1

The Moon and Sixpence

The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W Somerset Maugham, told in episodic form by a first-person
narrator, in a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character Charles Strickland, a middle-
aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an
artist. The story is said to be loosely based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin.
Publication date: 1919
Plot summary
The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator, who is first introduced to Strickland
through the latter's wife and strikes him (the narrator) as unremarkable. Certain chapters entirely comprise
stories or narrations of others, which the narrator recalls from memory (selectively editing or elaborating
on certain aspects of dialogue, particularly Strickland's, as Strickland is said by the narrator to be limited in
his use of verbiage and tended to use gestures in his expression).
Strickland is a well-off, middle-class stockbroker in London sometime in late 19th or early 20th century.
Early in the novel, he leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris. He lives a destitute but defiantly
content life there as an artist (specifically a painter), lodging in run-down hotels and falling prey to both
illness and hunger. Strickland, in his drive to express through his art what appears to continually possess
and compel him on the inside, cares nothing for physical discomfort and is indifferent to his surroundings.
He is generously supported, while in Paris, by a commercially successful but hackneyed Dutch painter, Dirk
Stroeve, a friend of the narrator's, who immediately recognizes Strickland's genius. After helping Strickland
recover from a life-threatening condition, Stroeve is repaid by having his wife, Blanche, abandon him for
Strickland. Strickland later discards the wife (all he really sought from Blanche was a model to paint, not
serious companionship, and it is hinted in the novel's dialogue that he indicated this to her and she took the
risk anyway), who then commits suicide - yet another human casualty (the first ones being his own
established life and those of his wife and children) in Strickland's single-minded pursuit of Art and Beauty.
After the Paris episode, the story continues in Tahiti. Strickland has already died, and narrator attempts to
piece together his life there from recollections of others. He finds that Strickland had taken up a native
woman, had two children by her (one of whom dies) and started painting profusely. We learn that
Strickland had settled for a short while in the French port of Marseilles before traveling to Tahiti, where he
lived for a few years before finally dying of leprosy. Strickland left behind numerous paintings, but
his magnum opus, which he painted on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy, was burnt
down after his death by his wife in accordance with his dying orders.
Inspiration
The inspiration for this story, Gauguin, is considered to be the founder of primitivism in art. The main
differences between Gauguin and Strickland are that Gauguin was French rather than English, and whilst
Maugham describes the character of Strickland as being largely ignorant of his contemporaries in Modern
art (as well as largely ignorant of other artists in general), Gauguin himself was well acquainted with and
exhibited with the Impressionists in the 1880s and lived for awhile with Van Gogh in southern France.
About the title
According to some sources, the title, the meaning of which is not explicitly revealed in the book, was taken
from a review of Of Human Bondage in which the novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as "so
busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet." [1] According to a 1956 letter from
Maugham, "If you look on the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon."
Adaptations
The book was made into a film of the same name directed and written by Albert Lewin. Released in
1942, the film stars George Sanders as Charles Strickland.
The novel served as the basis for an opera, also titled The Moon and Sixpence, by John Gardner to a
libretto by Patrick Terry; it was premiered at Covent Garden in 1958.[2][3]
Writer S Lee Pogostin adapted it for American TV in 1959. This production starred Laurence Olivier,
with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in supporting roles.
In popular culture
 2

In the opening scene of François Truffaut's cinematic adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, several firemen are
preparing books for burning. In the crowd of onlookers is a little boy who picks up one of the books and
thumbs through it before his father takes it from him and throws it on the pile with the rest. That book
is The Moon and Sixpence.
The book was mentioned in Agatha Christie's mystery (Hercule Poirot series) novel Five Little Pigs,
when Poirot asks one of the suspects (Angela Warren) if she read the book at the time the crime was
committed.
The book was also mentioned frequently in Stephen King's 1998 novel Bag of Bones.

