Oh, for a time machine to explore the past! But until Elon Musk comes up with one, books and biographies are as good as it gets.
Here are five books to read around Paul Gauguin.
After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art
National Gallery, 2023
If you want to know how art got from Impressionism to radical modernity, this is the book for you. Bang up-to-date, beautifully illustrated, with very readable essays from leading scholars, the book flings open the doors of perception.
Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters
Thames and Hudson, 2023
Van Gogh painted his famous Sunflowers to welcome Gauguin to his house in the south of France. Gauguin reciprocated, growing sunflowers in Tahiti and painting them to commemorate their friendship. Lovable but impossible, van Gogh’s letters track the journey of his tortured mind.
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
Penguin Classics, 1839
What do Paul Gauguin and Taylor Swift have in common? A fascination for the writing of Edgar Allan Poe; his magical wordscapes give us all space to dream.
The Happy Isles of Oceania by Paul Theroux
Penguin, 1992
A love letter to the Pacific islands where, as I discovered on my research trips, you are taken not only to an unspoiled world, but to an unspoiled mindset. This joyful book makes you feel as good as a week in a spa.
The Unknown Matisse by Hilary Spurling
Penguin, 2017
Henri Matisse, an early follower of Gauguin, celebrated ‘luxe, calme et volupte’ (luxury, calm and pleasure). This lovely biography celebrates the liberation of the instinctive in life and art.
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux is published in paperback on 5 June 2025, and is also available in hardback and ebook.
A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin, by the prize-winning author of I Am Dynamite!
Sue Prideaux’s first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (2005) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Strindberg: A Life (2012) won the Duff Cooper Prize, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (2018) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize, longlisted for the Cundhill History Prize and Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Non-Fiction Crown and was The Times Biography of the Year.
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