Wild Thing
A Life of Paul Gauguin
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- £15.99
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- £15.99
Publisher Description
A TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025
WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024
WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 2024
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.
'Scintillating.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Immaculate.' NEW STATESMAN
'Phenomenal.' PROSPECT
'A heroic rehabilitation.' THE TIMES
Paul 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographer Prideaux (I Am Dynamite!) presents a sympathetic portrait of 19th-century post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Born in 1848 France, Gauguin spent much of his childhood in Peru, where his anti-Bonapartist parents had fled threats of government persecution. As an adult, he burned through a series of jobs—merchant marine, stock trader—before discovering painting from impressionists exhibiting in Paris. The author depicts her subject as a perennial outsider who spent much of his life wandering the world in pursuit of artistic success, from Panama during the digging of the canal, to Arles, where Van Gogh attempted to enlist him in plans to form a "Studio of the South," to Tahiti—where Gaugin painted his "mythical and monumental" 1898 work Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, which interwove "Polynesian, classical and Christian references" and inspired Pablo Picasso to explore African art, from which cubism evolved. Prideaux draws heavily on Gauguin's own writings, including a recently discovered autobiography, to draw a rich psychological portrait that is buttressed by abundant historical detail. It makes for a revealing window into an unique artistic mind. Illus.
