Wild Thing

*Gorgeously illustrated with 70 colour images*You wish to teach me what is within myself: learn first what is within you . . . I believe life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. 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 how he struggled to sustain his artistry - from a career as a stockbroker in Paris to a door-to-door salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City to a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti. In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux reexamines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision - from his eccentric upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France, to the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene and meeting Mette - the woman who he would marry, to the formative encounters with Vincent Van Gogh and August Strindberg and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia. Prideaux draws from a wealth of new material and access to the artist's family to conjure Gauguin's visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. This myth-busting work challenges us to see Gauguin anew.