal on 7 June 1848, the year of revolutionary upheavals throughout Europe. His father, a 34-year-old liberal journalist from a family of entrepreneurs in Orléans, was compelled to flee France when the newspaper for which he wrote was suppressed by French authorities. Gauguin's mother was the 22-year-old daughter of André Chazal, an engraver, and Flora Tristan, an author and activist in early socialist movements. Their union ended when André assaulted his wife Flora and was sentenced to prison for attempted murder.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Paul Gauguin's maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, was the illegitimate daughter of Thérèse Laisnay and Don Mariano de Tristan Moscoso. Details of Thérèse's family background are not known; Don Mariano came from an aristocratic Spanish family from the Peruvian city of Arequipa. He was an officer of the Dragoons. Members of the wealthy Tristan Moscoso family held powerful positions in Peru. Nonetheless, Don Mariano's unexpected death plunged his mistress and daughter Flora into poverty. When Flora's marriage with André failed, she petitioned for and obtained a small monetary settlement from her father's Peruvian relatives. She sailed to Peru in hopes of enlarging her share of the Tristan Moscoso family fortune. This never materialized; but she successfully published a popular travelogue of her experiences in Peru which launched her literary career in 1838. An active supporter of early socialist societies, Gauguin's maternal grandmother helped to lay the foundations for the 1848 revolutionary movements. Placed under surveillance by French police and suffering from overwork, she died in 1844. Her grandson Paul "idolized his grandmother, and kept copies of her books with him to the end of his life".


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1850, Clovis Gauguin departed for Peru with his wife Aline and young children in hopes of continuing his journalistic career under the auspices of his wife's South American relations. He died of a heart attack en route, and Aline arrived in Peru as a widow with the 18-month-old Paul and his 2 year-old sister, Marie. Gauguin's mother was welcomed by her paternal granduncle, whose son-in-law, José Rufino Echenique, would shortly assume the presidency of Peru. To the age of six, Paul enjoyed a privileged upbringing, attended by nursemaids and servants. He retained a vivid memory of that period of his childhood which instilled "indelible impressions of Peru that haunted him the rest of his life".


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin's idyllic childhood ended abruptly when his family mentors fell from political power during Peruvian civil conflicts in 1854. Aline returned to France with her children, leaving Paul with his paternal grandfather, Guillaume Gauguin, in Orléans. Deprived by the Peruvian Tristan Moscoso clan of a generous annuity arranged by her granduncle, Aline settled in Paris to work as a dressmaker.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: After attending a couple of local schools, Gauguin was sent to the prestigious Catholic boarding school Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin. He spent three years at the school. At the age of 14, he entered the Loriol Institute in Paris, a naval preparatory school, before returning to Orléans to take his final year at the Lycée Jeanne D'Arc. Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine. Three years later, he joined the French navy in which he served for two years. His mother died on 7 July 1867, but he did not learn of it for several months until a letter from his sister Marie caught up with him in India.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. A close family friend, Gustave Arosa, got him a job at the Paris Bourse; Gauguin was 23. He became a successful Parisian businessman and remained one for the next 11 years. In 1879 he was earning 30,000 francs a year (about $145,000 in 2019 US dollars) as a stockbroker, and as much again in his dealings in the art market. But in 1882 the Paris stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Gauguin's earnings deteriorated sharply and he eventually decided to pursue painting full-time.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad (1850–1920). Over the next ten years, they had five children: Émile (1874–1955); Aline (1877–1897); Clovis (1879–1900); Jean René (1881–1961); and Paul Rollon (1883–1961). By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he pursued a business career as a tarpaulin salesman. It was not a success: He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins. Mette became the chief breadwinner, giving French lessons to trainee diplomats.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin was driven to paint full-time. He returned to Paris in 1885, after his wife and her family asked him to leave because he had renounced the values they shared. Gauguin's last physical contact with them was in 1891, and Mette eventually broke with him decisively in 1894.