Wild Thing

A Life of Paul Gauguin

Sue Prideaux

$26.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Faber & Faber
28 October 2025

Art & design styles: Impressionism & Post-Impressionism; Painting & paintings; Individual artists, art monographs; Biography: arts & entertainment

A TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025 WINNER OF THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024 WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 2024

'Scintillating.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Immaculate.' NEW STATESMAN 'Phenomenal.' PROSPECT 'A heroic rehabilitation.' THE TIMES

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 Wild Thing, 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.

By: Sue Prideaux
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Main
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9780571365944
ISBN 10: 0571365949
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 28 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Sue Prideaux's first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (2005) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Strindberg: A Life (2012) won the Duff Cooper Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (2018) was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and was The Times Biography of the Year.