W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham (/ˈmɔːm/ MAWM), CH (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was a British
playwright, novelist andshort story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly
the highest paid author during the 1930s. [1]
After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was
emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually
trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidlly
that Maugham gave up medicine to write full time.
During World War I, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in
1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of
these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.
Childhood and education

Maugham's father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British
embassy in Paris, France.[2] Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be
conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on
British soil.[3] His grandfather, another Robert, had also been a prominent lawyer and co-founder of
the English Law Society.[4] It was taken for granted that Maugham and his brothers would follow in their
footsteps. His elder brother Viscount Maugham enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord
Chancellor from 1938 to 1939.
Maugham's mother, Edith Mary (née Snell), had tuberculosis (TB), a condition for which her doctor
prescribed childbirth.[5] She had Maugham several years after the last of his three older brothers; they were
already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three. The youngest, he was effectively raised as an
only child.
Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth, on Maugham's eighth birthday.
Edith died of TB six days later on 31 January at the age of 41. [6] The early death of his mother left Maugham
traumatized; he kept his mother's photograph by his bedside for the rest of his life. [7] Two years after
Edith's death, Maugham's father died in France of cancer.
Maugham was sent to the UK to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar
of Whitstable, in Kent. The move was damaging, as Henry Maugham proved cold and emotionally cruel. The
boy attended The King's School, Canterbury, which was also difficult for him. He was teased for his bad
English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father.
Maugham developed a stammer that would stay with him all his life, although it was sporadic and subject
to mood and circumstance.[8]
Miserable both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, the young Maugham developed a talent for making
wounding remarks to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary
characters. At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School. His uncle allowed him to travel
to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. During his year
in Heidelberg, Maugham met and had a sexual affair with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years
his senior.[9] He also wrote his first book there, a biography of Giacomo Meyerbeer, an opera composer.[10]
On Maugham's return to Britain, his uncle found his nephew a position in an accountant's office, but after a
month, Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle set about finding Maugham a new
 3

profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers, and Maugham
asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps. A career in the church was rejected
because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous. His uncle rejected the civil service,
not because of the young man's feelings or interests, but because his uncle concluded that the civil service
was no longer a career for gentlemen; a recent law required applicants to pass an entry examination. The
local doctor suggested the medical profession and Maugham's uncle agreed.
Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of 15 and fervently wished to become an author, but as
he was not of age, he refrained from telling his guardian. For the next five years, he studied medicine at St
Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth, London.
Career

Early works
Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but
Maugham felt the contrary. He was living in the great city of London, meeting people of a "low" sort whom
he would never have met otherwise, and seeing them at a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their
lives. In maturity, he recalled the value of his experience as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw
how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."
Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary
ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his medical degree. In 1897, he
wrote his second book, Liza of Lambeth, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its
details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in Lambeth, a South
London slum. Maugham wrote near the opening of the novel: "...it is impossible always to give the exact
unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with
his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue." [11]
Liza of Lambeth's first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor,
dropped medicine and embarked on his 65-year career as a man of letters. He later said, "I took to it as a
duck takes to water."[12]
The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and to live in places such as Spain and Capri for the next
decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of Liza. This changed in 1907 with
the success of his play Lady Frederick. By the next year, he had four plays running simultaneously in
London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the
billboards.
Maugham's supernatural thriller, The Magician (1908), based its principal character on the well-known and
somewhat disreputableAleister Crowley. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist,
Oliver Haddo. He wrote a critique of the novel, charging Maugham with plagiarism, in a review published
in Vanity Fair.[13] Maugham survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation.
Popular success, 1914–39
By 1914, Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. Too old to enlist when
World War I broke out, he served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary
Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 23 well-known writers, including the Americans John Dos
Passos and E. E. Cummings.
During this time, he met Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan, who became his companion and
lover until Haxton's death in 1944.[14] Throughout this period, Maugham continued to write. He
proofread Of Human Bondage at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance duties. [15]
Of Human Bondage (1915) initially was criticized in both England and the United States; the New York
World described the romantic obsession of the protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a
poor fool". The influential American novelist and criticTheodore Dreiser rescued the novel, referring to it as
a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book a lift, and it has
never been out of print since.[16]
Maugham indicates in his foreword that he derived the title from a passage in Baruch Spinoza's Ethics:
 4

