Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influential practitioner of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. While only moderately successful during his lifetime, Gauguin has since been recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Leading a life full of hardship and struggle, Gauguin would move frequently in search of financial success and security, marrying and forming relationships with females of various ages. Some of these relationships, especially in French Polynesia, involved female adolescents / teenagers engaging in consensual relations with the approval of their family and community norms - an "unexceptional" occurrence in terms of time and place. His sexual relationships with teenage Tahitian girls have become the subject of great interest, with his 15-year-old wife Teha'amana being the subject of several of Gauguin's paintings, including the celebrated Spirit of the Dead Watching.

In the 21st century, Gauguin's Primitivist representations of Tahiti and its people have been a subject of debate and renewed scholarly attention. His depictions of Polynesian women have been criticized for their relationship to colonialism and patriarchal power, with some critics negatively rendering Gauguin's sexual relationships with teenage Tahitian girls. In contrast, a 2025 biography Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, describes Gauguin as believing in gender and culture equity, following local Polynesian customs, having the approval of his Danish wife with respect to his works, and as a defender of the locals against the French colonialist oppression. Writing in The Guardian, Sue Prideaux writes:

Gauguin had three serious relationships. Tehamana, the best known partner, had been supposed to be 13 but a recently discovered birth certificate shows her to have been 15. Within these relationships, Gauguin followed local custom. Sexually experienced girls were offered by their families. No money changed hands. After a couple of weeks, the girl went home to her family for a period, to decide if she then wanted to go back to her new husband. Tehamana returned to Gauguin. There was no coercion. She, like Gauguin’s later lovers, was free to come and go, to return home for good if she liked, and to take other lovers.

There was no financial advantage in staying: Gauguin in his beach hut was no richer than the average villager. When he went back to Paris for a couple of years to sell his paintings, Tehamana remarried. On his return, she went to live with him for a couple of weeks for old times’ sake.