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1873, around the time he became a stockbroker, Gauguin began painting in his free time. His Parisian life centered on the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Gauguin lived at 15, rue la Bruyère. Nearby were the cafés frequented by the Impressionists. Gauguin also visited galleries frequently and purchased work by emerging artists. He formed a friendship with Camille Pissarro and visited him on Sundays to paint in his garden. Pissarro introduced him to various other artists. In 1877 Gauguin "moved downmarket and across the river to the poorer, newer, urban sprawls" of Vaugirard. Here, on the third floor at 8 rue Carcel, he had his first home with a studio.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: His close friend Émile Schuffenecker, a former stockbroker who also aspired to become an artist, lived close by. Gauguin showed paintings in Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882 (earlier, a sculpture of his son Émile had been the only sculpture in the 4th Impressionist Exhibition of 1879). His paintings received dismissive reviews, although several of them, such as "The Market Gardens of Vaugirard", are now highly regarded.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1882, the stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' primary art dealer, was especially affected by the crash, and for a period of time stopped buying pictures from painters such as Gauguin. Gauguin's earnings contracted sharply, and over the next two years he slowly formulated his plans to become a full-time artist. The following two summers, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In October 1883, he wrote to Pissarro saying that he had decided to make his living from painting at all costs and asked for his help, which Pissarro at first readily provided. The following January, Gauguin moved with his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply and where he thought he had discerned opportunities when visiting Pissarro there the previous summer. However, the venture proved unsuccessful, and by the end of the year Mette and the children moved to Copenhagen, Gauguin following shortly after in November 1884, bringing with him his art collection, which subsequently remained in Copenhagen.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Life in Copenhagen proved equally difficult, and their marriage grew strained. At Mette's urging, supported by her family, Gauguin returned to Paris the following year.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, accompanied by his six-year-old son Clovis. The other children remained with Mette in Copenhagen, where they had the support of family and friends while Mette herself was able to get work as a translator and French teacher. Gauguin initially found it difficult to re-enter the art world in Paris and spent his first winter back in real poverty, obliged to take a series of menial jobs. Clovis eventually fell ill and was sent to a boarding school, Gauguin's sister Marie providing the funds. During this first year, Gauguin produced very little art. He exhibited 19 paintings and a wood relief at the eighth (and last) Impressionist exhibition in May 1886.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Most of these paintings were earlier work from Rouen or Copenhagen and there was nothing really novel in the few new ones, although his "Baigneuses à Dieppe" ("Women Bathing") introduced what was to become a recurring motif, the woman in the waves. Nevertheless, Félix Bracquemond did purchase one of his paintings. This exhibition also established Georges Seurat as leader of the "avant-garde" movement in Paris. Gauguin contemptuously rejected Seurat's Neo-Impressionist Pointillist technique and later in the year broke decisively with Pissarro, who from that point on was rather antagonistic towards Gauguin.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin spent the summer of 1886 in the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. He was attracted in the first place because it was cheap to live there. However, he found himself an unexpected success with the young art students who flocked there in the summer. His naturally pugilistic temperament (he was both an accomplished boxer and fencer) was no impediment in the socially relaxed seaside resort. He was remembered during that period as much for his outlandish appearance as for his art. Amongst these new associates was Charles Laval, who would accompany Gauguin the following year to Panama and Martinique.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: That summer, he executed some pastel drawings of nude figures in the manner of Pissarro and those by Degas exhibited at the 1886 eighth Impressionist exhibition. He mainly painted landscapes such as "La Bergère Bretonne" ("The Breton Shepherdess"), in which the figure plays a subordinate role. His "Jeunes Bretons au bain" ("Young Breton Boys Bathing"), introducing a theme he returned to each time he visited Pont-Aven, is clearly indebted to Degas in its design and bold use of pure colour. The naive drawings of the English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, used to illustrate a popular guide-book on Brittany, had caught the imagination of the "avant-garde" student artists at Pont-Aven, anxious to free themselves from the conservatism of their academies, and Gauguin consciously imitated them in his sketches of Breton girls. These sketches were later worked up into paintings back in his Paris studio. The most important of these is "Four Breton Women", which shows a marked departure from his earlier Impressionist style as well as incorporating something of the naive quality of Caldecott's illustration, exaggerating features to the point of caricature.