Paul Gauguin
Painter · 1848–1903
Who is Paul Gauguin?
Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose years in French Polynesia produced the body of work for which he remains best known worldwide. Born in Paris in 1848, he abandoned a career in finance in his mid-thirties to paint full-time, developing a bold, symbolic style built on flat color planes and non-naturalistic composition. In 1891 he sailed to Tahiti seeking what he described as an unspoiled world beyond European civilization, settling first near Papeete and later at Punaauia. After a return trip to France, he went back to Tahiti in 1895 and finally relocated to Atuona on the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands in 1901, where he died in 1903. His Polynesian-period paintings, including works such as "Ia Orana Maria" and "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?," fused Tahitian subject matter and mythology with his own symbolist vision, and his journal "Noa Noa" recorded his impressions of island life. Gauguin's Tahiti and Marquesas years profoundly shaped the global artistic image of French Polynesia, though his colonial-era conduct toward local communities, including relationships with adolescent girls, remains a documented and serious subject of modern historical and ethical scrutiny.
Sources: Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin (Internet Archive digitized edition) · Wikiquote, "Paul Gauguin" (sourced quotations) · With Good Reason, "Gauguin in Tahiti" (radio documentary summary)