Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

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. (May)