50 free Paul Gauguin trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Gauguin was born in Paris in which year of revolutions across Europe?
1848
His journalist father fled France when his newspaper was suppressed, bound for Peru.
Q 02In which country did Gauguin spend a privileged early childhood until the age of six?
Peru
A relative's son-in-law became president; the family fled during civil conflicts in 1854.
Q 03Gauguin's grandmother Flora Tristan was an activist in which movement?
Early socialism
She published a popular travelogue of Peru in 1838 and died under police surveillance in 1844.
Q 04Before painting, Gauguin served in the merchant marine and then which force?
The French navy
He had signed on as a pilot's assistant at 17 after attending a naval preparatory school.
Q 05What job did Gauguin take in Paris in 1871 that he kept for over a decade?
Stockbroker
By 1879 he was earning 30,000 francs a year, and as much again dealing in art.
Q 06Which financial event of 1882 pushed Gauguin toward painting full-time?
A stock market crash
Dealer Paul Durand-Ruel stopped buying pictures from painters like Gauguin for a time.
Q 07Gauguin's wife Mette-Sophie Gad, whom he married in 1873, was of which nationality?
Danish
They later moved to Copenhagen, where his tarpaulin business failed.
Q 08What did Gauguin unsuccessfully try to sell in Denmark in 1884?
Tarpaulins
He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins.
Q 09Which Impressionist became Gauguin's mentor and introduced him to the movement?
Camille Pissarro
He later broke with Gauguin, who rejected Seurat's pointillism.
Q 10A bust of Gauguin's son Émile was the only sculpture at which Impressionist exhibition?
The 4th, in 1879
He showed paintings in 1881 and 1882, and 19 canvases plus a wood relief in 1886.
Q 11Gauguin's Young Breton Boys Bathing is indebted to which artist in design and bold colour?
Degas
It introduced a theme Gauguin returned to on every visit to Pont-Aven.
Q 12Which young artist did Gauguin meet at Pont-Aven in 1888, sharing a simplified style?
Émile Bernard
Bernard's flat colour and bold outlines led the critic Dujardin to coin 'Cloisonnism'.
Q 13Which critic named the flat-colour, bold-outline style after medieval enamelwork?
Édouard Dujardin
Gauguin's work later moved to Synthetism, where form and colour share equal roles.
Q 21By Gauguin's later account, with what did Van Gogh confront him on 23 December 1888?
A straight razor
Later that evening Vincent cut off his own left ear; Gauguin left Arles the next day.
Q 22Theo van Gogh commissioned which 1889 series of Gauguin zincographs?
The Volpini Suite
They appeared at the Café des Arts show of 1889 beside the Exposition Universelle.
Q 23In which year did Gauguin first sail for Tahiti?
1891
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?
Q 14Vision After the Sermon depicts which biblical struggle?
Jacob wrestling the angel
The ground is a flat, unnatural red; the painting hangs in the Scottish National Gallery.
Q 15In which city is Vision After the Sermon held?
Edinburgh
It was completed in 1888, the year Gauguin tired of Impressionism.
Q 16The Yellow Christ, painted in 1889, sets the Crucifixion in which region?
Brittany
Breton women pray beneath the cross; a pencil study is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
Q 17The Yellow Christ is often cited as the quintessential work of which style?
Cloisonnism
The image is reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines.
Q 18In 1887 Gauguin ran out of money in Colón and took work on what?
The Panama Canal
He wrote to Mette of digging from 5.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. under tropical sun and rain.
Q 19After Panama, Gauguin and Charles Laval painted for five months on which Caribbean island?
Martinique
Vincent and Theo van Gogh saw and admired the Martinique paintings in Paris.
Q 20How long did Gauguin and Van Gogh paint together at the Yellow House in Arles in 1888?
Nine weeks
Theo van Gogh had pushed for the arrangement; it ended with Vincent's mutilated ear.
Mataiea
It was some 45 kilometres from the capital; he was fined there for bathing naked in a stream.
Q 25Which painting did Gauguin consider his most prized Tahitian work of the first trip?
Ia Orana Maria
Its title means Ave Maria; Fatata te Miti means By the Sea.
Q 26How old was Teha'amana when Gauguin took her as his vahine in 1892?
13
He called her Tehura in his travelogue; she was pregnant by the end of that summer.
Q 27Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) was painted on which unusual support?
Burlap
Gauguin said the title could mean the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her.
Q 28Which Manet painting is Spirit of the Dead Watching often compared with?
Olympia
Gauguin had admired Olympia at the 1889 Exposition Universelle.
Q 29What is the title of Gauguin's Tahitian travelogue, first published in 1901?
Noa Noa
He prepared experimental woodcuts for it in 1894; the poet Charles Morice collaborated.
Q 30Back in Paris in 1893, Gauguin conducted a public affair with a teenager known as what?
Annah the Javanese
He dressed in Polynesian costume and held a weekly salon at 6 rue Vercingétorix.