In 1889, Paul Gauguin was laready rather an exotic figure. Part of his childhood was spend in Lima with his Peruvian mother and he had also traveled widely in the navy and on business. However, his quest for an earthly paradise actually began at the Universal Exhibition in pris, where the display of a Polynesian village inspired him to reach beyond the artists' colonies he had experienced in France.
Sculpting and carving were Gauguin's earliest artistic outlets. With the encouragement of Pissaro - but absolutely non from his own family - painting enabled him to take stock of himself in relation to a lengthy western tradition and to start presenting his own unique vision. Fortunately, these intesne new images found a market and Gauguin was able to finance his first trip to Tahiti in 1891, with another 1894. He ended his days in the Marquesas, where he had moved to avoid the twin controls of government bureaucracy and the missionaries on Tahiti. 'He was a pagan and he saw nature with the eyes of a pagan' said Le Moine, a fellow expatriate.
Gauguin's final years were a long, drawn-out struggle with alcoholism and the effect of syphilis, relieved only by self administered morphine. But iw was the urge to paint that kept him alive and was all that he live for: 'My artistic centre is in my brain, Gauguin attained heroic status in the eyes of German Expressionists.
