Sue Prideaux is an Anglo-Norwegian art historian and the award-winning author of Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. A specialist in late 19th- and early 20th-century European art and thought, she is best known for her definitive biographies of painter Edvard Munch, playwright August Strindberg, and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Prideaux writes at a moment of decolonizing critiques within art history, often coupled with renewed scrutiny of artists’ personal conduct. Her work is distinguished by its deep archival research and its synthesis of historical context with new forensic methods. In Wild Thing, she positions herself as an evidence-driven interpreter, testing the romantic and often salacious legends surrounding Gauguin against a body of primary sources to construct a nuanced, ethically alert portrait of the artist.

Prideaux’s credibility rests on her extensive expertise in Modernism and her integration of recently surfaced materials. She draws heavily on the unedited manuscript of Gauguin’s memoir Avant et après alongside the complete Wildenstein Plattner Institute catalogue raisonné of his paintings, supplementing these archival sources with travel research, colonial legal documents, and forensic analysis of Gauguin’s remains. This source work underpins her revisionist claims about Gauguin’s health, political activism, and artistic intentions.

Prideaux clearly states her motivation and interpretive stance in the book’s Preface, defining her purpose as “not to condemn, not to excuse, but simply to shed new light on the man and the myth” (xiv). This perspective shapes her navigation of the charged debates surrounding Gauguin’s relationships with young Tahitian women and his role within a colonial framework. Rather than delivering a simple verdict, she seeks to illuminate the complexities of his character and the historical context in which he operated.

Ultimately, Prideaux’s authorial purpose is to reposition Gauguin within contemporary cultural conversations about primitivism, colonialism, and artistic legacy. By presenting a complex picture of his political engagement and debunking myths about his personal life, she provides a historical foundation for an informed and nuanced critique of his work.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose intense and fraught collaboration with Gauguin in Arles serves as a pivotal episode in Wild Thing. Having moved to the south of France in 1888 with the dream of establishing an artistic colony, Van Gogh invited Gauguin to join him. Their nine weeks of shared work and life produced some of their most significant paintings but ended in a violent breakdown, culminating in Van Gogh’s self-mutilation and Gauguin’s flight back to Paris. Prideaux presents this partnership as a turning point for both artists, where their conflicting artistic theories and personalities drove them to new creative heights and, in Van Gogh’s case, to a mental health crisis.

Prideaux focuses on the period of their collaboration in Arles from October to December 1888. This dramatic studio partnership was marked by significant artistic dialogue, as seen in their respective paintings of the Night Café and their famous exchange of self-portraits. Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (1888), depicting himself as a Japanese monk, and Gauguin’s Self-Portrait Dedicated to Van Gogh, Les Misérables (1888), showing himself as the outcast hero Jean Valjean, reveal the complex psychological and artistic ideals at play between them. Prideaux uses these works to illustrate the intense, often-conflicting conversation that pushed both artists to refine their formal and symbolic language.

The collaboration was also a site of fierce methodological debate. Prideaux details their conversations about technique, particularly Van Gogh’s “color gymnastics” and his use of thick impasto, which contrasted with Gauguin’s preference for flattened planes and Synthetist color. This artistic friction is central to Prideaux’s analysis of how their distinct styles developed in response to each other. She traces the lasting impact of their relationship through its aftermath: For Gauguin, the memory of Van Gogh and his work, especially the Sunflowers series, remained a touchstone, influencing his own art and his conception of the artist as a spiritual martyr.

Prideaux depicts Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), the Danish French painter and elder statesman of Impressionism, as Gauguin’s first significant mentor. As the only artist to exhibit in all eight Impressionist shows, Pissarro was a central figure in the Parisian avant-garde, acting as a bridge from the Barbizon School to Neo-Impressionism. Wild Thing presents him as the figure who launched Gauguin’s professional career, providing him with technical guidance, professional opportunities, and a model of artistic discipline. His mentorship established the Impressionist foundation that Gauguin would later absorb and radically transform.

Prideaux charts the concrete interventions that shaped Gauguin’s formation as an artist. After meeting Gauguin through their shared patron, Gustave Arosa, Pissarro invited Gauguin to exhibit with the Impressionists in the shows of 1879-1881. This invitation moved Gauguin from the world of finance toward a full commitment to art. Working alongside Pissarro in Pontoise, Gauguin received direct instruction in color theory and composition, learning the core principles of Impressionist practice.

