What canal did Paul Gauguin help to build as a laborer?

When people think of post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, they think of his groundbreaking paintings of Tahitians done in primitive style. Most, however, would not normally think of Panama. Nevertheless, Panama played a small but significant part of this painter’s remarkable life.

Gauguin lived in Isla Taboga, a stunning tropical island off the coast of Panama City. Virtually penniless, he had left his wife and five children in Paris to try and make a name for himself as an artist. En route to Martinique, he stopped off at the Isthmus of Panama in 1887. While here he worked as forced labor on the early, disastrous, French attempt to build the Panama Canal.

Accounts of this period suggest that Gauguin had a miserable time in Panama, effectively working as a slave on the canal, and remaining too ill to paint with his usual fervor. His first major output of tropical paintings, as evidence would suggest, were produced on the next stage of his travels, in Martinique.