“The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under
their control is not his own master...so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he see
the better before him." [17]
Of Human Bondage is considered to have many autobiographical elements. Maugham gave Philip
Carey a club foot (rather than his stammer); the vicar of Blackstable appears derived from the vicar of
Whitstable; and Carey is a doctor. Maugham insisted the book was more invention than fact. The close
relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark, despite the legal
requirement to state that "the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary". In 1938
he wrote: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly
distinguish one from the other."
Marriage and family

Although Maugham's first and many other sexual relationships were with men, he also had sexual
relationships with a number of women. He had an affair with Syrie Wellcome, the wife of Henry
Wellcome, the American-born English pharmaceutical magnate. They had a daughter named Mary
Elizabeth Wellcome, (1915–1998).[18] Henry Wellcome sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as
co-respondent.
In May 1917, following the decree absolute, Syrie Wellcome and Maugham were married. Syrie
Maugham became a noted interior decorator who in the 1920s popularized "the all-white room." Their
daughter was familiarly called Liza and her surname was changed to Maugham.
Syrie finally divorced him in 1929, finding his relationship and travels with Haxton too difficult to live
with.
Intelligence work

Maugham returned to England from his ambulance unit duties to promote Of Human Bondage. With
that completed, he was eager to assist the war effort again. As he was unable to return to his
ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high-ranking intelligence officer known as
"R;" he was recruited by John Wallinger.[19] In September 1915, Maugham began work in Switzerland,
as one of the network of British agents who operated against the Berlin Committee. Its members
included Virendranath Chattopadhyay, an Indian revolutionary trying to use the war to create violence
against the British in his country. Maugham lived in Switzerland as a writer.
In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the
life of Paul Gauguin. This was the first of his journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and
1930s which inspired his novels. He became known as a writer who portrayed the last days of
colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation
rests represent only a fraction of his output. On this and all subsequent journeys, he was accompanied
by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham was painfully shy,
and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material which the author converted to fiction.
In June 1917, Maugham was asked by Sir William Wiseman, an officer of the British Secret Intelligence
Service (later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia. [20][19]It was part of an attempt to
keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist
propaganda.[21] Two and a half months later, theBolsheviks took control. Maugham subsequently said
that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded. Quiet and observant,
Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed he had inherited from his lawyer
father a gift for cool judgement and the ability to be undeceived by facile appearances. [19][22][citation needed]
Maugham used his spying experiences as the basis for Ashenden: Or the British Agent, a collection of
short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy. This character is considered to have
influenced Ian Fleming's later series of James Bond novels.[23] In 1922, Maugham dedicated his book On
A Chinese Screen to Syrie. This was a collection of 58 ultra-short story sketches, which he had written
during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, intending to expand the sketches later as a book.
[24]
 5

