Paul Gauguin Biography

Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on 7 June, 1848, the son of Clovis Gauguin, a Republican editor, and his wife Aline Marie Chazal. In 1849, after Louis Napoleon came to power, the family emigrated to Peru. Clovis Gauguin died on the way. His widow and two children (Paul and his elder sister Mari) stayed in Lima with their rich relatives and did not return to France until 1855. On coming back they settled with the uncle Isidore Gauguin in Orleans. In 1865, Paul became a sailor and spent the next three years voyaging between France and South America, and made a voyage around the world. In 1868, Paul joined the navy, which he left after the Franco-Prussian War. Instead, he started to work as a broker's agent in Paris. The first known drawings by Gauguin dated 1871, when he was in his late twenties. In the broker's agency Gauguin met and befriended Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (1851-1934), a shy clerk, who shared Gauguin's interest in painting, they both started to study painting at the Colarossi Academy, worked together en plein-air and in the Louvre and met Parisian artists