This seventh book in a series which examines the lives of individual artists through their correspondence gives equal weight to Gauguin's activities as both a writer and an artist. It offers insight into his enigmatic, often uncompromising character, and traces the complex development of his art from hesitant Impressionism to the striking colour and powerful forms of his Tahitian work. Gauguin's letters, including many addressed to other painters including Pissarro and Van Gogh, comment freely on contemporaries such as Degas, Monet and Cezanne, and chart his increasingly hazardous travels around the globe in pursuit of his elusive ideal of the "primitive". The book is illustrated with more than 240 of the artist's most powerful works.