ABSTRACT
This chapter claims that the distinction between the artist and the tourist is not always easy to draw and that the role played by some famous artists in the invention' of touristic landscapes may have been overestimated. Paul Gauguin is a much celebrated and revered artist, whose image and late paintings are identified with Tahiti Gauguin was not the first European painter to sail to Tahiti. Several English and French artists, for example William Hodges and Charles Girault, visited Polynesia before him. Hodges travelled with James Cook as the official painter for his expedition: his task was to provide the English public with images of these new lands. Gauguin was one of the first artists to understand that, in order to sell his paintings, he had to sell his image. Successfully constructing his own myth, he worked hard to convince Western art critics, sellers and clients that he had become a real Tahitian.
