Referred to as a “Tahitian Turner”, the Scottish watercolourist William Alister Macdonald (1861-1956) led a life of mystery and intrigue fit for a novel by the writers he knew as friends. After painting widely in the early 1900s across Britain, Europe and North Africa, at the age of 60 he abandoned his wife and son in London and settled in Tahiti, where his friends included the author Zane Grey. Critical acclaim of his work peaked in 1935 with the discovery of over 120 watercolours capturing London streets and river life on the Thames, which are now part of the Wakefield Collection at London’s Guildhall. Macdonald’s reputation has endured with appreciation of his timeless, Tahitian landscapes and studies of paradise, and this first fully illustrated biography offers a long overdue reappraisal of both his European and Polynesian work.