Paul Gauguin Biography, Life & Quotes

On June 9, 1891, French painter Paul Gauguin arrived in Papeete, Tahiti. An excerpt from the article:

"In 1891, after spending years away from his wife and children, Gauguin effectively abandoned his family by moving alone, like a perpetual, solitary wanderer, to French Polynesia, where he would remain for the rest of his days. This move was the culmination of Gauguin's increasing desire to escape what he regarded as an artificial European culture for a life in a more "natural" condition.

In his final decade, Gauguin lived in Tahiti, and subsequently Punaauia, finally making his way to the Marquesas Islands. During this time he painted more traditional portraits, such as Tahitian Women on the Beach (1891), The Moon and the Earth (Hina tefatou) (1893), and Two Tahitian Women (1899). He also continued to experiment with quasi-religious and Symbolist subject matter, as in his Manao Tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch) (1892), and his Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897). These works were painted during a period in which Gauguin was essentially bidding his career adieu, as if he were an athlete "at the top of his game," so to speak, but wanting to aspire towards a more spiritual condition. Seeking an unworldly sense of repose and detachment, he is said to have been obsessed with his own mortality. He looked back on his life and even borrowed figures from his own earlier paintings, perhaps as though to symbolically lend them an extended lifespan. Notably, by 1899 Gauguin was referring to himself satirically, writing to a Paris colleague that he painted only "on Sundays and holidays," ironically like the amateur he once embodied prior to pursuing art seriously. Not long after that self-deprecating quip, he unsuccessfully attempted suicide by self-poisoning.

In early May, 1903, morally skittish, and weakened by drug-addiction and regular bouts with illness, Gauguin succumbed to the degenerative effects of syphilis and died at the age of 54, in the Marquesas islands, where he was subsequently buried.

The Legacy of Paul Gauguin
Gauguin's naturalistic forms and "primitive" subject matter would embolden an entire, younger generation of painters to move decisively away from late Impressionism and pursue more abstract, or poetically inclined subjects, some inspired by French Symbolist poetry, others derived from myth, ancient history, and non-Western cultural traditions for motifs with which they might refer to the more spiritual and supernatural aspects of human experience. Gauguin ultimately proved extremely influential to 20th-century modern art, in particular that of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and their development of Cubism from about 1911 to 1915. Likewise, Gauguin's endorsement of bold color palettes would have a direct effect on the Fauvists, most notably André Derain and Henri Matisse, both of whom would frequently employ intensely resonant, emotionally expressive, and otherwise "un-realistic" color.

Gauguin, the man, became a legend almost independently of his art and came to inspire a number of literary works based on his "exotic" life story - a prime example being W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence (1919)."