Rodolphe Rapetti in
GroveArt Online called Gauguin a "dominant figure in the Parisian intellectual circles in the late 1880s." Furthermore, the artist's "use of non-naturalistic colour and formal distortion for expressive ends was widely influential on early 20th-century avant-garde artists." Gauguin's rejection of objective representation in favor of subjective representation influenced artists from the Nabis school to Fauvists; his rejection of Western civilization for the supposedly primitive life of Tahiti made him one of the first artists whose life was perhaps larger that his art. "Gauguin's career," wrote Rapetti, "can be summarized as the pursuit of an ideal constantly belied by reality."
In the early 1880s Gauguin was living a very traditional life as a Parisian stockbroker, family man, and weekend painter. He eventually began to meet other painters in Paris and showed certain of his amateur works in exhibits. By 1883 the desire to become an artist had turned his life upside down; it would ultimately lead him to Denmark, Brittany, Martinique, and finally to the islands of the South Pacific. Tales of poverty and misery that have developed around Gauguin's life have made him a romantic symbol of the struggling artist.
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