Gauguin turns forty in Papeete, Tahiti, where…

Gauguin turns forty in Papeete, Tahiti, where he continues to live in self-imposed exile, still seeking to achieve a "primitive" expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work.

He had arrived in September 1895 and was to spend the next six years living, for the most part, an apparently comfortable life as an artist-colon near, or at times in, Papeete.

During this time he is able to support himself with an increasingly steady stream of sales and the support of friends and well-wishers, though he feels compelled in 1898–1899 to take a desk job in Papeete, of which there is not much record.

He has built a spacious reed and thatch house at Punaauia in an affluent area ten miles east of Papeete, settled by wealthy families, in which he has installed a large studio, sparing no expense.

Jules Agostini, an acquaintance of Gauguin's and an accomplished amateur photographer, photographed the house in 1896.