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin, along with Émile Bernard, Charles Laval, Émile Schuffenecker and many others, re-visited Pont-Aven after his travels in Panama and Martinique. The bold use of pure colour and Symbolist choice of subject matter distinguish what is now called the Pont-Aven School. Disappointed with Impressionism, Gauguin felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan (Japonism). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin's work evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic Édouard Dujardin to describe Émile Bernard's method of painting with flat areas of colour and bold outlines, which reminded Dujardin of the Medieval cloisonné enameling technique. Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in his art.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In Gauguin's "The Yellow Christ" (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour, thereby dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards Synthetism in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1887, Gauguin left France along with his friend, another young painter, Charles Laval. His dream was to purchase land of his own on the small Panamanian island of Taboga, where he stated he desired to live "on fish and fruit and for nothing… without anxiety for the day or for the morrow." By the time he reached the port city of Colón, Gauguin was out of money and found work as a laborer on the French construction of the Panama Canal. During this time, Gauguin penned letters to his wife, Mette, lamenting the arduous conditions: "I have to dig… from five-thirty in the morning to six in the evening, under the tropical sun and rain," he wrote. "At night I am devoured by mosquitoes." Meanwhile, Laval had been earning money by drawing portraits of canal officials, work which Gauguin detested since only portraits done in a lewd manner would sell.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin held a profound contempt for Panama, and at one point was arrested in Panama City for urinating in public. Marched across town at gunpoint, Gaugin was ordered to pay a fine of four francs. After discovering that land on Taboga was priced far beyond reach (and after falling deathly ill on the island where he was subsequently interned in a yellow fever and malaria sanatorium), he decided to leave Panama.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Later that same year, Gauguin and Laval spent the time from June to November near Saint Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique, a French colony. His thoughts and experiences during this time are recorded in his letters to his wife and his artist friend Emile Schuffenecker. At the time, France had a policy of repatriation where if a citizen became broke or stranded on a French colony, the state would pay for the boat ride back. Upon leaving Panama, protected by the repatriation policy, Gauguin and Laval decided to disembark at the Martinique port of St. Pierre. Scholars disagree on whether Gauguin intentionally or spontaneously decided to stay on the island.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: At first, the 'negro hut' in which they lived suited him, and he enjoyed watching people in their daily activities. However, the weather in the summer was hot and the hut leaked in the rain. Gauguin also suffered dysentery and marsh fever. While in Martinique, he produced between 10 and 20 works (12 being the most common estimate), traveled widely and apparently came into contact with a small community of Indian immigrants; a contact that would later influence his art through the incorporation of Indian symbols. During his stay, the writer Lafcadio Hearn was also on the island. His account provides an historical comparison to accompany Gauguin's images.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin finished 11 known paintings during his stay in Martinique, many of which seem to be derived from his hut. His letters to Schuffenecker express an excitement about the exotic location and natives represented in his paintings. Gauguin asserted that four of his paintings on the island were better than the rest. The works as a whole are brightly coloured, loosely painted, outdoor figural scenes. Even though his time on the island was short, it surely was influential. He recycled some of his figures and sketches in later paintings, such as the motif in "Among the Mangoes", which is replicated on his fans. Rural and indigenous populations remained a popular subject in Gauguin's work after he left the island.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin's Martinique paintings were exhibited at his colour merchant Arsène Poitier's gallery. There they were seen and admired by Vincent van Gogh and his art dealer brother Theo, whose firm Goupil & Cie had dealings with Portier. Theo purchased three of Gauguin's paintings for 900 francs and arranged to have them hung at Goupil's, thus introducing Gauguin to wealthy clients. This arrangement with Goupil's continued past Theo's death in 1891. At the same time, Vincent and Gauguin became close friends (on Vincent's part it amounted to something akin to adulation) and they corresponded together on art, a correspondence that was instrumental in Gauguin formulating his philosophy of art.