The Life Of Paul Gauguin
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,Literary
The Life Of Paul Gauguin Details
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Reviews
Burnett has given us a well-rounded and accurate account of Gauguin's personal, if turbulent, life in "The Life of Paul Gauguin". Gauguin, (1848-1903), was a French-born, post-impressionist painter and he also yielded wood engravings and woodcuts. He was additionally one of the few close associates of Vincent Van Gogh, albeit the two often had an adversarial relationship, mostly due to the strong wills of both men, coupled with Van Gogh's unfortunate intermittent madness.Some of Gauguin's artworks were primitive but all have a strong impact on those who view them. In this book, there are a dozen or so illustrations, reflective of Gauguin's various "periods," the most notable of which was his Tahitian period.There, after tangling with Catholic missionary priests (the "real law" on these remote islands) over his propensity to always have a young island girl near at hand, he hung a hand-painted sign over his outside doorway to keep the clergy at arms-length: "...nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people, the most unsupportable folk God has created."The featured paintings (10 total) are rendered in black and white and cropped just a bit, probably a common caveat of the printing industry in 1937 when this book was published, but they are still quite good and help in telling Gauguin's life story. The author, Burnett, was clearly an admirer of Gaugin's works and perhaps of his outlook on life as well. This actuality serves to make the book that much better, due to Burnett's enthusiasm for the topic.As a scholarly work, there's not much in regard to either footnotes or endnotes. However, in his foreword, Burnett does credit various sources. A nice index is helpful in locating specific topics.This older biography reads like a good novel and is clearly all about an interesting and talented fellow -- I recommend it to all.