Paul Gauguin is almost as well known for his bohemian life, his flight from what he called 'the disease of civilization', as for his exotic painting. He was born in Peru, educated in France, and spent five years as a merchant seaman. In 1872, aged 24, he became a stockbroker in Paris, took up painting as a leisure activity and exhibited at several of the Impressionist exhibitions, becoming a full-time painter in 1883.
In this reassessment of Gauguin, art historian Lesley Stevenson sets his life and work in the social and artistic context of late nineteenth-century France in order to dispel some of the mythology that has accumulated around him, much of it created by the artist himself. By emphasizing the importance of the early work, painted in his spare time when he was a successful and wealthy stockbroker, she demonstrates that Gauguin started as a conventional painter in the impressionist style. Only after losing his job did he decide to commit himself to painting and begin to produce the highly coloured, heavily simplified works associated with his mature style.
Gauguin recognized the importance of patrons, dealers and critics in the formation of an artistic reputation and began consciously to cultivate a bohemian persona for himself, founded on contemporary ideas of the 'civilized savage'. The desire to seek out 'primitive' motifs took him first to Brittany, and the author traces in the work he did there many of the themes and techniques more usually regarded as typical of his South Seas work. After Brittany Gauguin settled successively in Martinique, Tahiti and finally Hivaoa but the author shows that, even in the South Seas, Gauguin was far from being the 'savage' personality he liked to adopt in his art and writings. He continued to be bound to Paris by a need to promote and sell his work in the French capital.
Gauguin from Magna Books contains over 40 large-format full-colour plates, combining well-known works with more rarely seen paintings. Full commentaries on each plate and a comprehensive introduction explore Gauguin's developing artistic style and give an insight into the work of one of the most fascinating and legendary artistic personalities of the late nineteenth century.