Trading genius or painter? Paul Gauguin's surprising path

Chun Young-paik

The author is a professor of art history and visual philosophy at Hongik University.

The stock market has been swinging wildly, leaving many investors dizzy. Some who have suffered heavy losses are reportedly seeking psychiatric treatment after sleepless nights. As the market has drifted away from rational investing and increasingly resembles a casino, the language used to describe plunges has grown ever more dramatic. Expressions such as "What falls has no wings," "The tail is wagging the dog," "It has broken through the floor and keeps sinking," "There's blood everywhere" and even "Save me!" have replaced the optimistic slogans that once accompanied bull markets.

From young students to elderly scholars, people across Korea have joined the frenzy, turning the country into what some jokingly call a nation of stock investors. Countless people now spend more time staring at trading screens than focusing on their actual professions. Although the circumstances were very different, the history of Western stock markets also offers striking stories of fortunes won and lost.

One of the most remarkable involves Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), who later became one of the defining figures of modern art. Gauguin never intended to become a professional painter and never attended an art academy. Yet he ultimately transformed the course of art history. Surprisingly, his success and failure in the stock market played an important role in that transformation. Before leaving for the remote island of Tahiti, where he created vivid depictions of Indigenous life that reshaped modern painting, he experienced both the exhilaration of financial success and the despair of devastating losses.

Gauguin entered the securities business after spending six years as a sailor. In 1872, at the age of 24, he joined a Paris stock brokerage and quickly demonstrated exceptional talent for finance. Through stock brokerage and investment, he accumulated considerable wealth in only a few years. Financial success enabled him to marry a Danish woman in 1873 and settle with his family in an affluent Paris neighborhood.

His prosperity, however, proved short-lived. In 1882, the French stock market collapsed after the failure of major financial institutions, triggering one of the worst crashes in the history of the Paris Bourse. Gauguin suffered severe financial losses along with many other investors. While he struggled with frustration and despair, fate quietly prepared an unexpected turning point. In 1883, at the age of 34, he abandoned his career as a stockbroker and decided to become a full-time painter. 

Gauguin's decision was not an impulse brought on by financial failure. It rested on years of preparation. Encouraged by his guardian, he had developed an early interest in collecting art and had long pursued painting as an amateur. Even while working as a stockbroker, he built an impressive collection of Impressionist works and painted in his spare time. In 1876, one of his paintings was accepted into the official Paris Salon. Through the support of Camille Pissarro, he also exhibited in the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879, gradually establishing his reputation among fellow artists. The stock market crash merely pushed him to devote himself fully to the artistic life he had long desired.

As he immersed himself in painting, Gauguin discovered a quieter but deeper sense of fulfillment than he had ever experienced in finance. He realized that his true vocation lay not in making money but in creating art. In the process, he uncovered an artistic gift that had remained dormant for years. Yet embracing that calling came at a high cost. Painting provided little financial security, and his family's finances steadily deteriorated. In 1885, he left his wife and children in Denmark and returned alone to Paris, where poverty and isolation replaced the comfort he had once enjoyed.

A born bohemian who resisted social conventions, Gauguin soon made another life-changing decision. He resolved not only to abandon material civilization but also to leave behind urban life altogether. "Let's go to the distant island of Tahiti," he declared. Taking little more than his painting supplies, he departed for the South Pacific, severing his ties with the city and the world he had known.

There, far from the financial markets that had once defined his life, Gauguin created the bold, highly original paintings that secured his place in art history. His vivid colors, simplified forms and depictions of Tahitian life became some of the most influential works of the Post-Impressionist movement, inspiring generations of modern artists.

The irony of Gauguin's life is striking. The collapse of his financial career, which seemed an unmitigated disaster at the time, became the catalyst that revealed his true calling. The failed stockbroker was reborn as Paul Gauguin, one of the most celebrated painters in the history of Western art.