Always on the move - he was brought up in Lima and worked in Paris and Brittany - Paul Gauguin left France for good in 1891 to settle in Tahiti. The canvases he sent back were to have a profound influence on 20th-century art; their revolutionary use of brilliant pure colour and rejection of naturalism were an inspiration to a generation of younger artists, from Matisse to Picasso. Indispensible to an understanding of this complex man and the artistic, commercial and personal pressures that drove him, are his own letters and other writings, which contain explanations of pictures that meant a great deal to him and what he was trying to achieve in his work, and evocative descriptions of Tahitian life. This is a collection of extracts from Gauguin's correspondence - to his wife in Denmark, his agent in Paris and his friends, including Strindberg and Van Gogh - and from his journals Noa Noa and Avant et Apres. The extracts are juxtaposed with illustrations of his oil paintings, watercolours and letter sketches.