PAUL GAUGUIN  

    Born Paris, France 1848-1903 Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin went to sea at age 17 and later joined the French navy, then was employed as a stock broker in Paris. He had a flair for business and quickly became prosperous. When the 1882 stock market crash cost him his job, he announced that he now had no choice but to try to earn his living by painting.

    He went to Arles to share a house with Vincent Van Gogh in 1888. When Van Gogh was hospitalized after the famous episode in which he sliced off his earlobe and presented it to a local prostitute, Gauguin simply left town without saying good-bye. Back in Paris, his art beginning to sell at last, Gauguin still dreamed of paradise. He went to Tahiti. Ultimately, Gauguin's failure to become the toast of Paris made him furious.

     He died , alone, on May 8, 1903. He was 55. His possessions, including many paintings, were auctioned off for almost nothing.

    Three years after his death, critics finally discovered Gauguin's work at a major exhibition in Paris, and he is today regarded as the most daring and perhaps the most creative of all the Post-impressionist painters.