49 Fun Facts About Paul Gauguin

In which country did Gauguin spend a privileged early childhood?

Peru. He was waited on by servants there, and those vivid memories stayed with him for the rest of his life.

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

Early socialism. She toured France city by city urging workers to join together in one union, and died in Bordeaux.

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

The French navy. His mother died while he was away at sea, leaving him in the care of a wealthy guardian, Gustave Arosa.

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

Stockbroker. The Paris stock market crash of 1882 ended that comfortable career, and he set out to make his living as a painter.

Which Somerset Maugham novel was inspired by Gauguin's life?

The Moon and Sixpence. Its painter hero dies of leprosy, and at his dying wish his wife burns down the hut whose walls he had covered with paintings.

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

Danish. When they moved to Copenhagen and his sales job failed, Mette supported the family by giving French lessons.

Which actor won an Oscar for playing Gauguin in Lust for Life, the 1956 film about Van Gogh?

Anthony Quinn. Kirk Douglas, who played Van Gogh, was nominated for Best Actor but lost to Yul Brynner in The King and I.

Which Impressionist painter was Gauguin's early teacher and mentor?

Camille Pissarro. He introduced his pupil to other painters, among them Paul Cézanne, who sometimes joined the two of them to paint.

When Gauguin first took up sculpture, what did he carve his busts from?

Marble. He later gave it up for coarser wood and clay, which suited his love of rough, unpolished surfaces.

In a self-portrait he swapped with Van Gogh, Gauguin portrayed himself as which character from Les Misérables?

Jean Valjean. Gauguin saw Hugo's persecuted hero, forever branded a criminal, as a stand-in for misunderstood artists like himself.

Which young painter's flat colours and bold outlines impressed Gauguin at Pont-Aven in 1888?

Émile Bernard. He later claimed that he, not Gauguin, had invented their new style, and grew bitter as the credit went to Gauguin.

Which group of young Paris painters did Paul Sérusier found after working under Gauguin at Pont-Aven?

The Nabis. Their name comes from the Hebrew word for prophet, since they saw themselves as prophets of a new kind of painting.

Vision After the Sermon depicts which biblical struggle?

Jacob wrestling the angel. A tree trunk slashes across the picture, dividing the praying women from the vision they see after the sermon.

What happened when Gauguin offered Vision After the Sermon to a local church?

It was refused. He had carried the canvas out to a village church, but its strange, bold vision was too much for the clergy to accept.

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

Brittany. He modelled the figure on a painted wooden crucifix that still hangs in a chapel near Pont-Aven, where he was working.

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

Cloisonnism. Its name comes from cloisonné enamel, and like that craft the style divides flat patches of colour with dark lines.

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

The Panama Canal. He dug from dawn until dusk under the tropical sun, but the job lasted only about two weeks.

In 1887, Gauguin and fellow painter Charles Laval went to paint on which Caribbean island?

Martinique. The tropical paradise he had dreamed of left him an invalid, laid low by dysentery and fevers.

Van Gogh painted a series of which flowers to decorate the studio he hoped to share with Gauguin?

Sunflowers. After the two fell out, Gauguin asked for one of the paintings in exchange for studies he had left behind, and Van Gogh flatly refused.

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

A straight razor. The two men never met again after that night, yet they kept writing, and Gauguin later even proposed a shared studio.

During the 1889 World's Fair, where did Gauguin and his friends put on their own art show?

In a café. The fair's official art show took only works passed by academic juries, so the rebels hung theirs on a café's walls nearby.

What paid for Gauguin's first voyage to Tahiti?

An auction. He sold his paintings at a Paris saleroom, and a banquet and a benefit show were also held for him.

Because Gauguin wore his hair long, what did Tahitians first take him for?

A man living as a woman, a role Tahitians call mahu. The colonial French, meanwhile, suspected he was a spy.

In Gauguin's painting Ia Orana Maria, how does Mary carry the baby Jesus?

On her shoulder. The title is Tahitian for Hail Mary, and the painter cast both mother and child as Tahitians.

In Gauguin's portrait of Teha'amana, the glyphs on the wall behind her resemble the script of which island?

