Paul Gauguin

Introduction
Beginnings
Early maturity
Tahiti
Legacy

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images, Videos & Interactives

Self-portrait painting by Paul Gauguin showing the artist with a mustache, yellow halo, and stylized plants against a vivid orange background with green and red fruit.

Paul Gauguin: The Market Gardens of Vaugirard

Paul Gauguin: Old Women of Arles (Mistral)

At a Glance

Paul Gauguin summary

Quizzes

Color pastels, colored chalk, colorful chalk. Hompepage blog 2009, arts and entertainment, history and society

Ultimate Art Quiz

Close-up of a palette held by a man. Mixing paint, painting, color mixing.

Artists, Painters, & Architects

63 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular Visual Arts Quizzes

Tate Modern extension Switch House, London, England. (Tavatnik, museums). Photo dated 2017.

Can You Match These Lesser-Known Paintings to Their Artists?

"The Birth of Venus," tempera on canvas by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485; in the Uffizi, Florence.

Who Painted the Most Expensive Paintings in the World?

Related Questions

How did Camille Pissarro mentor Paul Gauguin?
How did Gustave Arosa encourage Paul Gauguin’s interest in art?
How did Paul Gauguin mentor the younger artists of the Pont-Aven school?
How did Paul Gauguin use Tahitian titles and Oceanic imagery in his art?
How did Paul Gauguin use color and line to create emotion in his paintings?
How did Paul Gauguin use flat forms and dark outlines in Vision of the Sermon?
How did Paul Gauguin use his Peruvian ancestry in shaping his artistic identity?
How did Paul Gauguin’s art help inspire Pablo Picasso and the development of Cubism?
How did Paul Gauguin’s ideas influence Paul Sérusier’s painting The Talisman?
How did Paul Gauguin’s paintings from Martinique differ from his earlier Impressionist work?
How did Paul Gauguin’s style move away from Impressionism?
How did Synthetism differ from Impressionism?
How long did Paul Gauguin stay with Vincent van Gogh in Arles?
What biblical story appears in Paul Gauguin’s Vision of the Sermon?
What do historians disagree about regarding Vincent van Gogh’s ear injury?
What does Paul Gauguin’s painting The Yellow Christ show about his rejection of traditional perspective?
What event ended Paul Gauguin’s stay with Vincent van Gogh in Arles?
What ideas about life and death are explored in Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
What was Paul Gauguin’s House of Pleasure on Hiva Oa?
When and where was Paul Gauguin born?
When did Paul Gauguin marry Mette Sophie Gad?
Which Impressionist painters did Paul Gauguin collect during the 1870s?
Which Paul Gauguin painting was accepted into the Salon in 1876?
Which artists helped develop Synthetism with Paul Gauguin?
Which artists were represented in Gustave Arosa’s art collection?
Which visual features are typical of Paul Gauguin’s Synthetist paintings?
Who were the members of the Pont-Aven school led by Paul Gauguin?
Why did Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh often argue while living together in Arles?
Why did Paul Gauguin criticize Impressionism’s focus on effects of light?
Why did Paul Gauguin leave France for Tahiti again in 1895?
Why did Paul Gauguin lose his job as a stockbroker in 1882?
Why did Paul Gauguin move from Pont-Aven to Le Pouldu?
Why did Paul Gauguin move his family to Denmark in 1884?
Why did Paul Gauguin move to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands?
Why did Paul Gauguin return to Paris from Denmark in 1885?
Why did Paul Gauguin seek a French government grant to travel to Tahiti?
Why did Paul Gauguin travel to Pont-Aven in Brittany in 1886?
Why did Paul Gauguin use a bright red field in Vision of the Sermon?
Why did Paul Gauguin view losing his stockbroker job as an opportunity?
Why did Vision of the Sermon cause conflict between Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard?
Why was Paul Gauguin disappointed when he arrived in Tahiti in 1891?
What was Wassily Kandinsky known for?
Why did Wassily Kandinsky leave Germany?
What was significant about Henri Matisse’s Jazz?
What was Claude Monet’s early life like?
Where was Claude Monet educated?
Why is Claude Monet famous?
How did Claude Monet influence others?
What did Vincent van Gogh accomplish?
Why did Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and who did he give it to?
What was Vincent van Gogh’s cause of death?

Visual Arts Painting Painters

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External Websites

Art in Context - Paul Gauguin Â– Influential Primitivist Post-Impressionist
TATE - Paul Gauguin
World History Encyclopedia - Paul Gauguin
Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum - Paul Gauguin
Web Gallery of Art - Paul Gauguin
Art UK - Biography of Paul Gauguin
The Art Story - Paul Gauguin
The Met - Biography of Paul Gauguin

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Paul Gauguin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Paul Gauguin

French painter

Also known as: Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin

Written by

Douglas Cooper

Art historian and critic. Author of Toulouse Lautrec and many other works on French artists of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Douglas Cooper

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Sep. 17, 2026 •History

Paul Gauguin (born June 7, 1848, Paris, France—died May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who sought to achieve a “primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work. The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist, and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh as well as for his self-imposed exile in Tahiti, French Polynesia....

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