Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin (2024) is a biography of the French Post-Impressionist artist by Sue Prideaux. The book re-examines the life of Paul Gauguin, tracing his journey from a Peruvian childhood and a successful career as a Parisian stockbroker to his controversial decision to become a full-time artist. The narrative follows his artistic development in Brittany, his fraught collaboration with Vincent van Gogh in Arles, and his final years in French Polynesia, where he became a vocal critic of colonial rule. Prideaux explores themes of Artistic Myth Versus Historical Reality, Encountering and Responding to Colonial Reality, and Art as Spiritual Synthesis.

An award-winning biographer specializing in late 19th-century European cultural figures, Prideaux has written acclaimed biographies of Edvard Munch, August Strindberg, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Her work on Gauguin is informed by new evidence, including the recovery of his uncensored manuscript Avant et après and a forensic analysis of his teeth that disproves the long-held myth that he had syphilis. By synthesizing these findings with archival research, Prideaux challenges both romanticized and villainous caricatures of the artist. Wild Thing has been widely recognized, winning the Duff Cooper Prize and the American Library in Paris Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

This guide refers to the 2025 hardcover edition published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, mental illness, self-harm, graphic violence, substance use, addiction, suicidal ideation, death by suicide, child abuse, child sexual abuse, child death, emotional abuse, sexual harassment, sexual content, gender discrimination, religious discrimination, antigay bias, racism, and animal death.

Summary

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848 to radical parents. His father, Clovis, was a journalist, and his mother, Aline, was the daughter of the socialist-feminist Flora Tristan. In 1849, the family fled France for Peru to escape the new regime of Louis Napoleon. During the voyage, Clovis died of a heart attack. Aline and her children, Paul and Marie, arrived in Lima and lived with their wealthy relative, Don Pío Tristán-y-Moscoso. Gauguin spent his early childhood, from age one to seven, in this luxurious, pre-industrial environment, an experience that formed his lifelong identification as a “savage.” His mother collected pre-Columbian artifacts, particularly Moche pottery, which later influenced his art; the Moche fox warrior became a personal symbol for lust. In 1855, the family returned to Orléans, France, to live with Gauguin’s paternal grandfather.

Gauguin struggled to adapt to French provincial life. After his grandfather’s death, he lived with his mother and uncle, Isidore (“Zizi”). In 1859, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school run by the progressive Bishop Félix Dupanloup, whose teachings instilled a habit of questioning authority and a preoccupation with existential questions regarding human nature and purpose. In 1862, he joined his mother in Paris, where she was supported by her protector, the wealthy art collector Gustave Arosa. Arosa became Gauguin’s guardian and introduced him to contemporary art. After failing to qualify for the elite naval college, Gauguin joined the merchant marine in 1865.

Gauguin spent over five years at sea, serving in the merchant marine and later the French navy during the Franco-Prussian War. During this time, he visited Tahiti for the first time. His mother, Aline, died in 1867 while he was away. He returned to Paris in 1871 and, with Arosa’s help, became a successful stockbroker. He began collecting Impressionist paintings and started to paint seriously. In 1872, he met Mette-Sophie Gad, a Danish governess, and they married the following year. They settled into a prosperous bourgeois life and had five children: Emil, Aline, Clovis, Jean-René, and Paul (Pola).

The 1882 Paris stock market crash ended Gauguin’s financial career, and he decided to become a full-time painter. The family moved to Rouen and then Copenhagen to live more cheaply, but Gauguin was miserable and unsuccessful as a tarpaulin salesman. In June 1885, he returned to Paris with his son, Clovis, leaving the rest of his family in Denmark in what became a permanent separation. He endured extreme poverty, working as a bill-poster and later as a ceramicist, creating innovative pieces that blended Peruvian and modern influences. In June 1886, seeking to reconnect with his “savage” self, he moved to the artists’ colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he became a leading figure.

In 1887, Gauguin traveled to Panama and Martinique with the artist Charles Laval. Despite severe illness, he produced a body of work in Martinique that he considered a major breakthrough, marked by subjective color and simplified forms. Upon his return to Paris, his new work impressed Theo van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh’s brother, who became his dealer. During an 1888 sojourn in Pont-Aven, he painted his masterpiece of this period, The Vision of the Sermon, which was rejected by two local churches. In October 1888, financially supported by Theo, Gauguin joined Vincent van Gogh in Arles to form the “Studio of the South.” Their two months together were marked by intense artistic collaboration but also escalating tension. On December 23, 1888, after a confrontation, Vincent threatened Gauguin with a razor and then mutilated his own ear. Gauguin left for Paris two days later. He returned to Brittany, where he solidified his new Synthetist style, which emphasized painting from imagination with bold, non-naturalistic color.

Disillusioned with Europe, Gauguin decided to escape to the tropics, choosing Tahiti. He held an auction in February 1891 to fund his passage and departed in April. He arrived in the capital, Papeete, only to find a “poisoned paradise” corrupted by colonialism. He moved to the rural district of Mataiea, where he took a 13-year-old Tahitian wife, Tehamana, who became his muse and taught him about local myths, including the fear of tupapaus (spirits of the dead). This period yielded some of his most famous works, such as Ia orana Maria (Hail Mary) and Manaò tupapaú (Spirit of the Dead Watching). Despite his artistic productivity, he struggled with poverty and illness. In 1893, a critically successful joint exhibition with Van Gogh’s work in Copenhagen prompted him to return to France to capitalize on his growing fame.

Gauguin arrived back in Paris in August 1893 and received an inheritance from Zizi, which led to a bitter dispute with Mette over money. He rented a studio, painted it chrome yellow, and became a prominent figure in the Symbolist avant-garde, hosting notorious salons. He took a new mistress, Annah la Javanaise, and created his ceramic sculpture Oviri. In May 1894, during a trip to Brittany, his ankle was shattered in a brawl with sailors, leaving him with a permanent, painful injury and a dependence on morphine. A second auction in 1895 to fund his return to Polynesia was a financial disaster.

Gauguin departed for Tahiti for the final time in July 1895. He settled in Punaauia, built a hut, and took a new, 14-year-old wife, Pahura. His health deteriorated, with heart problems and suppurating sores on his legs. In April 1897, he was devastated by the news of his daughter Aline’s death, which severed his last emotional tie to Mette. Impoverished and in constant pain, he attempted to die by suicide with arsenic in December 1897 but survived. He then rallied to paint his monumental artistic testament, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? on coarse copra sacking.

After his recovery, Gauguin reinvented himself as a political activist, taking a job as a journalist for the satirical newspaper Les Guêpes (The Wasps) and later founding his own paper, Le Sourire (The Smile). He became a fierce critic of the colonial administration and secured a contract with the Parisian dealer Ambroise Vollard, which provided a modest income. Disgusted with the corruption of Tahiti, he moved to the more remote Marquesas Islands.

In September 1901, Gauguin settled in Atuona on the island of Hiva Oa. He built his final home, the “Maison du Jouir” (House of Pleasure), decorating it with defiant and anti-clerical carvings. He became a “barefoot lawyer” for the Indigenous Marquesans, fighting the authorities over illegal taxes and gendarme corruption. As his health continued to decline, however, he became largely bedridden and wrote his final memoir, Avant et après. His activism led to a conviction for libeling a gendarme, resulting in a prison sentence. On May 8, 1903, before he could be imprisoned, Paul Gauguin died alone in his hut at the age of 54. The local bishop buried him in the Catholic cemetery, where his sculpture Oviri was later placed on his grave.