The Bad Boy, The Outcast, The Wild Thing — MFAH’s Gauguin in the World Exposes the Scandal & Struggles of a Controversial Artist Who Defied Colonialism

A self-described “wild thing,” the controversial French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin obsessively followed an unconventional path. His journey, as complex as it was controversial, comes to life in an extraordinary new exhibition of his work now on view in Houston.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the only United States venue for Gauguin in the World, a sweeping show spread across six galleries. It showcases more than 150 paintings, sculptures, prints and writings by the multitalented artist (1848 to 1903). Drawn from 65 collections worldwide, this ambitious exhibition unfolds like a peacock unfurling its vibrant feathers.

The exhibition follows the arc of Gauguin’s career, spanning the 1870s to his final years painting exotic scenes in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. Visitors witness the story of a complicated man whose art is celebrated even as his behavior remains condemned. This dichotomy is noted in the informative catalog, which frames Gauguin as “an interesting case” of brilliance and controversy.

Independent curator Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay, organized the exhibition. He’s also a leading scholar of 19th-century French painting. The show examines Gaugin’s artistic networks, influences and his ongoing legacy.

In the Beck Building galleries, the exhibition begins with Gauguin’s Impressionist roots in Paris. During this time, he dabbled in art while working as a stockbroker. Early works, like Clovis Sleeping (1884), show influences from artists such as his mentor Camille Pissarro, and contemporaries Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne. The softly rendered portrait depicts Gauguin’s young son with his blond hair aglow, peacefully resting beside the vivid red of a large tankard. It captures the gentle warmth and intimacy characteristic of Gauguin’s early style.

In the wake of the 1882 Paris Bourse crash, Gauguin lost the well-paying job that had supported his artistic pursuits. He moved his family — his Danish wife Mette and their five children — to Copenhagen to be near her relatives. However, this marked a major turning point. In the letters to his friend Emile Schuffenecker, Gauguin described feeling ostracized in Copenhagen due to his vocation, Catholic upbringing and financial struggles.

Two years later, he returned to Paris with son Clovis, leaving Mette and their other children in Copenhagen. As noted in the catalog’s chronology, Gauguin spent most of his life without financial security from his art. He relied on the generosity of his friends and low-wage menial jobs for income.

A Quest for “Primitive” Inspiration

In Paris, Gauguin joined the artists’ colony in Pont-Aven, Brittany, which he admired for its “savage primitive quality.” His stimulating associations with other artists, along with his discoveries of Breton culture, provided rich sources of artistic inspiration. The gallery dedicated to his “New Directions” showcases a period of creative breakthrough, where we see his artwork adopts a more experimental nature and a broader range.

At the invitation of studio potter Ernest Chaplet, Gauguin experimented with ceramics, as seen in Vase Decorated with Breton Scenes (1886-87), which features figures of Breton women in their distinctive costumes. Gauguin glazed Chaplet’s forms while also creating his own sculptures, a venture described in the catalog as “a commercial failure but an important creative breakthrough.”

In 1887, Gauguin and painter Charles Laval traveled to Martinique, in further pursuit of his artistic and lifestyle ideals of “primitivism.” However, his work in Martinique was cut short by malaria, dysentery and hepatitis. His friend Schuffenecker funded his return to Paris.

After arriving in Paris, Gauguin met art dealer Theo van Gogh and his brother Vincent, who invited him to share an atelier in Arles, Provence. While there, Gauguin adopted a new style called Synthetism, using vibrant splashes of orange, yellow and turquoise as a dreamlike backdrop for Washerwomen in Arles (1888). However, Van Gogh suffered a breakdown, severed his ear and was hospitalized.

Theo and Gauguin returned to Paris, where Gauguin took up printmaking, creating a series of zincographs displayed in Volpini Suite (1889).

Tahitian Years and Symbolist Masterpieces

The Musee d’Orsay loaned Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ (1890-91). The museum describes this fascinating painting as a “veritable manifesto.” It is a “triple portrait” of Gauguin, alongside two of his recent works. At the center, Gauguin’s intense gaze conveys his resolve. He will continue his artistic journey despite being “misunderstood and abandoned by his wife.” (She had returned to Denmark with their children.) Gaugin also struggled to secure a mission to settle in the colonies.

Visitors encounter a copy of The Yellow Christ on their left. The catalog describes it as “the image of sublimated suffering.” To their right, Pot in the Form of a Grotesque Head highlights the artist’s exaggerated expression.