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1888, at Theo's instigation, Gauguin and Vincent spent nine weeks painting together at Vincent's Yellow House in Arles in the South of France. Gauguin's relationship with Vincent proved fraught. Their relationship deteriorated and eventually Gauguin decided to leave. On the evening of 23 December 1888, according to a much later account of Gauguin's, Vincent confronted Gauguin with a straight razor. Later the same evening, he cut off his own left ear. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and handed it to a woman who worked at a brothel Gauguin and Vincent had both visited, and asked her to "keep this object carefully, in remembrance of me". Vincent was hospitalized the following day and Gauguin left Arles. They never saw each other again, but they continued to correspond, and in 1890 Gauguin went so far as to propose they form an artist studio in Antwerp. An 1889 sculptural self-portrait "Jug in the Form of a Head" appears to reference Gauguin's traumatic relationship with Vincent.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin later claimed to have been instrumental in influencing Vincent van Gogh's development as a painter at Arles. While Vincent did briefly experiment with Gauguin's theory of "painting from the imagination" in paintings such as "Memory of the Garden at Etten", it did not suit him and he quickly returned to painting from nature.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Although Gauguin made some of his early strides in the world of art under Pissarro, Edgar Degas was Gauguin's most admired contemporary artist and a great influence on his work from the beginning, with his figures and interiors as well as a carved and painted medallion of singer Valérie Roumi. He had a deep reverence for Degas' artistic dignity and tact. It was Gauguin's healthiest, longest-lasting friendship, spanning his entire artistic career until his death.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In addition to being one of his earliest supporters, including buying Gauguin's work and persuading dealer Paul Durand-Ruel to do the same, there was never a public support for Gauguin more unwavering than from Degas. Gauguin also purchased work from Degas in the early to mid-1870s and his own monotyping predilection was probably influenced by Degas' advancements in the medium.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin's Durand-Ruel exhibition in November 1893, which Degas chiefly organized, received mixed reviews. Among the mocking were Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and former friend Pissarro. Degas, however, praised his work, purchasing "" and admiring the exotic sumptuousness of Gauguin's conjured folklore. In appreciation, Gauguin presented Degas with "The Moon and the Earth", one of the exhibited paintings that had attracted the most hostile criticism. Gauguin's late canvas "Riders on the Beach" (two versions) recalls Degas' horse pictures that he started in the 1860s, specifically "Racetrack" and "Before the Race", testifying to his enduring effect on Gauguin. Degas later purchased two paintings at Gauguin's 1895 auction to raise funds for his final trip to Tahiti. These were "Vahine no te vi (Woman with a Mango)" and the version Gauguin painted of Édouard Manet's " Olympia".


title: Paul Gauguin

text: By 1890, Gauguin had conceived the project of making Tahiti his next artistic destination. A successful auction of paintings in Paris at the Hôtel Drouot in February 1891, along with other events such as a banquet and a benefit concert, provided the necessary funds. The auction had been greatly helped by a flattering review from Octave Mirbeau, courted by Gauguin through Camille Pissarro. After visiting his wife and children in Copenhagen, for what turned out to be the last time, Gauguin set sail for Tahiti on 1 April 1891, promising to return a rich man and make a fresh start. His avowed intent was to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional". Nevertheless, he took care to take with him a collection of visual stimuli in the form of photographs, drawings and prints.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: He spent the first three months in Papeete, the capital of the colony and already much influenced by French and European culture. His biographer Belinda Thomson observes that he must have been disappointed in his vision of a primitive idyll. He was unable to afford the pleasure-seeking life-style in Papeete, and an early attempt at a portrait, "Suzanne Bambridge", was not well liked. He decided to set up his studio in Mataiea, Papeari, some from Papeete, installing himself in a native-style bamboo hut. Here he executed paintings depicting Tahitian life such as "Fatata te Miti (By the Sea)" and "Ia Orana Maria (Ave Maria)", the latter to become his most prized Tahitian painting.