Gaugin,

This man is one of the first artists whose work I came to admire. I was quite young and didn’t know any thing about art when I first came across him and I was drawn to his bright colours and decorative shapes. When I went to Art College, age 18, I remember the lecturer being very superior about Gauguin and pointing out the anatomical faults in his figure drawings and lack of any real perspective in the landscapes. Being young, and a bit uncertain, I came to agree with him, I didn’t publically admit to liking this work for a very long time. But now I’m not young or uncertain, I’m old and cynical and sometimes wish I could go back in time and tell that lecturer he was wrong.
 

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, french artist born 7 June 1848, died 8 May 1903)
 
He was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist whose talents were only properly recognised posthumously. After his death his experimental use of color and style, that were noticeably different from the other Impressionist painters,  became appreciated and his work gained in popularity.  

He influenced many artists who came after him, notably, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Once Gauguin’s art began to rise in popularity, the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin added many of them to his private collection. .Gauguin’s  work,  with its bright colours, anatomically incorrect figures and the slightly ‘off’ perspective  paved the way for the Primitivism style of art which was to follow.

Biography;
Married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad in 1873 and over the following ten years fathered five children to her.  By 1884, Gauguin had moved his family to Copenhagen, where he pursued an unsuccessful business career as a tarpaulin salesman. 

His wife became the breadwinner by giving French lessons to trainee diplomats. His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin returned to Paris and began painting full time. 
 

In 1888 he spent nine weeks painting with Van Gogh in Arles, it was during this time he first suffered periods of severe depression. He traveled to Martinique in search of an idyllic landscape and worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal construction;
 
In 1891, Gauguin sailed to French Polynesia to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional" He wrote a book titled Noa Noa describing his experiences in Tahiti. There have been allegations by modern critics that the contents of the book were fantasized and plagiarized.
Gauguin left France again on 3 July 1895, never to return. His time away, particularly in Tahiti and Hiva Oa Island, was the subject of much interest both then and in modern times due to his relationships with several of the Island girls. Gauguin’s offspring almost formed an artistic legacy, of the children from his marriage;  Jean René became a well-known sculptor and a staunch socialist,  Pola (Paul Rollon) became an artist and art critic and wrote a memoir, My Father, Paul Gauguin.  

Gauguin also had several children by his Island mistresses: he had Germaine with Juliette Huais, Emile Marae a Tai with Pau'ura; and a daughter with Mari-Rose. There is also speculation that the Belgian artist Germaine Chardon was Gauguin's daughter. Emile Marae a Tai, illiterate and raised in Tahiti, was brought to Chicago by French journalist Josette Giraud in 1963 and became a respected  artist.
In French Polynesia, toward the end of his life, sick and suffering from an unhealed injury, he got into legal trouble for taking the natives' side against French colonialists. 

On 27 March 1903, while living in the Marquesas Islands, he was charged with libeling the governor, M Guicheray, and given three days to prepare his defense. 

He was fined 500 francs and sentenced to three months in prison. On 2 April, he appealed for a new trial in Papeete. At the second trial, Gauguin was fined 500 francs and sentenced to one month in prison. 

At that time he was being supported by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Suffering from syphilis, he died at 11 a.m. on 8 May 1903 of an overdose of morphine and possibly heart attack before he could start the prison sentence. His body had been weakened by alcohol and a dissipated life. He was 54 years old.
 

Gauguin was buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa at 2 p.m. the next day.