Wild Thing (a Life Of Paul Gauguin)

By (author) Prideaux Sue
Short description/annotation:
A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin, by the prize-winning author of I Am Dynamite!
Description:

A NEW YORK TIMES, TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025
WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024
WINNER THE AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS BOOK AWARD 2025
WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 2024

A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin - and the first full biography in over thirty years - written by the award-winning author of I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche.

''Scintillating.'' FINANCIAL TIMES
''Immaculate.'' NEW STATESMAN
''Phenomenal.'' PROSPECT
''A heroic rehabilitation.'' THE TIMES

Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti.

In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia.

Prideaux conjures Gauguin''s visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artist''s family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.

Biographical note:
Sue Prideaux''s first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (2005) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Strindberg: A Life (2012) won the Duff Cooper Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (2018) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and was The Times Biography of the Year.
Promotional headline:
A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin, by the prize-winning author of I Am Dynamite!
Review quote: previous edition:
Scintillating . . . As a man, as an artist, Gauguin was more than one thing, and Prideaux colourfully fleshes out his story with nuance and detail.
Review quote: previous edition:
This detailed biography complicates our perception of the bad boy of French art and illuminates his fraught friendship with Van Gogh . . . Prideaux examines the facts and contexts of the painter''s South Sea life in greater detail than before, while refusing to begin to judge any of those choices . . . [she] lets him construct his own epitaph: "virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them."
Review quote: previous edition:
An immaculate biography: even handed, scholarly, comprehensive and historically informed.
Review quote: previous edition:
Terrific . . . [Prideaux] is everything you might want in a biographer: diligent, judicious, compassionate without being indulgent . . . To reduce <