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Many of his finest paintings date from this period. His first portrait of a Tahitian model is thought to be "Vahine no te tiare" ("Woman with a Flower"). The painting is notable for the care with which it delineates Polynesian features. He sent the painting to his patron George-Daniel de Monfreid, a friend of Schuffenecker, who was to become Gauguin's devoted champion in Tahiti. By late summer 1892 this painting was being displayed at Goupil's gallery in Paris. Art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews believes that Gauguin's encounter with exotic sensuality in Tahiti, so evident in the painting, was by far the most important aspect of his sojourn there.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin was lent copies of 1837 "Voyage aux îles du Grand Océan" and 1855 "État de la société tahitienne à l'arrivée des Européens", containing full accounts of Tahiti's forgotten culture and religion. Gauguin was fascinated by the accounts of "Arioi" society and their god 'Oro. Because these accounts contained no illustrations and the Tahitian models had in any case long disappeared, he could give free rein to his imagination. He executed some twenty paintings and a dozen woodcarvings over the next year. The first of these was "Te aa no areois (The Seed of the Areoi)", representing Oro's terrestrial wife Vairaumati, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His illustrated notebook of the time, "," is preserved in the Louvre and was published in facsimile form in 1951.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In all, Gauguin sent nine of his paintings to Monfreid in Paris. These were eventually exhibited in Copenhagen in a joint exhibition with the late Vincent van Gogh. Reports that they had been well received (though in fact only two of the Tahitian paintings were sold and his earlier paintings were unfavourably compared with van Gogh's) were sufficiently encouraging for Gauguin to contemplate returning with some seventy others he had completed. He had in any case largely run out of funds, depending on a state grant for a free passage home. In addition he had some health problems diagnosed as heart problems by the local doctor, which Mathews suggests may have been the early signs of cardiovascular syphilis.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin later wrote a travelogue (first published 1901) titled "", originally conceived as commentary on his paintings and describing his experiences in Tahiti. Modern critics have suggested that the contents of the book were in part fantasized and plagiarized. In it he revealed that he had at this time taken a 13-year-old girl as native wife or "vahine" (the Tahitian word for "woman"), a marriage contracted in the course of a single afternoon. This was Teha'amana, called Tehura in the travelogue, who was pregnant by him by the end of summer 1892. Teha'amana was the subject of several of Gauguin's paintings, including "Merahi metua no Tehamana" and the celebrated "Spirit of the Dead Watching", as well as a notable woodcarving "Tehura" now in the Musée d'Orsay. By the end of July 1893, Gauguin had decided to leave Tahiti and he would never see Teha'amana or her child again even after returning to the island several years later. A digital catalogue raisonné of the paintings from this period was released by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute in 2021.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In August 1893, Gauguin returned to France, where he continued to execute paintings on Tahitian subjects such as "Mahana no atua (Day of the God)" and "Nave nave moe (Sacred spring, sweet dreams)". An exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in November 1894 was a moderate success, selling at quite elevated prices 11 of the 40 paintings exhibited. He set up an apartment at 6 rue Vercingétorix, on the edge of the Montparnasse district frequented by artists, and began to conduct a weekly "salon". He affected an exotic "persona", dressing in Polynesian costume, and conducted a public affair with a young woman still in her teens, "half Indian, half Malayan", known as .


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Despite the moderate success of his November exhibition, he subsequently lost Durand-Ruel's patronage in circumstances that are not clear. Mathews characterises this as a tragedy for Gauguin's career. Amongst other things he lost the chance of an introduction to the American market. The start of 1894 found him preparing woodcuts using an experimental technique for his proposed travelogue "Noa Noa". He returned to Pont-Aven for the summer. In February 1895 he attempted an auction of his paintings at Hôtel Drouot in Paris, similar to the one of 1891, but this was not a success. The dealer Ambroise Vollard, however, showed his paintings at his gallery in March 1895, but they unfortunately did not come to terms at that date.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: He submitted a large ceramic sculpture he called "Oviri" he had fired the previous winter to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts 1895 "salon" opening in April. There are conflicting versions of how it was received: his biographer and "Noa Noa" collaborator, the Symbolist poet , contended (1920) that the work was "literally expelled" from the exhibition, while Vollard said (1937) that the work was admitted only when Chaplet threatened to withdraw all his own work. In any case, Gauguin took the opportunity to increase his public exposure by writing an outraged letter on the state of modern ceramics to "Le Soir".


