The island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas is the final destination of the great traveler, Paul Gauguin. After Paris, Peru, Denmark, Brittany, Panama, Matinique and Tahiti, it was on this wild and remote island on the other side of the world that the painter set down his easel in 1901. What was he seeking on this Southern Pacific island? What constant but never truly satisfied desire drove him throughout his life to seek out a paradise that would always remain beyond the horizon?

Paul Gauguin was one of a rare few who traveled so widely at the time, and one of very few painters to have fully integrated the different cultures he encountered into his work. One hundred years before anyone else, he elevated Maori culture and Marquesan traditions to the status of "Art Papou," and revealed much of its wealth in his work.