see A Small List of Great Artists: Gauguin’s Tahiti
PAUL GAUGUIN (French, 1848-1903) was a stock broker and successful business man, painting in his free time and married with five children, until the Paris stock market crashed in 1882, which led him to become a full time painter and leave his family. His art became influenced by folk art and Japanese prints, as he tried to find a technique to express the essence of objects, eliminating subtle gradations of color and classical perspective, and painting from the imagination. He sought to capture the “primitive” magic of spiritual and imaginative states in his art. He befriended Van Gogh and spent nine weeks in 1888 painting at his Yellow House in Arles. Their relationship deteriorated, and when Gauguin said he was leaving town, van Gogh confronted him with a straight razor, then cut off his own ear that evening. They never saw each other again, but they continued to correspond. In 1891, Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, producing many of his most famous paintings there, of the exotic location, its forgotten culture and religion, and its natives – or his romanticized visions of all of it in his mind. He wrote in a travelogue that he married a thirteen year old and had a child with her before leaving in 1893. Upon his return, he continued to paint from his Tahitian memories, then returned again from 1895-1901, taking in a fourteen year old who gave him two children, but one died in infancy. His health declined, and he was hospitalized several times. He moved to the Marquesas Islands, took in a fourteen year old to live with him and dress his sores, and she had his daughter. Weak, in great pain, his sight beginning to fail him, and resorting to morphine, he died in 1903.
Read the comic book, “Brush with Peril”:
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