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Paul Gauguin: Life & Times
Early Years | Art Interest | Primitive Life | Arles | TahitiPrimitive Life
Brittany did not exert a constant hold over Gauguin for even these short four years. He travelled to Paris, worked for a while on the Panama Canal and first experimented living a primitive life in Martinique, accompanied by the painter Charles Laval. There, he marvelled at the colour, climate, fresh food and ease of life apparently enjoyed by local people and painted Les Negresses.
However, the romantic exoticism of a primitive life soon tarnished as that life became deprived. The hut in which Laval and Gauguin lived leaked in heavy tropical rainstorms. They both contracted dysentery and returned to France quarrelsome, seriously ill and seriously poor.