title: Paul Gauguin

text: By this time it had become clear that he and his wife Mette were irrevocably separated. Although there had been hopes of a reconciliation, they had quickly quarrelled over money matters and neither visited the other. Gauguin initially refused to share any part of a 13,000-franc inheritance from his uncle Isidore which he had come into shortly after returning. Mette was eventually gifted 1,500 francs, but she was outraged and from that point on kept in contact with him only through Schuffeneckerdoubly galling for Gauguin, as his friend thus knew the true extent of his betrayal.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: By mid 1895 attempts to raise funds for Gauguin's return to Tahiti had failed, and he began accepting charity from friends. In June 1895 Eugène Carrière arranged a cheap passage back to Tahiti, and Gauguin never saw Europe again.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin set out for Tahiti again on 28 June 1895. His return is characterised by Thomson as an essentially negative one, his disillusionment with the Paris art scene compounded by two attacks on him in the same issue of "Mercure de France"; one by Emile Bernard, the other by Camille Mauclair. Mathews remarks that his isolation in Paris had become so bitter that he had no choice but to try to reclaim his place in Tahiti society.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: He arrived in September 1895 and was to spend the next six years living, for the most part, an apparently comfortable life as an artist-"" near, or at times in, Papeete. During this time he was able to support himself with an increasingly steady stream of sales and the support of friends and well-wishers, though there was a period of time 1898–1899 when he felt compelled to take a desk job in Papeete, of which there is not much record. He built a spacious reed and thatch house at Puna'auia in an affluent area ten miles east of Papeete, settled by wealthy families, in which he installed a large studio, sparing no expense. Jules Agostini, an acquaintance of Gauguin's and an accomplished amateur photographer, in 1896. Later a sale of land obliged him to build a new one in the same neighbourhood.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: He maintained a horse and trap, so was in a position to travel daily to Papeete to participate in the social life of the colony should he wish. He subscribed to the "Mercure de France" (indeed was a shareholder), by then France's foremost critical journal, and kept up an active correspondence with fellow artists, dealers, critics, and patrons in Paris. During his year in Papeete and thereafter, he played an increasing role in local politics, contributing abrasively to a local journal opposed to the colonial government, "Les Guêpes (The Wasps)", that had recently been formed, and eventually edited his own monthly publication "Le Sourire: Journal sérieux (The Smile: A Serious Newspaper)", later titled simply "Journal méchant (A Wicked Newspaper)". A certain amount of artwork and woodcuts from his newspaper survive. In February 1900 he became the editor of "Les Guêpes" itself, for which he drew a salary, and he continued as editor until he left Tahiti in September 1901. The paper under his editorship was noted for its scurrilous attacks on the governor and officialdom in general, but was not in fact a champion of native causes, although perceived as such nevertheless.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: For the first year at least he produced no paintings, informing Monfreid that he proposed henceforth to concentrate on sculpture. Few of his wooden carvings from this period survive, most of them collected by Monfreid. Thomson cites "Oyez Hui Iesu (Christ on the Cross)", a wooden cylinder half a metre (20") tall featuring a curious hybrid of religious motifs. The cylinder may have been inspired by similar symbolic carvings in Brittany, such as at Pleumeur-Bodou, where by local craftsmen. When he resumed painting, it was to continue his long-standing series of sexually charged nudes in paintings such as "Te tamari no atua (Son of God)" and "O Taiti (Nevermore)". Thomson observes a progression in complexity. Mathews notes a return to Christian symbolism that would have endeared him to the colonists of the time, now anxious to preserve what was left of native culture by stressing the universality of religious principles. In these paintings, Gauguin was addressing an audience amongst his fellow colonists in Papeete, not his former "avant-garde" audience in Paris.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: His health took a decided turn for the worse and he was hospitalised several times for a variety of ailments. While he was in France, he had his ankle shattered in a drunken brawl on a seaside visit to Concarneau. The injury, an open fracture, never healed properly. Then painful and debilitating sores that restricted his movement began erupting up and down his legs. These were treated with arsenic. Gauguin blamed the tropical climate and described the sores as "eczema", but his biographers agree this must have been the progress of syphilis.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In April 1897, he received word that his favorite daughter Aline had died from pneumonia. This was also the month he learned he had to vacate his house because its land had been sold. He took out a bank loan to build a much more extravagant wooden house with beautiful views of the mountains and sea. But he overextended himself in so doing, and by the end of the year faced the real prospect of his bank foreclosing on him. Failing health and pressing debts brought him to the brink of despair. At the end of the year he completed his monumental "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?", which he regarded as his masterpiece and final artistic testament (in a letter to Monfreid he explained that he tried to kill himself after finishing it). The painting was exhibited at Vollard's gallery in November the following year, along with eight thematically related paintings he had completed by July. This was his first major exhibition in Paris since his Durand-Ruel show in 1893 and it was a decided success, critics praising his new serenity. "Where do we come from?", however, received mixed reviews and Vollard had difficulty selling it. He eventually sold it in 1901 for 2,500 francs (about $10,000 in year 2000 US dollars) to , of which Vollard's commission was perhaps as much as 500 francs.