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A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin, by the prize-winning author of I Am Dynamite!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024
A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
*Gorgeously illustrated with 70 full-colour images*
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.
Author: Sue Prideaux
Hardback Published 19 November 2024 416 pages
'Scintillating.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Immaculate.' NEW STATESMAN
'Phenomenal.'PROSPECT
'A heroic rehabilitation.'THE TIMES