Brief Biography-Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848. A year later, his father, Clovis, decided to head for Lima, Peru, the home of his wife’s family. Clovis was a journalist of the deep-seated type; he was unhappy with Louis Napoleon’s rise that year. Unfortunately, Clovis died on the journey to Peru, and his wife Aline and the children took refuge with her uncle in Lima. They returned to Orleans in France after six years. At seventeen, Paul joined the merchant navy and served in the military navy. Sadly, his mother died while he was at sea; however, she had arranged for him to be looked after by a banker friend. The banker got him to work as a stockbroker, after which he married in 1873 and settled down with five children.
He took up painting as a hobby and received some lessons from Camille Pissarro. He got to know other impressionists of the day and exhibited his works. Then, with the advent of a stock market downturn in 1883 and his ability to sell paintings, he became a professional painter.  
Due to the recession, his venture failed, and his wife decided they should leave for Denmark. He had no success in Denmark and returned to France, bringing his six-year-old son Clovis. He went through extreme hardships in France, and in desperation, he travelled to Panama. He laboured on digging the canal for a short spell before illness drove him back to France. He struggled to get by with his paintings, and in 1888 he went to Arles with Vincent van Gogh. However, he had to leave Vincent there because of his insanity and returned to Paris.
In Paris, his paintings gained a high reputation, but he still struggled financially; this time, he left for Tahiti. He stayed in Tahiti, painting many pictures until ill health and poverty forced him to return to France. His works were well received, and he acquired some wealth from an uncle, which gave him the recourse to return to Tahiti in 1895. He did numerous paintings there but had to resort to menial work to survive. He wrote thorough articles for a newspaper denouncing colonialism and the Catholic Church. In his last dwellings in the Marquesas Islands, he received imprisonment for defamation; however, he died awaiting the appeal in 1903.