50 Fun Facts About Paul Gauguin

Gauguin was born in Paris in which year of revolutions across Europe?

His journalist father fled France when his newspaper was suppressed, bound for Peru.

In which country did Gauguin spend a privileged early childhood until the age of six?

A relative's son-in-law became president; the family fled during civil conflicts in 1854.

Gauguin's grandmother Flora Tristan was an activist in which movement?

She published a popular travelogue of Peru in 1838 and died under police surveillance in 1844.

Before painting, Gauguin served in the merchant marine and then which force?

He had signed on as a pilot's assistant at 17 after attending a naval preparatory school.

What job did Gauguin take in Paris in 1871 that he kept for over a decade?

By 1879 he was earning 30,000 francs a year, and as much again dealing in art.

Which financial event of 1882 pushed Gauguin toward painting full-time?

Dealer Paul Durand-Ruel stopped buying pictures from painters like Gauguin for a time.

Gauguin's wife Mette-Sophie Gad, whom he married in 1873, was of which nationality?

They later moved to Copenhagen, where his tarpaulin business failed.

What did Gauguin unsuccessfully try to sell in Denmark in 1884?

He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins.

Which Impressionist became Gauguin's mentor and introduced him to the movement?

He later broke with Gauguin, who rejected Seurat's pointillism.

A bust of Gauguin's son Émile was the only sculpture at which Impressionist exhibition?

He showed paintings in 1881 and 1882, and 19 canvases plus a wood relief in 1886.

Gauguin's Young Breton Boys Bathing is indebted to which artist in design and bold colour?

It introduced a theme Gauguin returned to on every visit to Pont-Aven.

Which young artist did Gauguin meet at Pont-Aven in 1888, sharing a simplified style?

Bernard's flat colour and bold outlines led the critic Dujardin to coin 'Cloisonnism'.

Which critic named the flat-colour, bold-outline style after medieval enamelwork?

Gauguin's work later moved to Synthetism, where form and colour share equal roles.

Vision After the Sermon depicts which biblical struggle?

The ground is a flat, unnatural red; the painting hangs in the Scottish National Gallery.

In which city is Vision After the Sermon held?

It was completed in 1888, the year Gauguin tired of Impressionism.

The Yellow Christ, painted in 1889, sets the Crucifixion in which region?

Breton women pray beneath the cross; a pencil study is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

The Yellow Christ is often cited as the quintessential work of which style?

The image is reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines.

In 1887 Gauguin ran out of money in Colón and took work on what?

He wrote to Mette of digging from 5.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. under tropical sun and rain.

After Panama, Gauguin and Charles Laval painted for five months on which Caribbean island?

Vincent and Theo van Gogh saw and admired the Martinique paintings in Paris.

How long did Gauguin and Van Gogh paint together at the Yellow House in Arles in 1888?

Theo van Gogh had pushed for the arrangement; it ended with Vincent's mutilated ear.

By Gauguin's later account, with what did Van Gogh confront him on 23 December 1888?

Later that evening Vincent cut off his own left ear; Gauguin left Arles the next day.

Theo van Gogh commissioned which 1889 series of Gauguin zincographs?

They appeared at the Café des Arts show of 1889 beside the Exposition Universelle.

In which year did Gauguin first sail for Tahiti?

He spent his first three months in Papeete before moving to a bamboo hut at Mataiea.

Gauguin set up his first Tahitian studio in a bamboo hut in which district?

It was some 45 kilometres from the capital; he was fined there for bathing naked in a stream.

Which painting did Gauguin consider his most prized Tahitian work of the first trip?

Its title means Ave Maria; Fatata te Miti means By the Sea.

How old was Teha'amana when Gauguin took her as his vahine in 1892?

He called her Tehura in his travelogue; she was pregnant by the end of that summer.

Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) was painted on which unusual support?

Gauguin said the title could mean the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her.

Which Manet painting is Spirit of the Dead Watching often compared with?

Gauguin had admired Olympia at the 1889 Exposition Universelle.

What is the title of Gauguin's Tahitian travelogue, first published in 1901?

He prepared experimental woodcuts for it in 1894; the poet Charles Morice collaborated.

Back in Paris in 1893, Gauguin conducted a public affair with a teenager known as what?

He dressed in Polynesian costume and held a weekly salon at 6 rue Vercingétorix.

Who chiefly organised Gauguin's November 1893 Durand-Ruel exhibition?

Degas bought Te faaturuma and later two more works at the 1895 auction.

Gauguin's large ceramic Oviri was submitted to which 1895 salon?

Accounts differ on whether it was expelled or admitted after Chaplet threatened to withdraw his own work.

What was placed on Gauguin's grave in 1973, as he had wished?

He is buried in the Calvary Cemetery at Atuona on Hiva Oa.

Gauguin's monumental Where Do We Come From? was painted in which years?

He then attempted suicide with arsenic, as he had warned his friend de Monfreid he would.

With what did Gauguin attempt suicide after finishing Where Do We Come From?

He had disclosed the plan in a December 1897 letter to Daniel de Monfreid.

Where Do We Come From? hangs in which city?

Boston bought it from the Marie Harriman Gallery in April 1936; Vollard had struggled to sell it.

When Will You Marry? was sold in 2015 for close to what price?

The Staechelin family sold it privately to Sheikha Al-Mayassa of Qatar after half a century on loan to Basel.

Before its 2015 sale, When Will You Marry? spent nearly 50 years on loan in which city?

Rudolf Staechelin had bought it at a Geneva gallery in 1917.

Which dealer agreed in 1900 to pay Gauguin a monthly advance of 300 francs?

He guaranteed to buy at least 25 unseen paintings a year at 200 francs each, plus materials.

In Papeete Gauguin edited which journal opposed to the colonial government?

He also produced his own monthly, Le Sourire, later retitled Journal méchant.

On which Marquesan island did Gauguin settle in September 1901?

He built his house at Atuona on land bought from the Catholic mission.

What name did Gauguin carve on the lintel of his Atuona house?

The 'House of Pleasure'; the jambs echoed his carving Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses.

How did Gauguin win over the bishop who sold him his Atuona plot?

Bishop Martin later became a target of Gauguin's revised tract on the Catholic Church.

In the Marquesas Gauguin relied for medical help on a Vietnamese exile known as what?

Nguyen Van Cam had no formal medical training; the pastor Paul Vernier had studied medicine.

Gauguin's leg sores in the Marquesas were treated with what?

He blamed the climate and called it eczema; biographers suspect advancing syphilis.

In which year did Gauguin die?

He was 54 and was buried the next day in the Catholic cemetery at Atuona.

Who became Gauguin's devoted champion in Paris, receiving nine paintings from Tahiti?

A friend of Schuffenecker, he was also the confidant of the December 1897 suicide letter.

Gauguin's wife and children settled in which city, where his art collection stayed?

He followed them there in November 1884 but returned to Paris the next year.

Which movements are listed among those Gauguin inspired in the early 20th century?

Matisse, Picasso, Braque and Derain are named among the artists he influenced.

What did Gauguin rename his Papeete paper Le Sourire, 'A Serious Newspaper', later on?

'A Wicked Newspaper'; he drew a salary as editor of Les Guêpes from 1900.