Wild Thing

A TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR


LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025

WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2025

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024

WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 2024

A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin - and the first full biography in over thirty years - written by the award-winning author of I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche.

Scintillating.FINANCIAL TIMES
Immaculate.NEW STATESMAN
Phenomenal.PROSPECT
A heroic rehabilitation.THE TIMES

Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti.

In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia.

Prideaux conjures Gauguins visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artists family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.