Paul Gauguin

ALTHOUGH HE was born in Paris, Gauguin spent his early childhood in Peru, returning to France in 1855. He worked for a time as a stockbroker, painting only as a hobby, until the stock market crash of 1882 prompted a dramatic change of career. His first pictures were in the Impressionist style, influenced in particular by his friend, Camille Pissarro. Increasingly, though, Gauguin became dissatisfied with the purely visual emphasis of the movement, and tried to introduce a greater degree of symbolism and spirituality into his work. Inspired by Japanese prints, he also developed a new style, coupling bold splashes of bright, unmixed colour with simplified, linear designs. At the same time, haunted by memories of his Peruvian childhood, Gauguin developed a growing fascination for exotic and ‘primitive’ cultures. Initially, he was able to satisfy this need in Brittany where, inspired by the region’s distinctive Celtic traditions, he produced The Vision after the Sermon, his first great masterpiece. Then, in 1891, he moved to the French colony of Tahiti. Dogged by poverty and ill health, he spent most of his later life in this area, producing the paintings for which he is best known today.

Excerpt from Art. The World of Art, from Aboriginal to American Pop, Renaissance Masters to Postmodernism.