The Moon and Sixpence characters

Appears from the start

An English writer who tells the story through his own encounters and through accounts collected from other people. Socially observant and often skeptical, he becomes an intermittent witness to Charles Strickland's rejection of ordinary life and later tries to assemble the parts of Strickland's history that he did not see himself.

First appears in chapter 2

A deceased painter whose posthumous fame has generated a public legend. The narrator remembers first knowing him as a conventional, inarticulate London stockbroker with a wife and children, a man who seemed to offer no sign of the consuming artistic purpose that would govern his later life.

First appears in chapter 3

Charles Strickland's capable and socially ambitious wife. She maintains a comfortable London household, cultivates writers, and takes pride in appearing sympathetic to the arts. Her ordered life is shattered when her husband leaves without explanation.

First appears in chapter 8

Amy Strickland's brother, a practical retired officer who helps her respond to Charles's disappearance. He assumes that the desertion has a conventional romantic explanation and urges firm measures to protect his sister and her children.

First appears in chapter 18

A Dutch painter living in Paris, sentimental, generous, and certain that Strickland possesses extraordinary talent even when nobody else values the work. His own conventional pictures are commercially successful, but his greatest gift is his sincere recognition of another artist's genius.

First appears in chapter 19

Dirk Stroeve's reserved English wife. She is beautiful, composed, and sharply hostile to Strickland, while remaining protective of the husband whose warmth and lack of dignity can expose him to ridicule.

First appears in chapter 42

An impoverished seaman and drifter whom the narrator meets in Marseilles. Talkative and resourceful, he remembers Strickland's difficult period in the port and supplies a rough, self-interested account of how the painter survived there.

First appears in chapter 47

A warm, imposing hotelkeeper in Tahiti who knew Strickland during his final years. She understands the island's mixed colonial society, speaks without sentimentality, and gives the narrator a sympathetic account of Strickland's life with Ata.

First appears in chapter 49

A young Tahitian woman whom Tiare brings together with Strickland. Quiet, practical, and devoted, she shares his remote island home and accepts his poverty and absorption in painting without asking him to become sociable or conventional.

First appears in chapter 54

A French doctor on Tahiti who attends Strickland in his last illness. His eyewitness account allows the narrator to understand both the painter's physical decline and the astonishing work covering the walls of the remote house.