Gauguin’s luck shifted for the better in early 1891. A positive journal review declared him the leader of the Symbolist movement. This was followed by funding from the Minister of Public Education for his artist mission to Tahiti, as noted in the catalog’s chronology. A few years years later, Gauguin produced an innovative series of woodcut prints, seen in The Noa Noa Suite (1893).

Gauguin’s enigmatic Symbolist masterpiece, Three Tahitians (1899), invites much contemplation. At the center, a young man stands with his back to the viewer, his gaze fixed on the woman to his left. She meets the viewer’s eyes with a somber stare. Her hair is adorned with pink flowers and a red ribbon to match her dress, holding a piece of green fruit. Beside her stands another woman holding a bouquet of white flowers. The background, alive with bright swaths of green, pink and yellow, forms a vivid, dreamlike setting.

The Houston exhibition follows the show’s debut in June at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra. It was in collaboration with Art Exhibitions Australia. Gary Tinterow, MFAH director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair, is acknowledged in the catalog. Dr. Mark Nelson, AEA chair, calls Tinterow a “constant support to the curator.” Nelson notes that Tinterow has dedicated much of his career to advancing the scholarship of late 19th century French art.

Tinterow, in a release, highlights Gauguin’s pivotal role in art history, describing him as “the key predecessor to the different strands of Modernism that developed through Picasso and Matisse, challenging what he perceived as a culture that had reached a dead end and renewing it by exploring and embracing non-Western art.”

“His influence on avant-garde has been profound and continues in our own time,” Ann Dumas, MFAH consulting curator for the exhibition, notes. She emphasizes “the astonishing range of the artist’s achievement” that visitors can explore firsthand.

Recent Insights Into Gauguin’s Life

As they journey through the galleries, art lovers trace Gauguin’s “inner quest for elsewhere,” as noted by curator Loyrette. He explains in the catalog that Gauguin was constantly “in search of ever-more ‘primitive’ sources in ever-more remote places. Gauguin was “seeking a condition ever-more like that of ‘savagery’.” It echoed the view of the colonial dispatch-boat officer who retrieved Gauguin’s personal effects after his death in Hiva Oa.

This was what led Gauguin “first to Brittany, then to Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas, transforming the self-taught Impressionist pupil of Pissarro into an artist whose affinity with the ‘Maoris of the forgotten past’ led him to depict ‘the man of former times.’” Loyrette also quoted from the officer’s journal: “He was loved by the natives, whom he defended against the gendarmes, the missionaries and the entire apparatus of murderous ‘civilization.’”

New Perspectives: Sue Prideaux’s Biography

In addition to these perspectives, new insights were recently shared by esteemed biographer Sue Prideaux.

“The key to understanding this rebellious, charismatic man and his painting is knowing he spent his first seven years in Peru,” Prideaux wrote in The Times following the release of her biography, Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. Growing up in his maternal grandmother’s home in Lima, Gauguin “ran wild through a magical-realist Eden.” This formative experience foreshadowed his lifelong search for the freedom of wild places. It was a quest to match his “Peru-of-the-mind,” as Prideaux describes it.

As a young boy, Gauguin was sent to France for school. He attended a Catholic seminary where he didn’t speak French and was bullied. He resorted to fighting, declaring, “I am a wild thing from Peru.” This sentiment defined his role as a “misfit for life,” according to Prideaux.

Colonial Disillusionment and the Bad Boy Reputation

In 1891, after receiving free passage to the French colony of Tahiti as its first official artist, Gauguin was shocked by the harshness of French colonialism. Prideaux recounts how he started a newspaper exposing corruption and oppression of local officials. He championed the preservation of the islanders’ culture.

Prideaux also tackles the bad boy”reputation that has followed Gauguin. This reputation stems from his controversial liaisons with young girls in the South Seas. She clarifies that, at the time, the age of consent was 13 in both France and its colonies. It varied between 10 and 12 in the United States, except in Delaware, where it was 7.

While these statistics disgust her, Prideaux offers them for context, not as an excuse. Thus, she argues, Gauguin wasn’t breaking the law “or indeed, doing anything unusual.” Moreover, a recently uncovered birth certificate revealed that one of his three serious relationships was with a 15-year-old, not a 13-year-old, as had previously been assumed.

Prideaux also presents findings from a scientific analysis of teeth linked to Gauguin. They suggest it was “highly unlikely” he had syphilis, dispelling another longstanding theory about the artist.

Paul Gauguin didn’t just break the rules — he shattered them, leaving behind a trail of scandal, defiance and brilliance. Gauguin in the World dares visitors to confront the raw, untamed spirit of an artist who refused to conform and forever changed the game.

Gauguin in the World is on view through February 16, 2025, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Get more informtion here.