Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was one of the most important postimpressionist painters in France. He was born in 1848 in Paris. When he was 17 he joined the navy. After going around the world fighting he came home and became a stockbroker. His life was going well; in 1873 he married. But then the stock market crashed in 1882 and Paul lost his job.

After he lost his job he collected art and then started painting. His paintings were good but they just wouldn’t sell. Because of the loss of money his wife and his children left him. After his wife and children left, Paul tried living with the painter Vincent Van Gogh; but, their temperaments just weren’t compatible. Paul packed up his things and left for good.

When Gauguin left Van Gogh’ house he started telling his friends how much wanted to go to Tahiti. A few months later his friends paid for him to take the trip. When he was in Tahiti he got back to painting. He mainly painted Tahitian women. He liked Tahiti so much that he eventually decided to live there permanently.

When he was on his second trip to Tahiti he remarried, this time to a Tahitian woman. Some of Gauguin’s most famous paintings are of Tahitian women. He panted his second wife in his painting “Women with Flowers”.

Another of Gauguin’s paintings featuring Tahitian women was “Ta Matete” which was based on an original Egyptian painting. One exception of his painting women subjects was the painting “Horsemen on Beach”. The painting has a sense of freedom to it because the men are not using saddles or bridles. This same sense of freedom was the sense of freedom that Gauguin sought throughout his life.

Sadly, his life ended in 1903 due to untended to leg that had broken in a fight with a local Tahitian man. Gauguin in his life left us with some of postimpressionism’s most famous paintings.