1 Tahiti, the enduring image 1767-1920

2 1920s Tahiti – Writers and Artists

Talks on Tahiti

3 Rober Keable, utterly immoral WW1 chaplain and writer?

Simon is an acredited lecturer with the Arts Society and listed in the Arts Society directory of lecturerers

 

Tahiti, the enduring image 1767-1920

The first Europeans writers and artists, travelling with James Cook and Louis Bougainville, who visited Tahiti in the 1760s, came back talking about an island paradise. Neoclassical paintings by William Hodges, John Webber and Joshua Reynolds, and etchings based on their work, presented the island as a garden of Eden. Over the next 150 years writers such as Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stephenson, Pierre Loti and Somerset Maugham; and artists such as Charles Giraud, John La Farge and Paul Gauguin kept this image going. What was it about Tahiti, the time it was 'discovered' and the popularity of certain writers and artists and the work that they produced that made Tahiti so unique? 

 

1920's Tahiti - writers and artists

What was the attraction of Tahiti in the 1920s? Why was there a South Seas craze, centred on Tahiti, with many books, magazine articles, photographs, paintings and movies? And why did a group of English-speaking writers and artists such as Robert Keable, James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, Dean Frisbie, Octave Morillot and William Alister Macdonald follow in the footsteps of Paul Gauguin, and decide to settle on the island. In my talk I detail the South Seas craze and tell the stories of these amazing writers and artists. I look at why they decided to escape western civilisation and to become forerunners to today's digital nomads. And i look at the work they produced and discuss how successful they were.  

Description of my talks on Tahiti

 

Robert Keable, Utterly immoral WW1 chaplain and writer

Robert Keable’s first, semi-autobiographical, novel Simon Called Peter, about a WW1 chaplain's affair with a nurse, shocked many, was name checked in The Great Gatsby, and became a huge international best seller. Keable led an extraordinary life as a Cambridge educated priest who served as a missionary in Africa, before becoming chaplain to ill-treated black labourers in France. After the war he left the church, and his wife, and ran away to Tahiti with his mistress to live for a year in Paul Gauguin’s house. He stayed in Tahiti, built his own house, continued writing and married a Tahitian princess. 

You can see my descrition of this talk at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Tia_UVvtw&t=24s

Simon Keable-Elliott has been researching the writers living in Tahiti in the 1920s for a number of years. In July 2021 he took early retirement following 25 years as a secondary school politics teacher, and now works as a writer and lecturer. In his first book Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel, published in November 2022, he covered - among other topics - Robert Keable’s time in Tahiti

To see a list of  talks and lectures by Simon please visit his events page: https://robertkeable.com/events/

If you require any further information, please do email Simon on [email protected] or use the contact page to send a message.