On 8 May 1903, having lost a futile and fatally exhausting battle with colonial officials, threatened with a ruinous fine and an imprisonment for allegedly instigating the natives to mutiny and slandering the authorities, after a week of acute physical sufferings endured in utter isolation, an artist who had devoted himself to glorifying the pristine harmony of Oceania’s tropical nature and its people died. There is bitter irony in the name given by Gauguin to his house at Atuona – “Maison du Jouir” (House of Pleasure) – and in the words carved on its wood reliefs, Soyez amoureuses et vous serez heureuses (Be in love and you will be happy) and Soyez mystérieuses (Be mysterious). After receiving news of the death of their old enemy, the bishop and the brigadier of gendarmes – the pillars of the local colonial regime – hastened to demonstrate their fatherly concern for the salvation of the sinner’s soul by having him buried in the sanctified ground of a Catholic cemetery. Only a small gr