Sue Prideaux in conversation with The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize

How does it feel to be shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize?

It’s a tremendous honour to be shortlisted for this historic and very distinguished prize. I’m thrilled to bits.

What drew you to the subject of Paul Gauguin?

I have always loved his art, but I never really thought about him as a person until 2019, when the National Gallery held a show of Gauguin’s portraits. All hell broke loose: Gauguin was a Colonialist oppressor who spread syphilis among underage girls throughout the South Seas. There were calls for him to be cancelled and his paintings burned. I had just finished my biography of Nietzsche and here was a moral problem I couldn’t fudge.  Love the art but hate the man was hardly an acceptable position. I wanted to find out as much as I possibly could about him.  What I found became the book.

How did you plan, research and write Wild Thing?

Planning would be an overstatement. I had absolutely no intention of writing Gauguin’s biography, I just wanted to explore and what I found out drew me in.
When the National Gallery put on a big show, they have a programme of associated talks and study days. This was where I started. I learned an enormous amount. I met a doctor who’d spent years studying Gauguin’s health records and found no trace of syphilis. I met the art historian who discovered four of Gauguin’s teeth, had them analysed by the Human Genome Project at Cambridge and other labs; again no trace of syphilis. I met Gauguin’s great-granddaughter who had family papers in Danish and Norwegian (Gauguin’s wife was Danish, one son grew up in Norway). I’m half Norwegian and, unlike previous biographers, I can read both languages.
As if all this wasn’t enough, in 2020, Gauguin’s most important written manuscript, Avant et après, resurfaced. Two hundred handwritten pages covering his thoughts on God, Life, Art, everything. The manuscript had been known about but lost for a century following his death. Suddenly it reappeared, offered to the British Government in lieu of Death Duties. It’s now in the Courtauld and they were immensely generous allowing me access. The following year, 2021, the catalogue raisonneé was completed. This is like the official Bible of an artist. Gives you all the information on the known works. All this new material, such a gift to a biographer; how could I possibly not?

What were the surprises you encountered along the way?

Gauguin the feminist was a surprise. His grandmother was a fierce fighter for women’s rights, Gauguin kept her published writings all his life; he believed in equality and actively encouraged the women in his circle, including his wife, to find fulfilment through independence.
Another surprise was Gauguin the political activist. Tahiti was a French colony; Gauguin fought French oppression, representing Polynesians in French Courts, petitioning the French authorities for lower taxes and fairer treatment. The French hated him, the locals loved him; he was made a blood brother.
A further surprise was the context for Gauguin’s sexual relationships with young girls. Shocking though it us to us today, the age of consent in France and its Colonies was 13 and it was even younger in some States in the USA. Gauguin was doing nothing illegal or, I’m afraid, unusual.

Tell us how Wild Thing can be seen as a continuation or a departure from your earlier biographies.

A departure because I hadn’t written about a French subject before, they’d all been Northern European: Norwegian, Swedish, German. The cultural references are different. It was huge fun to be writing about the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.
A continuation because Gauguin was an artist, like my first subject, Edvard Munch. They never met but Munch’s art was heavily influenced by Gauguin’s art, so that was a link. Gauguin was a close friend of my second subject, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg; together they put on a South Sea Musical in Paris choreographed by the chorus master of the Folies Bergère – I wish I’d seen it. Strindberg, Munch and Gauguin were all heavily influenced by the philosophy of my third subject: Nietzsche.

What advice would you give a writer of non-fiction starting out today, given the current publishing climate?

If there’s a subject that will fascinate you for three or four lonely years, go for it! Nietzsche describes it like having a fish hook in the brain. It tugs and tugs, won’t leave you alone. Nothing is more exciting, satisfying, frustrating. But maybe don’t give up the day job.

What’s next for you as an author?

Reading for fun. Filling up the tank. Playing with a couple of ideas for the next book.