Dramatised from a story first published in his collection The Casuarina Tree (1924), Maugham's
play The Letter, starring Gladys Cooper, had its premiere in London in 1927. Later, he asked
that Katharine Cornell play the lead in the 1927 Broadway version. The play was adapted as a film by
the same name in 1929, and again in 1940. Playing the lead in his comedy, The Constant Wife, in 1951,
Cornell was a great success.[25]
In 1926, Maugham bought Villa Mauresque, on 9 acres (3.6 hectares) at Cap Ferrat on the French
Riviera. His home for most of the rest of his life, he hosted one of the great literary and social salons of
the 1920s and 30s. He continued to be highly productive, writing plays, short stories, novels, essays and
travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France and German occupation in World War II forced
Maugham to leave the French Riviera, he was a refugee but one of the most famous and wealthiest
writers in the English-speaking world.
Maugham's novel, An Appointment in  Samarra (1933), is based on an ancient Babylonian myth: Death
is both the narrator and a central character. [26][27] The American writer John O'Hara credited Maugham's
novel as a creative inspiration for his own novel Appointment in Samarra.
Grand old man of letters
Maugham, by then in his sixties, spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he
worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film
adaptations) and later in the South. While in the US, he was asked by the British government to make
patriotic speeches to induce the US to aid Britain, if not necessarily become an allied combatant. After
his companion Gerald Haxton died in 1944, Maugham moved back to England. In 1946 he returned to
his villa in France, where he lived, interrupted by frequent and long travels, until his death.
Maugham began a relationship with Alan Searle, whom he had first met in 1928. A young man from the
London slum area of Bermondsey, Searle had already been kept by older men. He proved a devoted if
not a stimulating companion. One of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Haxton
and Searle, said simply: "Gerald was vintage, Alan was vin ordinaire."[28]
Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. He once confessed: "I have most loved people who
cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed... In order not
to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel." [29][page  needed]
In 1962 Maugham sold a collection of paintings, some of which had already been assigned to his
daughter Liza by deed. She sued her father and won a judgment of £230,000. Maugham publicly
disowned her and claimed she was not his biological daughter. He adopted Searle as his son and heir.
In his 1962 volume of memoirs, Looking Back, he attacked the late Syrie Maugham and wrote that Liza
had been born before they married. The memoir cost him several friends and exposed him to much
public ridicule. Liza and her husband Lord Glendevon contested the change in Maugham's will in the
French courts, and it was overturned. But, in 1965 Searle inherited £50,000, the contents of Villa
Mauresque, Maugham's manuscripts and his revenue from copyrights for 30 years. Thereafter the
copyrights passed to the Royal Literary Fund.
There is no grave for Maugham. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, The King's School,
Canterbury. Liza Maugham, Lady Glendevon, died aged 83 in 1998, survived by her four children (a son
and a daughter by her first marriage to Vincent Paravicini, and two more sons to Lord Glendevon). One
of her grandchildren is Derek Paravicini, who is a musical prodigy and autistic savant.
Achievements

Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film
adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable
life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he
kept churning out the books, proud that he could. Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the
highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his
small vocabulary, and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work. In 1934 the American
journalist and radio personality Alexander Woollcott offered Maugham some language advice: "The
female implies, and from that the male infers." Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn." [30]
 6

Maugham wrote at a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William

Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning
critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's
wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put
anything in an individual way".[31]
For a public man of Maugham's generation, being openly gay was impossible. Whether his own orientation
disgusted him (as it did many at a time when homosexuality was widely considered a moral failing as well
as illegal) or whether he was trying to disguise his leanings, Maugham wrote disparagingly of the gay artist.
In Don Fernando, a non-fiction book about his years living in Spain, Maugham pondered a (perhaps fanciful)
suggestion that the painter El Greco was homosexual:
"It cannot be denied that the homosexual has a narrower outlook on the world than the normal man. In
certain respects the natural responses of the species are denied to him. Some at least of the broad and
typical human emotions he can never experience. However subtly he sees life he cannot see it whole ... I
cannot now help asking myself whether what I see in El Greco's work of tortured fantasy and sinister
strangeness is not due to such a sexual abnormality as this." [32]
But Maugham's homosexuality is believed to have shaped his fiction in two ways. Since he tended to see
attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave his women characters sexual needs and appetites, in a way
quite unusual for authors of his time.[citation needed] Liza of Lambeth, Cakes and Ale, Neil MacAdam and The
Razor's Edge, all featured women determined to feed their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result.
As Maugham's sexual appetites were then officially disapproved of, or criminal, in nearly all of the countries
in which he traveled, the author was unusually tolerant of the vices of others. [citation needed] Some readers and
critics[who?] complained that Maugham did not condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays.
Maugham replied: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they
personally affect me."[33]
Maugham's public view of his abilities remained modest. Toward the end of his career he described himself
as "in the very first row of the second-raters". [34] In 1954, he was made aCompanion of Honour.
Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War; he continued to the point
where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club.[35] In 1948 he announced that he would
bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre. From 1951, some 14 years before his
death, his paintings began their exhibition life. In 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in
Covent Garden.[36][37]
Significant works

