J. Jiquel Lanoe

Biography

Joseph Jiquel-Lanoë traded the gray light of France for the blaze of Tahiti in the late 1890s, arriving just in time to cross paths with Paul Gauguin during the painter’s first Pacific binge. After decades absorbed by island color and rumor, he settled permanently in Papeete from 1940 until his death there eight years later. Today only three canvases survive to prove he ever lifted a brush; the most vivid, “Three Tahitian Women by a Forest Pond,” wears its debt to Gauguin like a fragrant lei, while every other trace of his hand has vanished into salt air.