Easter Island. Yet before these ancient signs, Teha'amana sits in her churchgoing missionary dress, holding a fan.

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

Burlap. Gauguin said the scene came from getting home late to a dark room, striking a match and finding the girl frightened on the bed.

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

Olympia. Gauguin so admired Manet's famous nude that he painted a copy of it himself.

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

Noa Noa. Home in France in 1894, Gauguin set about illustrating the book himself, cutting a set of woodcuts for it.

In a brawl in Brittany between his two Tahiti stays, what did Gauguin break?

His leg. The break never healed properly, and the wound still plagued him years later in the South Seas.

Which fellow painter admired Gauguin's 1893 show of Tahitian paintings while others mocked it?

Edgar Degas. Gauguin thanked him with a gift he had made with his own hands.

Soon after Gauguin returned to France in 1893, what brought him a windfall of 13,000 francs?

An uncle's legacy. Gauguin set up a new studio in Paris and took to going about in an outlandish, exotic costume.

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

A bronze cast of Oviri. It shows a ferocious goddess of mourning, a figure Gauguin came to see as his own alter ego.

Where Do We Come From? reads in which direction?

Right to left. It opens with a sleeping child on the right and ends at the far left with an old woman approaching death.

In which southern French town did Gauguin share the Yellow House with Van Gogh in 1888?

Arles. Van Gogh had set the house up as a studio of the south, and the pair spent nine weeks painting side by side before their friendship soured.

Where Do We Come From? hangs in which city?

Boston. Gauguin shipped it from Tahiti to Paris in 1898, where it waited three years for a buyer, a collector from Bordeaux.

When Will You Marry? was reportedly sold in 2015 to a buyer from which country?

Qatar. The Swiss family that sold it had kept it on loan to a Basel museum for almost 50 years, and the seller refused to name the buyer.

What does Gauguin wear in his last known self-portrait?

A pair of glasses. His eyesight had begun to fail, one more torment added to the pain in his legs.

Which Paris art dealer was supporting Gauguin during his final years?

Ambroise Vollard. The dealer took a steady supply of new canvases, and that money let Gauguin move on to the Marquesas Islands.

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

Les Guêpes (The Wasps). Under his editorship it became known for scathing attacks on the governor and on colonial officials.

Gauguin left Tahiti in 1901 for which more remote island?

Hiva Oa. He hoped its wilder surroundings would give him new subjects and fresh strength to paint, though his health was already failing.

What name did Gauguin give his last house in the South Pacific?

House of Pleasure. He carved the wooden panels around its door, and they survive in a Paris museum though the house itself is gone.

Gauguin mocked the local Catholic bishop with a caricature statue that gave the churchman what?

A pair of horns. Gauguin named the figure Father Lechery and stood it at his own house beside a second statue of a woman.

Tests on teeth found in a well at Gauguin's last home cast doubt on the belief that he had which disease?

Syphilis. Tests showed the teeth were his, yet they held no trace of mercury, a standard treatment for the disease in his day.

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

Arsenic. Sick and deep in debt, he swallowed so large a dose that his body rejected it, and he survived.

Gauguin died in 1903 facing which punishment?

Prison. He had accused a gendarme of taking bribes and was convicted of libel, but he died before the sentence could begin.

In 2009 two German historians argued that Gauguin sliced off Van Gogh's ear with what?

A sword. Gauguin was a keen fencer, and the historians argued that the two painters then kept a pact of silence about the quarrel.

The title of Gauguin's 1897 painting Nevermore echoes a famous poem by which writer?

Edgar Allan Poe. The word is the refrain of The Raven, yet Gauguin insisted the bird he painted was not Poe's raven but a bird of the devil keeping watch.

Gauguin's bold, unnatural colour helped inspire which early 20th-century movement led by Matisse?

Fauvism. When the group first showed together in 1905, a critic mocked the painters as fauves, French for wild beasts, and the insult became the movement's name.

Which singer spent his last years in the Marquesas and lies buried near Gauguin?

Jacques Brel. The Belgian settled in the islands after quitting the stage, and named his final album Les Marquises after them.