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, a semiautobiographical novel that
deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned, and brought up
by his pious uncle. Philip's clubfoot causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing
Maugham's struggles with his stutter and, as his biographer Ted Morgan notes, his homosexuality.
Two of his later novels were based on historical people: The Moon and Sixpence is about the life of Paul
Gauguin; and Cakes and Ale contains thinly veiled characterizations of the authors Thomas Hardy and Hugh
Walpole. Maugham's last major novel, The Razor's Edge (1944), was a departure for him in many ways.
While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The
protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of World War I who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle,
traveling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and war-weariness struck
a chord with readers as World War II waned. It was quickly adapted as a movie.
Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly
British, colonists in the Far East. They typically express the emotional toll the colonists bear by their
isolation. "Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation" are considered especially notable. "Rain",
in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert the Pacific island
prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its reputation. It has been adapted as a play and as several films.
Maugham said that many of his short stories were inspired by accounts he heard during his travels in the
outposts of the Empire. After publication, he left behind a long string of angry former hosts. Maugham's
restrained prose allows him to explore the tensions and passions without appearing melodramatic. [citation
needed]
 His The Magician (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley.
 7

Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared
with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Freya Stark. His best efforts in this line include The
Gentleman in the Parlour, dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and On
a Chinese Screen, a series of very brief vignettes that might have been sketches for stories left
unwritten.
Influenced by the published journals of the French writer Jules Renard, which Maugham had enjoyed
for their conscientiousness, wisdom and wit, Maugham published selections from his own journals
under the title A Writer's Notebook (1949). Although these journal selections are, by nature, episodic
and of varying quality, they range over more than 50 years of the writer's life and contain much that
Maugham scholars and admirers find of interest. [citation needed]
Influence

In 1947 Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, awarded to the best British writer or
writers under the age of thirty-five for a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable winners
include V. S. Naipaul, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis and Thom Gunn. On his death, Maugham donated his
copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund.
Other writers acknowledged his work. Anthony Burgess, who included a complex fictional portrait of
Maugham in the novel Earthly Powers, praised his influence. George Orwell said that Maugham was
"the modern writer who has influenced me the most."
Portraits of Maugham

Many portraits were painted of Somerset Maugham, including that by Graham Sutherland[38] in
the Tate Gallery, and several by Sir Gerald Kelly. Sutherland's portrait was included in the
exhibit Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 at the National Portrait Gallery.

Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist
who was not well appreciated until after his death. Gauguin was later recognized for his experimental use
of colors and synthetist style that were distinguishably different from Impressionism. His work was
influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso, and Henri
Matisse. Gauguin’s art became popular after his death and many of his paintings were in the possession of
Russian collector Sergei Shchukin.[1] He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter,
sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with coloring led directly to
the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his
paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way toPrimitivism and the return to
the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms
Biography
Gauguin was born in Paris, France, to journalist Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal, daughter of the
proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan, a feminist precursor whose father was part of an
influential Peruvian family. In 1850 [4] the family left Paris for that country, motivated by the political
climate of the period.[citation needed] Clovis died on the voyage, leaving eighteen-month-old Paul, his mother,
and sister, to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima with Paul's uncle and his family. The
imagery of Peru would later influence Gauguin in his art. It was in Lima that Gauguin encountered his first
art. His mother admired Pre-Columbian pottery, collecting Inca pots that some colonists dismissed as
barbaric. "One of Gauguin's few early memories of his mother was of her wearing the traditional costume
of Lima, one eye peeping from behind her manteau, the mysterious one-eye veil that all women in Lima
went out in. [...] He was always drawn to women with a 'traditional' look. This must have been the first of
the colourful female costumes that were to haunt his imagination." [5]
At the age of seven, Gauguin and his family returned to France, moving to Orléans to live with his
grandfather. The Gauguins came originally from the area and were market gardeners and
greengrocers: gauguin means 'walnut-grower'. His father had broken with family tradition to become a
 8

