Franco-British Society AGM and Awarding of the Literary Prize winner 2024, Sue Prideaux,
for “Wild thing: a life of Paul Gauguin”
On Tuesday 14th October 2025, the Franco-British Society hosted its AGM which was followed by the awarding of the Literary Prize winner 2024, Sue Prideaux, for “Wild thing: a life of Paul Gauguin”,
In the Gazette Brasserie, at the Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
We would like to congratulate Sue Prideaux for winning the award and to thank her for giving such a fascinating insight on Gauguin's life.
If you are interested in purchasing the book, please follow this link.
If you would like to know more about the author and the book, please visit the website here.
In the Gazette Brasserie, at the Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
We would like to congratulate Sue Prideaux for winning the award and to thank her for giving such a fascinating insight on Gauguin's life.
If you are interested in purchasing the book, please follow this link.
If you would like to know more about the author and the book, please visit the website here.
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“You wish to teach me what is within myself: learn first what is within you . . . I believe life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.”
Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti. In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia. Prideaux conjures Gauguin's visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artist's family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew. Wild Thing has won the Duff Cooper Prize 2025, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024 and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025. It has also been chosen as one of the Top Ten books of 2025 by the New York Times - Here is their selection |
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Sue Prideaux is Anglo-Norwegian. Her first biography Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (Yale University Press) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and she has spoken on Munch for the World Monuments Fund, at literary festivals, at the Royal Academy in London and at MOMA in New York for CBS television, and for Korean TV. She has written on Munch for the Royal Academy, Sotheby’s, the Art Newspaper and other publications.
While writing about Munch, Sue became increasingly fascinated by his friend August Strindberg. Strindberg: A Life was published by Yale in March 2012. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction and won the Duff Cooper prize. https://www.sueprideaux.com/ |