“May the day come—and perhaps soon—when I can flee to the woods on a South Sea island, and live there in ecstasy, in peace and for art,” Gauguin wrote to his wife in 1890. As history has shown, Gauguin’s life in the South Seas was anything but ecstatic or peaceful, even as he created some of the most revolutionary and iconic objects of his time. This book, to date the most comprehensive volume of the painter’s letters in English, offers an uncensored glimpse into Gauguin’s life, from his days as a young newlywed through the extraordinary adventure of his years in Tahiti. Gauguin’s writings have proven him to be a talented, uninhibited literary stylist, and this volume provides one of the most compelling, intimate, and revealing epistolary autobiographies ever assembled.