journalist in Paris. Gauguin soon learned French, though his first and preferred language remained Peruvian
Spanish, and he excelled in his studies. After attending a couple of local schools he was sent to a Catholic
boarding school in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, which he hated. He spent three years at the school. At
seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his requiredmilitary
service.[citation needed] Three years later, he joined the French navy in which he served for two years. He was
somewhere in the Caribbean when he found out that his mother had died. In 1871, Gauguin returned to
Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. His mother's very rich boyfriend, Gustave Arosa, got him a
job at the Paris Bourse; Gauguin was twenty-three. He became a successful Parisian businessman and
remained one for eleven years.
In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad (1850–1920). Over the next ten years, they had
five children: Émile (1874–1955); Aline (1877–1897); Clovis (1879–1900);Jean René (1881–1961); and Paul
Rollon (1883–1961). By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he
pursued a business career as a tarpaulinsalesman. It was not a success: He could not speak Danish, and the
Danes did not want French tarpaulins. Mette became the chief breadwinner, giving French lessons to
trainee diplomats.[6] His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin was driven
to paint full-time. He returned to Paris in 1885, after his wife and her family asked him to leave because he
had renounced the values they shared. [citation needed] Paul Gauguin's last physical contact with them was in
1891. Like his friend Vincent van Gogh, with whom in 1888 he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul
Gauguin experienced many bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. He traveled
to Martinique in search of an idyllic landscape and worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal construction;
he was dismissed from his job after only two weeks. [citation needed]
In 1891, Gauguin sailed to French Polynesia to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial
and conventional".[7] He wrote a book titled Noa Noa describing his experiences in Tahiti. There have been
allegations by modern critics that the contents of the book were fantasized and plagiarized. [8]
Gauguin left France again on 3 July 1895, never to return. His time away, particularly in Tahiti and Hiva Oa
Island, was the subject of much interest both then and in modern times due to his alleged sexual exploits.
[9]
 He was known to have had trysts with several prepubescent native girls, some of whom appear as
subjects of his paintings.[10]
Gauguin outlived two of his children; his favorite daughter Aline died of pneumonia and his son Clovis died
of a blood infection following a hip operation. Emile Gauguin worked as a construction engineer in the U.S.
and is buried in Lemon Bay Historical Cemetery, in Florida.Jean René became a well-known sculptor and a
staunch socialist. He died on 21 April 1961 in Copenhagen. Pola (Paul Rollon) became an artist and art critic
and wrote a memoir, My Father, Paul Gauguin (1937). Gauguin had several children by his mistresses:
Germaine (born 1891) with Juliette Huais (1866–1955); Emile Marae a Tai (born 1899) with Pau'ura; and a
daughter (born 1902) with Mari-Rose. There is some speculation that the Belgian artist Germaine
Chardon was Gauguin's daughter. Emile Marae a Tai, illiterate and raised in Tahiti, was brought to Chicago
by French journalist Josette Giraud in 1963 and became an artist of note. [11]
In French Polynesia, toward the end of his life, sick and suffering from an unhealed injury, he got into legal
trouble for taking the natives' side against French colonialists. On 27 March 1903, while living in
the Marquesas Islands, he was charged with libeling the governor, M Guicheray, and given three days to
prepare his defense. He was fined 500 francs and sentenced to three months in prison. On 2 April, he
appealed for a new trial in Papeete. At the second trial, Gauguin was fined 500 francs and sentenced to one
month in prison. At that time he was being supported by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard.[12] Suffering
from syphilis, he died at 11 a.m. on 8 May 1903 of an overdose of morphine and possibly heart attack
before he could start the prison sentence. His body had been weakened by alcohol and a dissipated life. He
was 54 years old.
Gauguin was buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa at 2 p.m. the next day.
[edit]Artistic career
In 1873, around the same time as he became a stockbroker, Gauguin began painting in his free time. His
Parisian life centred on the 9th arrondissement. Gauguin lived at 21 rue la Bruyère. All around were the
cafés frequented by the Impressionists. Gauguin also visited galleries frequently and purchased work by
emerging artists. He formed a friendship withPissarro and visited him on Sundays, to paint in his garden,
and Pissarro introduced him to various other artists. In 1877 Gauguin "moved downmarket and across the
 9