Their relationship was grounded in technical discussion. Pissarro taught Gauguin to build form from the center out rather than relying on outlines and modeled a process of using plein-air studies as sources for more synthesized studio compositions. This methodology was fundamental to Gauguin’s early work, even as he began to develop his own distinct style in resistance to Pissarro’s influence. Likewise, Pissarro’s teachings on color and structure provided the vocabulary that Gauguin would later expand and subvert in his move toward Synthetism. Prideaux uses their artistic dialogue to mark key inflection points in Gauguin’s career, establishing Pissarro as the catalyst for Gauguin’s transformation from a talented amateur into an exhibiting avant-garde artist.

Mette-Sophie Gad (1850-1920) was Paul Gauguin’s Danish wife and the mother of his five children. Prideaux portrays her as a pragmatic and steadfast figure who, though in some ways iconoclastic herself, became associated by circumstance with the bourgeois expectations that Gauguin ultimately rejected. Their marriage in 1873 coincided with his comfortable life as a stockbroker, but as he turned fully to his artistic vocation, they became estranged, with Mette’s story ultimately providing a counternarrative to the romantic myth of the artist.

Through their extensive correspondence, which forms a key source for the book, Prideaux reveals the emotional and economic strains of Gauguin’s career. The family’s interlude in Copenhagen, Mette’s management of the household, and her eventual decision to sell some of his paintings to support their children highlight the practical consequences of his artistic pursuit. Their conflicting perspectives on money, duty, and the role of art expose the ethical and personal stakes of Gauguin’s decision to leave his family for his vision. Prideaux portrays Mette as a sometimes antagonistic force in Gauguin’s life but also as a woman navigating an impossible situation.

Flora Tristan (1803-1844) was Gauguin’s maternal grandmother, a pioneering French Peruvian socialist feminist, writer, and activist. Though she died before he was born, Prideaux establishes her as a powerful posthumous influence on Gauguin’s self-conception and political conscience. Author of the influential text L’Union ouvrière (1843), Tristan was a celebrated and radical voice for workers’ and women’s rights in early industrial Europe. To her grandson, who described her as a beautiful socialist-anarchist blue-stocking (a contemporaneous term for an intellectual woman), she was a revered ancestor and moral exemplar.

Prideaux uses Tristan’s legacy to explain Gauguin’s political activism. She argues that Gauguin’s courtroom advocacy for Indigenous rights and his journalistic attacks on colonial corruption in Tahiti and the Marquesas were modeled on his grandmother’s fearless campaigning. By linking his actions to his lineage, Prideaux casts Tristan as the source of an intergenerational ethic of fighting for the underdog, contextualizing the political dimension of Gauguin’s life that is central to the book’s reinterpretation of his character.

Félix Dupanloup (1802-1878) was a liberal Catholic Bishop of Orléans and a prominent educator who directed the seminary where Gauguin studied as a boy. Prideaux identifies him as a formative intellectual influence on the artist, shaping his lifelong habits of inquiry and his metaphysical worldview. Dupanloup reconciled faith with scientific inquiry and encouraged a rational, questioning approach to belief, which contrasted with the often-dogmatic religious instruction of the era.

His significance in the book lies in providing the philosophical framework for Gauguin’s great spiritual questions. Prideaux links Dupanloup’s catechism—which included the questions “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” (24)—to the title of Gauguin’s monumental 1897-98 canvas. This connection suggests that Gauguin’s artistic quest was rooted in the philosophical and spiritual inquiries of his youth. Thematically, Dupanloup’s model of rational Christianity also parallels Prideaux’s own methodology of examining evidence alongside myth.

Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was a major Parisian art dealer and an early champion of artists like Cézanne, Picasso, and Gauguin. He professionalized the art market by offering artists stipends in exchange for their work, a system that provided them with crucial financial stability.

Prideaux presents Vollard as the key patron of Gauguin’s final years, as his material support underwrote the artist’s last creative period in the Marquesas Islands. In 1900, Vollard arranged an agreement that provided Gauguin with a monthly stipend and a supply of canvases, enabling him to continue working despite his isolation and declining health. This support was essential to the production of Gauguin’s late masterpieces. However, Prideaux also touches on the controversial aspects of their relationship, noting the debates around Vollard’s dealer tactics, such as buying work in bulk at low prices. This discussion exposes the complex market mechanisms that shaped modern art, securing visibility for artists even as it raised questions about commercial ethics.