Sue Prideaux, in conversation with Rachel Wang; A Life of Paul Gauguin

“I’ve galloped through Gauguin’s life, guilty of many sins of omission” 

An unconventional start, opening this piece with some of Sue Prideaux’s penultimate words in her talk on the life of Paul Gaugin at Wimbledon BookFest, but I don’t think anyone could have better ridden their chariot into the war against time constraint like Prideaux was able to. In just forty odd minutes, I’ve danced the whirlwind of Gauguin’s controversial pastiche of a life.  

See, as soon as Sue Prideaux begun her talk, the audience was struck by the moral dilemma of writing the life of Gauguin – his art, versus his terrible reputation as a paedophile, syphilis-spreader, Colonialist, exploiter. She talked of how, as a biographer who didn’t want to preside under the age-old excuse of “love the art, hate the man”, she set out to dismantle the puzzle of the falsities and truths concerning his character, using everything from the data on his teeth, to the mementos of his great granddaughter, to a precious, private manuscript (Avant et Après), recently unearthed. 

Under the gleam of the stage light, she peeled away layer after layer of Gauguin’s complex enigma, orating the defining events of his life in a fascinating synthesis – his childhood, familial tragedies, his movement away from Impressionism and the Paris art scene, his time spent with Van Gogh, his journeys to and from Tahiti, and his sky-rattling advocacy for the indigenous people of French Polynesia, culminating in his death after false conviction.                  

And above all, Prideaux wove together the tapestry of the wives, mother, and daughter – Mette, Teha’amana, Pau’ura, Aline and Aline – of Gauguin; and their often mistold dynamic with him.  

Gauguin may lie under the earth, presided over by his self-carved statue of Oviri, but Sue Prideaux’s remarkable work grants him a literary life after death.