Paul Gauguin
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49 free Paul Gauguin trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Paul Gauguin was a stockbroker until he was 34, a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen after that, and a labourer on the Panama Canal before he ever reached the South Seas. The painter of the Tahitian canvases that sell for hundreds of millions spent a privileged early childhood in Lima, sailed with the merchant marine and the French navy, and learned his craft from Camille Pissarro rather than any academy. These 49 questions follow that route: Flora Tristan the socialist grandmother, the Pont-Aven summers with Émile Bernard, Cloisonnism and The Yellow Christ, the Vision after the Sermon in Edinburgh, the nine turbulent weeks at Van Gogh's Yellow House in Arles, the 1891 voyage to Tahiti, Teha'amana and Spirit of the Dead Watching, Noa Noa, the arsenic attempt after Where Do We Come From?, the newspaper feuds in Papeete, the House of Pleasure at Atuona and the grave on Hiva Oa with Oviri on it. The record-breaking 2015 sale of When Will You Marry? and Gauguin's influence on Matisse and Picasso round it off. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo or print it for an art-history night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country did Gauguin spend a privileged early childhood?
Peru
Peru. He was waited on by servants there, and those vivid memories stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Q 02Gauguin's grandmother Flora Tristan was an activist in which movement?
Early socialism
Early socialism. She toured France city by city urging workers to join together in one union, and died in Bordeaux.
Q 03Before painting, Gauguin served in the merchant marine and then which force?
The French navy
The French navy. His mother died while he was away at sea, leaving him in the care of a wealthy guardian, Gustave Arosa.
Q 04What job did Gauguin take in Paris in 1871 that he kept for over a decade?
Stockbroker
Stockbroker. The Paris stock market crash of 1882 ended that comfortable career, and he set out to make his living as a painter.
Q 05Which Somerset Maugham novel was inspired by Gauguin's life?
The Moon and Sixpence
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.
Q 06Gauguin's wife Mette-Sophie Gad, whom he married in 1873, was of which nationality?
Danish
Danish. When they moved to Copenhagen and his sales job failed, Mette supported the family by giving French lessons.
Q 07Which actor won an Oscar for playing Gauguin in Lust for Life, the 1956 film about Van Gogh?
Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn. Kirk Douglas, who played Van Gogh, was nominated for Best Actor but lost to Yul Brynner in The King and I.
Q 08Which Impressionist painter was Gauguin's early teacher and mentor?
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro. He introduced his pupil to other painters, among them Paul Cézanne, who sometimes joined the two of them to paint.
Q 09When Gauguin first took up sculpture, what did he carve his busts from?
Marble
Marble. He later gave it up for coarser wood and clay, which suited his love of rough, unpolished surfaces.
Q 10In a self-portrait he swapped with Van Gogh, Gauguin portrayed himself as which character from Les Misérables?
Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean. Gauguin saw Hugo's persecuted hero, forever branded a criminal, as a stand-in for misunderstood artists like himself.
Q 11Which young painter's flat colours and bold outlines impressed Gauguin at Pont-Aven in 1888?
Émile Bernard
Émile Bernard. He later claimed that he, not Gauguin, had invented their new style, and grew bitter as the credit went to Gauguin.
Q 12Which group of young Paris painters did Paul Sérusier found after working under Gauguin at Pont-Aven?
The Nabis
The Nabis. Their name comes from the Hebrew word for prophet, since they saw themselves as prophets of a new kind of painting.
Q 13Vision After the Sermon depicts which biblical struggle?
Jacob wrestling the angel
Q 21During the 1889 World's Fair, where did Gauguin and his friends put on their own art show?
In a café
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.
Q 22What paid for Gauguin's first voyage to Tahiti?
An auction
An auction. He sold his paintings at a Paris saleroom, and a banquet and a benefit show were also held for him.
Q 23Because Gauguin wore his hair long, what did Tahitians first take him for?
A man living as a woman
A man living as a woman, a role Tahitians call mahu. The colonial French, meanwhile, suspected he was a spy.
Jacob wrestling the angel. A tree trunk slashes across the picture, dividing the praying women from the vision they see after the sermon.
Q 14What happened when Gauguin offered Vision After the Sermon to a local church?
It was refused
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.
Q 15The Yellow Christ, painted in 1889, sets the Crucifixion in which region?
Brittany
Brittany. He modelled the figure on a painted wooden crucifix that still hangs in a chapel near Pont-Aven, where he was working.
Q 16The Yellow Christ is often cited as the quintessential work of which style?
Cloisonnism
Cloisonnism. Its name comes from cloisonné enamel, and like that craft the style divides flat patches of colour with dark lines.
Q 17In 1887 Gauguin ran out of money in Colón and took work on what?
The Panama Canal
The Panama Canal. He dug from dawn until dusk under the tropical sun, but the job lasted only about two weeks.
Q 18In 1887, Gauguin and fellow painter Charles Laval went to paint on which Caribbean island?
Martinique
Martinique. The tropical paradise he had dreamed of left him an invalid, laid low by dysentery and fevers.
Q 19Van Gogh painted a series of which flowers to decorate the studio he hoped to share with Gauguin?
Sunflowers
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.
Q 20By Gauguin's later account, with what did Van Gogh confront him on 23 December 1888?
A straight razor
A straight razor. The two men never met again after that night, yet they kept writing, and Gauguin later even proposed a shared studio.
Q 24In Gauguin's painting Ia Orana Maria, how does Mary carry the baby Jesus?
On her shoulder
On her shoulder. The title is Tahitian for Hail Mary, and the painter cast both mother and child as Tahitians.
Q 25In Gauguin's portrait of Teha'amana, the glyphs on the wall behind her resemble the script of which island?
Easter Island
Easter Island. Yet before these ancient signs, Teha'amana sits in her churchgoing missionary dress, holding a fan.
Q 26Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) was painted on which unusual support?
Burlap
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.
Q 27Which Manet painting is Spirit of the Dead Watching often compared with?
Olympia
Olympia. Gauguin so admired Manet's famous nude that he painted a copy of it himself.
Q 28What is the title of Gauguin's Tahitian travelogue, first published in 1901?
Noa Noa
Noa Noa. Home in France in 1894, Gauguin set about illustrating the book himself, cutting a set of woodcuts for it.
Q 29In a brawl in Brittany between his two Tahiti stays, what did Gauguin break?
His leg
His leg. The break never healed properly, and the wound still plagued him years later in the South Seas.
Q 30Which fellow painter admired Gauguin's 1893 show of Tahitian paintings while others mocked it?
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas. Gauguin thanked him with a gift he had made with his own hands.