Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) moved away from impressionism to create a new art driven less by observation than by imagination. His gifts as an artist were matched by his talent for creating myths about places, cultures, and most of all, himself. The former stockbroker invented personal mythologies, including Gauguin the Savage, Gauguin the Fallen Angel, and Gauguin the Wanderer. In his search for paradise, he traveled to ever more remote lands—Brittany, Martinique, Tahiti—before dying in the Marquesas Islands.
