Wild Thing
A Life of Paul Gauguin
Published on 16. May 2025
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-1-324-02042-4 (ISBN)
Description
Paul Gauguin's legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved.
Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso.
Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin's most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin's son, and a sample of Gauguin's teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. The result is "a brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin-not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach" (Artemis Cooper, Spectator).
Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso.
Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin's most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin's son, and a sample of Gauguin's teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. The result is "a brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin-not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach" (Artemis Cooper, Spectator).
Reviews / Votes
"Enthralling [and] terrific... When it comes to Gauguin, [Prideaux] is everything you might want in a biographer: diligent, judicious, compassionate without being indulgent." -- Jennifer Szalai - New York Times "Gruesomely fascinating... A biography for anyone who wants to know about the man behind some irrepressibly memorable art, about one of the most creatively magic moments of European history and about a vividly extreme version of a recurring human situation." -- Anne Higonnet - Wall Street Journal "Remarkable... Reexamines [Gauguin's] vision." -- Alexandra Schwartz - New Yorker "A remarkable, important portrait... Prideaux has a gift for illustrating the intricacies of an artist's perspective." -- Sarah Moorhouse - Los Angeles Review of Books "Invites us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about Gauguin... [Wild Thing] brims with reputation-redeeming surprises." -- Kelly Horan - Boston Globe "A gift for disrupting snap judgments... [Prideaux] chooses to consider events in view of historical circumstance rather than moral dicta." -- Susan Tallman - Atlantic "Wise, engaging. . . . [Prideaux has] an unusual and compelling degree of sympathy." -- Max Carter - Air Mail "A spirited biography... [Wild Thing] is an ode to both a singular visionary and a world, not unlike ours, in the throes of political and artistic turmoil." -- Hamilton Cain - Minnesota Star Tribune "Sue Prideaux's highly readable biography argues that Gauguin's life was far more complicated and nuanced than previously understood." -- Terry W. Hartle, Christian Science Monitor, Ten Best Books of the Month "Lively and absorbing... Wild Thing offers a rich retelling of the Gauguin story." -- Hannah Stamler - American Scholar "Engaging... A vivid portrait of Paul Gauguin." -- Diane Scharper - Washington Examiner "Newly definitive, impeccably researched, and lavishly illustrated... See[s] a pioneering artist in a new light." -- Kirkus Reviews "A rich psychological portrait that is buttressed by abundant historical detail. [Wild Thing] makes for a revealing window into a unique artistic mind." -- Publishers Weekly "This sympathetic biography is a heroic rehabilitation . . . Prideaux is one of the finest biographers working today." -- Pratinav Anil - Times (UK) "An immaculate biography: even handed, scholarly, comprehensive and historically informed." -- Michael Prodger - New Statesman "A brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin - not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach." -- Artemis Cooper - Spectator "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." -- Tim Adams, Book of the Day - Observer "Scintillating . . . [a] triumph . . . As a man, as an artist, Gauguin was more than one thing, and Prideaux colourfully fleshes out his story with nuance and detail." -- Financial Times "Ambitious, clear-eyed... A complex, intractable man to the last." -- The Economist "A vivid, revisionist picture of the controversial artist's life, from France to Tahiti." -- Flora Bowen and Cal Revely-Calder - Daily Telegraph "Sumptuous . . . magnificent." -- Daily Mail "A 'scintillating' achievement." -- The Week, Book of the Week "Reflective and lyrical." -- Nikhil Krishnan - Telegraph "As an art critic and cultural historian Sue Prideaux is thoughtful and knowledgeable. As a biographer she is witty and bold. She writes with panache about the artist's prosperous years and with unshockable sympathy about his hard times. A scintillating account of a richly complicated life." -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of Peculiar Ground "The definitive biography of an artist like Gauguin rolls around once in a generation, and this might well be the one for ours." -- Stephen Smith - Literary ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
70 color illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
938 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-324-02042-4 (9781324020424)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sue Prideaux is the author of three prize-winning biographies: I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, and Strindberg: A Life. She has written for the Economist and the Spectator, among other publications. She lives in London.