Individual Reading. Summary №5

Strickland shows his paintings to the narrator, but the latter cannot appreciate them for they seem to him gaudy and strange. The narrator doesn’t buy anything of which he eventually regrets. This is their last meeting, for after that Strickland moves to Marseilles and the narrator never sees him. Nevertheless, several years later after Strickland’s death he decides to write a book about him. Having arrived in Tahiti where Strickland spent the last years of his life, the narrator meets Captain Nichols, who was with Charles when the latter was jobless and penniless. Nichols describes their life in Marseilles and adds that by chance and with the help of false documents Strickland managed to go to Tahiti. There he continued to paint and worked as an overseer on a plantation. After Strickland’s death everybody understood his talent and his paintings became very expensive, making lots of people who knew him during his life to regret the missed opportunity of buying Charles’ paintings for a song.