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Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin Hardcover – May 13, 2025

by Sue Prideaux (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 40 ratings
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One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025
One of Five Books Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
Shortlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize

An original and revealing portrait of the misunderstood French Post-Impressionist artist.

Paul Gauguin’s legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved.

Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso.

Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin’s most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin’s son, and a sample of Gauguin’s teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. The result is “a brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin―not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach” (Artemis Cooper, Spectator).

70 color illustrations
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  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    May 13, 2025
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1324020423
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1324020424
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Newly definitive, impeccably researched, and lavishly illustrated… See[s] a pioneering artist in a new light."
― Kirkus Reviews

"A rich psychological portrait that is buttressed by abundant historical detail. [Wild Thing] makes for a revealing window into a unique artistic mind."
― Publishers Weekly

"This sympathetic biography is a heroic rehabilitation . . . Prideaux is one of the finest biographers working today."
― Pratinav Anil, Times (UK)

"An immaculate biography: even handed, scholarly, comprehensive and historically informed."
― Michael Prodger, New Statesman

"A brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin – not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach."
― Artemis Cooper, Spectator

"This detailed biography complicates our perception of the bad boy of French art and illuminates his fraught friendship with Van Gogh . . . Prideaux examines the facts and contexts of the painter’s South Sea life in greater detail than before, while refusing to begin to judge any of those choices."
― Tim Adams, Book of the Day, Observer

"Scintillating . . . [a] triumph . . . As a man, as an artist, Gauguin was more than one thing, and Prideaux colourfully fleshes out his story with nuance and detail."
― Financial Times

"Ambitious, clear-eyed... A complex, intractable man to the last."
― The Economist

"A vivid, revisionist picture of the controversial artist’s life, from France to Tahiti."
― Flora Bowen and Cal Revely-Calder, Daily Telegraph

"Sumptuous . . . magnificent."
― Daily Mail

"A 'scintillating' achievement."
― The Week, Book of the Week

"Reflective and lyrical."
― Nikhil Krishnan, Telegraph

"As an art critic and cultural historian Sue Prideaux is thoughtful and knowledgeable. As a biographer she is witty and bold. She writes with panache about the artist’s prosperous years and with unshockable sympathy about his hard times. A scintillating account of a richly complicated life."
― Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of Peculiar Ground

"The definitive biography of an artist like Gauguin rolls around once in a generation, and this might well be the one for ours."
― Stephen Smith, Literary Review

About the Author

Sue Prideaux is the author of three prize-winning biographies: I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, and Strindberg: A Life. She has written for the Economist and the Spectator, among other publications. She lives in London.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (May 13, 2025)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324020423
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324020424
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.07 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 40 ratings

About the author

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Sue Prideaux

Sue Prideaux

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'Never trust a thought that occurs to you indoors' is my favourite Nietzsche aphorism. Outdoors is no hardship for me. Growing up in Norway, mountains are my natural habitat. Nietzsche's aphorism makes me laugh (important) while reminding me to survey as wide a context as possible before I take the responsibility of putting words onto the page. I love the rigour and the terror of writing.

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4.6 out of 5 stars
40 global ratings

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Top reviews from other countries

  • wise owl
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!
    Reviewed in Canada on December 1, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    This book totally changed my understanding of Paul Gauguin. I enjoyed it from start to finish!
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  • markr
    5.0 out of 5 stars artist biography at its best
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I loved this book, which presents a positive revision to Paul Gaugin's recent reputation. I enjoyed the writing style, loved the reproduction of Gaugin's paintings, and learned a lot about the artist's life and the art milieux in which he moved ,including his conflicted relationship with Vincent Van Gogh with whom he briefly shared a home.

    Very enjoyable and informative , this is art history/biography at its most enjoyable
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  • Michael
    5.0 out of 5 stars It is a masterpiece
    Reviewed in India on October 18, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    For my personal reading pleasure
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  • C A L
    5.0 out of 5 stars Best biography
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    Superbly written
    Report
  • conjunction
    5.0 out of 5 stars He straddled continents and cultures.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I enjoyed this. I learnt a lot about the relationships between different impressionist painters like Degas, Monet, Cezanne etc from Gauguin's Paris days, and a few things about Van Gogh who Prideaux paints as a character very difficult to live with. Much as Gauguin loved him he was glad to get away. Brittany was very important to Gauguin and he lived hand to mouth and got ripped off by dealers all the way along the line.

    I thought his relationship with his wife Mette was very sensitively drawn out and with his children to whom he was devoted.

    Gauguin's time in the South Seas is also very interesting, how it took him a long time to settle in and find his niche in relation to the native people and to the French colonial administration.

    Prideaux has plenty to say about Gauguin as a painter and his philosophy of life and art but it is how this plays out in his relationships which fascinated me most in what I thought a well-balanced book.
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