Sue Prideaux Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

About

Based on a book that was long listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction 2024 and described as ‘scintillating’ by the FT, ‘phenomenal’ by Prospect magazine and ‘vivid’ by the Telegraph, Sue Prideaux gives a talk on the life of the artist Paul Gaugin.

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 this talk, 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 Gauguin's 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 artist's family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.

Sue Prideaux is Anglo-Norwegian. Her first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and she has spoken on Munch for the World Monuments Fund, at literary festivals, at the Royal Academy in London and at MOMA in New York for CBS television, and for Korean TV. She has written on Munch for the Royal Academy, Sotheby’s, the Art Newspaper and other publications.

While writing about Munch, Sue became increasingly fascinated by his friend August Strindberg. Strindberg: A Life was published by Yale in March 2012. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction and won the Duff Cooper prize.

A Q&A Session will follow.