Gauguin A Dangerous Life

Gauguins vivid artworks sell for millions He was an inspired and committed multimedia artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia where in his 40s he took wives between 13 and 15 years old creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific Later he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903 sick impoverished and alone