Description Unappreciated in his own lifetime, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) is now recognized as one of the giants of French postimpressionism and a pioneer of early modernism.
A rebel in both art and life, he rejected his bourgeois upbringing and comfortable stockbroker's job to devote his life to painting.
Eventually, dismayed by the hypocrisy of civilization and in search of a primitive idyll, he left Paris and took up residence in the South Seas, first in Tahiti and, later, .
