Gauguin seen in a new light

The French artist has been tarred as a colonialist who gave syphilis to underage girls in the South Seas. But author Sue Prideaux has made discoveries that challenge this picture

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IN 2019, THE NATIONAL GALLERY in London held an exhibition of Paul Gauguin's portraits that provoked uproar. Was Gauguin not a French colonialist who spread syphilis to underage girls throughout the islands of the South Seas? The show was caught in the crosshairs of cancel culture and there were calls for his paintings to be burned.

I have always loved Gauguin's pictures. Having just written I Am Dynamite!, a biography of controversial philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and feeling a strong sympathy with #MeToo, I couldn't live in the dishonest and hypocritical position of loving the paintings and hating the man. I embarked on research.

My purpose was simply to discover the facts so I could measure my feelings against the truth. But my research turned up so many new sides that this private project turned into a book, which I titled Wild Thing, as that is what Gauguin called himself. His first seven years were spent in Peru, but he was brought back to France to go to school. He hated it: fitting in was never Gauguin's forte. He put up his fists and snarled: "I am a wild thing from Peru." Schoolmates quailed.

Did he have syphilis? Gauguin, who died in 1903 at the age of 54, spent his last three years on the tiny island of Hiva Oa in French Polynesia. In 2000, its mayor decided to restore his hut on its original site in time for the centenary of the artist's death. Excavations discovered a glass jar containing four human teeth. Examined by the Human Genome Project in Cambridge, they proved to be Gauguin's.

Further tests were carried out for cadmium, mercury and arsenic - standard treatments for syphilis at the time. No trace was found.