river to the poorer, newer, urban sprawls" of Vaugirard. Here, on the third floor at 8 rue Carcel, he had the
first home in which he had a studio. He showed paintings in Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882
- (earlier a sculpture, of his son Emile, had been the only sculpture in the 4th Impressionist Exhibition of
1879.) Over two summer holidays, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne.
MA, USA
In 1887, after visiting Panama, Gauguin spent several months near Saint Pierrein Martinique, in the
company of his friend the artist Charles Laval. At first, the 'negro hut' in which they lived suited him, and he
enjoyed watching people in their daily activities. [13] However, the weather in the summer was hot and the
hut leaked in the rain. He also suffered dysentery and marsh fever. While in Martinique, he produced
between ten and twenty works (twelve being the most common estimate) and traveled widely and
apparently came into contact with a small community of Indian immigrants, a contact that would later
influence his art through the incorporation of Indian symbols. Gauguin, along with Émile Bernard, Charles
Laval, Émile Schuffenecker and many others, frequently visited the artist colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. By
the bold use of pure color andSymbolist choice of subject matter, the group is now considered a Pont-Aven
School. Disappointed with Impressionism, Gauguin felt that traditional European painting had become too
imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic
symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that
of Japan (Japonism). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX.
[edit]Cloisonnism and Synthetism
Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin's work evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style
given its name by the criticÉdouard Dujardin in response to Émile Bernard's method of painting with flat
areas of color and bold outlines, which reminded Dujardin of the Medieval cloisonné enamelling technique.
Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which
suited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in his art. [14]
In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to
areas of pure color separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to
classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of color, thereby dispensing with the two most
characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towardsSynthetism in
which neither form nor color predominate but each has an equal role.
Living in Mataiea Village in Tahiti, he painted Fatata te Miti ("By the Sea"), "Ia Orana Maria" ("Ave Maria"),
and other depictions of Tahitian life. In 1893 Gauguin returned to France, where he paintedMahana No
Atua ("Day of the God"; 1894) which depicted Tahitian religion, even though the idol in the center, Hina, is
derived more from Indian and Southeast Asian archetypes. [15] Huts, mountains, dancers, a flute player, and
other reminiscences of Polynesian life form the setting for the foreground subject of three women at the
edge of a pool. Its illogical colors make the pool seem abstract, its apparent depth evoking a sort of
symbolism: The woman whose toes touch the water on the left side of the pool represents birth; the figure
in the middle, who is sitting upright with both feet in the water, represents life; while the figure on the right
represents death by turning away from the pool. [15] He moved to Punaauia in 1897, where he created the
masterpiece painting "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" and then lived
the rest of his life in the Marquesas Islands, returning to France only once, when he painted at Pont-Aven.
His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of
Polynesia. In Polynesia, he sided with the native peoples, clashing often with the colonial authorities and
with the Catholic Church. During this period he also wrote the book Avant et après (before and after), a
fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, memories from his life and comments on
literature and paintings.
[edit]Historical significance
Primitivism was an art movement of late 19th century painting and sculpture; characterized by exaggerated
body proportions, animal totems, geometric designs and stark contrasts. The first artist to systematically
use these effects and achieve broad public success was Paul Gauguin. The European cultural elite
discovering the art of Africa, Micronesia, and Native Americans for the first time were fascinated, intrigued
and educated by the newness, wildness and the stark power embodied in the art of those faraway places.
LikePablo Picasso in the early days of the 20th century, Gauguin was inspired and motivated by the raw
power and simplicity of the so-calledPrimitive art of those foreign cultures.
 10

