Like Van Gogh, Gauguin has become a legendary figure: the Parisian stockbroker who suddenly forsook his home, his career and even his family to devote himself wholly to painting, and who roamed as far afield as Tahiti before finding the earthly paradise in which his genius could be fully released. In fact Gauguin’s wanderings, and his ultimate rejection of Western civilization, were synonymous with his long struggle to give artistic expression to his deepest emotions and ideals.

          At first an impressionist, he then abandoned all attempts at naturalistic representation in favour of a simplified manner, in which decorative lines and flat areas of bright colour are the dominant elements. Gauguin eventually brought this style to glorious fruition in the South Sea Islands. The pictures which he painted there – with their sensuous exoticism, symbolic content and boldly non-naturalistic use of colour – were to revolutionize painting, and to make their creator one of the great progenitors of twentieth century art.