Wild Thing : A Life of Paul Gauguin

Author: Prideaux, Sue

Art & design styles: Impressionism & Post-Impressionism

Published on 12 September 2024 by FABER & FABER in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 416 pages
240 x 160 x 30 | 912g

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin - and the first full biography in over thirty years - written by the award-winning author of I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche.

*Gorgeously illustrated with 70 full-colour images*'Scintillating.' FINANCIAL TIMES'Immaculate.' NEW STATESMAN'Phenomenal.' PROSPECT'A heroic rehabilitation.' THE TIMESPaul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti.

In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia.

Prideaux conjures Gauguin's visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artist's family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.