Gauguin is also considered a Post-Impressionist painter. His bold, colorful and design oriented paintings
significantly influenced Modern art. Artists and movements in the early 20th century inspired by him
include Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André
Derain, Fauvism, Cubism and Orphism, among others. Later he influenced Arthur Frank Mathews and the
American Arts and Crafts Movement.
John Rewald, an art historian focused on the birth of Modern art, wrote a series of books about the Post-
Impressionist period, includingPost-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956) and an essay, Paul
Gauguin: Letters to Ambroise Vollard and André Fontainas(included in Rewald's Studies in Post-
Impressionism, 1986), discusses Gauguin's years in Tahiti, and the struggles of his survival as seen through
correspondence with the art dealer Vollard and others.
[edit]Gauguin and Van Gogh
Gauguin's relationship with Van Gogh was rocky. Gauguin had shown an early interest in Impressionism,
and the two shared bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies. In 1888, Gauguin and Van Gogh spent nine
weeks together, painting in the latter's Yellow House inArles. During this time, Gauguin became increasingly
disillusioned with Impressionism, and the two quarreled. On the evening of December 23, 1888, frustrated
and ill, Van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade. In a panic, Van Gogh fled to a local brothel. While
there, he cut off the lower part of his left ear lobe. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and
handed it to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to "keep this object carefully." [16] Gauguin left Arles, and
a few days later Van Gogh was hospitalized. They never saw each other again, but they continued to
correspond and in 1890 Gauguin proposed they form an artist studio in Antwerp. [17] In an 1889 sculptural
self-portrait Jug in the form of a Head, Self-portrait Gauguin portrays the traumatic relationship with Van
Gogh.
[edit]Legacy
The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the
Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin
Museum and the Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as
$39.2 million US$.
Gauguin's posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger
one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on the French avant-garde and in particular Pablo
Picasso's paintings. In the autumn of 1906, Picasso made paintings of oversized nude women, and
monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive
art. Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture,
painting and his writing as well. The power evoked by Gauguin's work led directly to Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon in 1907.[18]
According to Gauguin biographer David Sweetman, Picasso as early as 1902 became a fan of Gauguin's
work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio (1875–1940),
in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid
agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris.
After they met, Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic
pieces and gave Picasso a first La Plumeedition of Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin. [19] In
addition to seeing Gauguin's work at Durrio's Picasso also saw the work atAmbroise Vollard's gallery where
both he and Gauguin were represented.
Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso John Richardson wrote,
The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin
demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology,
symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was
of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by
harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine
energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and
1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from
his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor. [20]
oth David Sweetman and John Richardson point to the Gauguin sculpture called Oviri (literally meaning
'savage'), the gruesome phallic figure of the Tahitian goddess of life and death that was intended for
 11

Gauguin's grave, exhibited in the 1906 retrospective exhibition that even more directly led to Les
Demoiselles. Sweetman writes, "Gauguin's statue Oviri, which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to
stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest
in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the
direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon."[21]
According to Richardson,
Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin
retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have
already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesomeOviri. Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-
known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let
alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the Demoiselles. Although just under 30
inches high , Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso
was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had
come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his cubist head. Has it
been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to
admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to primitivism. [22]
Critic Joel Silverstein in Reviewny.com suggested Gauguin's style influenced painters such as Julian
Hatton, Joan Miró and Ludwig von Hofmann.[23]
Gauguin's life inspired W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence. Mario Vargas Llosa based
his 2003 novel The Way to Paradise on Gauguin's life, and that of his grandmother Flora Tristan.
Gauguin is also the subject of at least two operas: Federico Elizalde's Paul Gauguin (1943); and Gauguin (a
synthetic life) by Michael Smetanin and Alison Croggon. Déodat de Séverac wrote his Elegy for piano in
memory of Gauguin.
The Danish produced film "Oviri" (1986) is a biographical film. It follows the painter from the time he
returns to Paris in 1893 after a long stay in Tahiti and must confront his wife, his children, and his former
lover. It ends when he returns to Tahiti two years later.
The Japanese styled Gauguin Museum, opposite the Botanical Gardens of Papeari in Papeari, Tahiti,
contains some exhibits, documents, photographs, reproductions and original sketches and block prints of
Gauguin and Tahitians. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center opened in Atuona in the Marquesas
Islands.