Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was born in 1848 in Paris. He served in the merchant marine from 1865 to 1871 and traveled in the tropics. Later he worked as a clerk in Paris and began painting in his spare time, exhibiting in impressionist shows in the 1880's. He moved briefly to Copenhagen in 1884, but after an unsuccessful attempt at a business career he returned to Paris to paint while leaving his family in Denmark. He mixed with a number of artistic types including Degas, van Goph and Laval, with whom he traveled to Panama and Martinique in search of exotic subject matter. More and more Gauguin turned to primitive cultures for inspiration, until in 1891 he sold off his paintings to raise money for a voyage to Tahiti. Illness two years later compelled him to return to Paris, where he began to write about Tahiti. He returned there in 1895 and unsuccessfully attempted suicide in 1898. He continued to write and paint; championing the cause of French settlers in Tahiti in various political journals. In 1901 he moved to Marquesas where he died in 1903.