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Georges Chaudet, Gauguin's Paris dealer, died in the fall of 1899. Vollard had been buying Gauguin's paintings through Chaudet and now made an agreement with Gauguin directly. The agreement provided Gauguin a regular monthly advance of 300 francs against a guaranteed purchase of at least 25 unseen paintings a year at 200 francs each, and in addition Vollard undertook to provide him with his art materials. There were some initial problems on both sides, but Gauguin was finally able to realise his long cherished plan of resettling in the Marquesas Islands in search of a yet more primitive society. He spent his final months in Tahiti living in considerable comfort, as attested by the liberality with which he entertained his friends at that time.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin was unable to continue his work in ceramics in the islands for the simple reason that suitable clay was not available. Similarly, without access to a printing press ("Le Sourire" was hectographed), he was obliged to turn to the monotype process in his graphic work. Surviving examples of these prints are rather rare and command very high prices in the saleroom.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: During this time Gauguin maintained a relationship with Pahura (Pau'ura) a Tai, the daughter of neighbours in Puna'auia. Gauguin began this relationship when Pau'ura was 14 and a half years old. He fathered two children with her, of which a daughter died in infancy. The other, a boy, she raised herself. His descendants still inhabited Tahiti at the time of Mathews' biography. Pahura refused to accompany Gauguin to the Marquesas away from her family in Puna'auia (earlier she had left him when he took work in Papeete just 10 miles away). When the English writer Willam Somerset Maugham visited her in 1917, she could offer him no useful memory of Gauguin and chided him for visiting her without bringing money from Gauguin's family.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin had nurtured his plan of settling in the Marquesas ever since seeing a collection of intricately carved Marquesan bowls and weapons in Papeete during his first months in Tahiti. However, he found a society that, as in Tahiti, had lost its cultural identity. Of all the Pacific island groups, the Marquesas were the most affected by the import of Western diseases (especially tuberculosis). An 18th-century population of some 80,000 had declined to just 4,000. Catholic missionaries held sway and, in their effort to control drunkenness and promiscuity, obliged all native children to attend missionary schools into their teens. French colonial rule was enforced by a gendarmerie noted for its malevolence and stupidity, while traders, both Western and Chinese, exploited the natives appallingly.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin settled in Atuona on the island of Hiva-Oa, arriving 16 September 1901. This was the administrative capital of the island group, but considerably less developed than Papeete although there was an efficient and regular steamer service between the two. There was a military doctor but no hospital. The doctor was relocated to Papeete the following February and thereafter Gauguin had to rely on the island's two health care workers, the Vietnamese exile Nguyen Van Cam (Ky Dong), who had settled on the island but had no formal medical training, and the Protestant pastor Paul Vernier, who had studied medicine in addition to theology. Both of these were to become close friends.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: He bought a plot of land in the center of the town from the Catholic mission, having first ingratiated himself with the local bishop by attending mass regularly. This bishop was Monseigneur Joseph Martin, initially well disposed to Gauguin because he was aware that Gauguin had sided with the Catholic party in Tahiti in his journalism.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin built a two-floor house on his plot, sturdy enough to survive a later cyclone which washed away most other dwellings in the town. He was helped in the task by the two best Marquesan carpenters on the island, one of them called Tioka, tattooed from head to toe in the traditional Marquesan way (a tradition suppressed by the missionaries). Tioka was a deacon in Vernier's congregation and became Gauguin's neighbour after the cyclone when Gauguin gifted him a corner of his plot. The ground floor was open-air and used for dining and living, while the top floor was used for sleeping and as his studio. The door to the top floor was decorated with a polychrome wood-carved lintel and jambs that still survive in museums. The lintel named the house as "Maison du Jouir" (i.e. "House of Pleasure"), while the jambs echoed his earlier 1889 wood-carving "Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses" (i.e. "Be in Love, You Will Be Happy"). The walls were decorated with, amongst other things, his prized collection of forty-five pornographic photographs he had purchased in Port Said on his way out from France.