Look and learn | 6 November 2010
The greatest myth to affect Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is the one of his own life: the romantic bohemian who escaped to the South Seas. The greatest myth to affect Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is the one of his own life: the romantic bohemian who escaped to the South Seas. This has spawned numerous popular interpretations from novels such as Somerset Maugham’s Moon and Sixpence to films which include Lust for Life (though principally about van Gogh, it features Anthony Quinn as an unforgettable Gauguin) and the Danish–French Wolf at the Door (1986). The danger with such an enjoyable myth as Gauguin’s back-to-nature nonconformist is that it is more than likely to