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In the early days at least, until Gauguin found a "vahine", the house drew appreciative crowds in the evenings from the natives, who came to stare at the pictures and party half the night away. Needless to say, all this did not endear Gauguin to the bishop, still less when Gauguin erected two sculptures he placed at the foot of his steps lampooning the bishop and a servant reputed to be the bishop's mistress, and yet still less when Gauguin later attacked the unpopular missionary school system. The sculpture of the bishop, "Père Paillard", is to be found at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, while its pendant piece "Thérèse" realized a record $30,965,000 for a Gauguin sculpture at a Christie's New York 2015 sale. These were among at least eight sculptures that adorned the house according to a posthumous inventory, most of which are lost today. Together they represented a very public attack on the hypocrisy of the church in sexual matters.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: State funding for the missionary schools had ceased as a result of the 1901 Associations Bill promulgated throughout the French empire. The schools continued with difficulty as private institutions, but these difficulties were compounded when Gauguin established that attendance at any given school was only compulsory within a catchment area of some two and a half miles radius. This led to numerous teenage daughters being withdrawn from the schools (Gauguin called this process "rescuing"). He took as "vahine" one such girl, Vaeoho (also called Marie-Rose), the 14-year-old daughter of a native couple who lived in an adjoining valley six miles distant. This can scarcely have been a pleasant task for her as Gauguin's sores were by then extremely noxious and required daily dressing. Nevertheless, she lived willingly with him and the following year gave birth to a healthy daughter whose descendants continue to live on the island.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: By November he had settled into his new home with Vaeoho, a cook (Kahui), two other servants (nephews of Tioka), his dog, Pegau (a play on his initials "PG"), and a cat. The house itself, although in the center of the town, was set amongst trees and secluded from view. The partying ceased and he began a period of productive work, sending twenty canvases to Vollard the following April. He had thought he would find new motifs in the Marquesas, writing to Monfreid: In fact, his Marquesas work for the most part can only be distinguished from his Tahiti work by experts or by their dates, paintings such as "Two Women" remaining uncertain in their location. For Anna Szech, what distinguishes them is their repose and melancholy, albeit containing elements of disquiet. Thus, in the second of two versions of "Cavaliers sur la Plage (Riders on the Beach)", gathering clouds and foamy breakers suggest an impending storm while the two distant figures on grey horses echo similar figures in other paintings that are taken to symbolise death.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin chose to paint landscapes, still lifes, and figure studies at this time, with an eye to Vollard's clientele, avoiding the primitive and lost paradise themes of his Tahiti paintings. But there is a significant trio of pictures from this last period that suggest deeper concerns. The first two of these are "Jeune fille à l'éventail (Young Girl with Fan)" and "Le Sorcier d'Hiva Oa (Marquesan Man in a Red Cape)". The model for "Jeune fille" was the red-headed Tohotaua, the daughter of a chieftain on a neighbouring island. The portrait appears to have been taken from . The model for "Le sorcier" may have been Haapuani, an accomplished dancer as well as a feared magician, who was a close friend of Gauguin's and, according to Bengt Danielsson, married to Tohotau. Szech notes that the white colour of Tohotau's dress is a symbol of power and death in Polynesian culture, the sitter doing duty for a Maohi culture as a whole threatened with extinction. "Le Sorcier" appears to have been executed at the same time and depicts a long-haired young man wearing an exotic red cape. The androgynous nature of the image has attracted critical attention, giving rise to speculation that Gauguin intended to depict a "māhū" (i.e. a third gender person) rather than a "taua" or priest. The third picture of the trio is the mysterious and beautiful "Contes barbares (Primitive Tales)" featuring Tohotau again at the right. The left figure is Jacob Meyer de Haan, a painter friend of Gauguin's from their Pont-Aven days who had died a few years previously, while the middle figure is again androgynous, identified by some as Haapuani. The Buddha-like pose and the lotus blossoms suggests to Elizabeth Childs that the picture is a meditation on the perpetual cycle of life and the possibility of rebirth. As these paintings reached Vollard after Gauguin's sudden death, nothing is known about Gauguin's intentions in their execution.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In March 1902, the governor of French Polynesia, , arrived in the Marquesas to make an inspection. He was accompanied by Édouard Charlier as head of the judicial system. Charlier was an amateur painter who had been befriended by Gauguin when he first arrived as magistrate at Papeete in 1895. However their relationship had turned to enmity when Charlier refused to prosecute Gauguin's then "vahine" Pau'ura for a number of trivial offences, allegedly housebreaking and theft, she had committed at Puna'auia while Gauguin was away working in Papeete. Gauguin had gone so far as to publish an open letter attacking Charlier about the affair in "Les Guêpes". Petit, presumably suitably forewarned, refused to see Gauguin to deliver the settlers' protests (Gauguin their spokesman) about the invidious taxation system, which saw most revenue from the Marquesas spent in Papeete. Gauguin responded in April by refusing to pay his taxes and encouraging the settlers, traders and planters, to do likewise.