He was a selftaught painter, having first been employed by the Merchant Marines, then by a stockbroker, where he worked until 1883.
H is first works reveal a resolutely impressionist influence.
The effect he sought lay in the direction of a simplification of forms, simplification obtained by the use of contour and large surfaces of colour. T he presentation of several of his canvases at the Universal Exposition of 1889 awoke the enthusiasm of several young painters, who soon formed the School of Pont-Aven around Gauguin. His unstable temperament caused him to leave for Tahiti in 1891 and then, annoyed by the Parisian critics upon his return, to go back to Tahiti in 1895. There, solitude and financial hardship did not prevent him from realising some of his most beautiful works, in which his synthetic technique allowed him to concisely and intensely transcribe his sensual and mystical vision of life. The freshness and intensity of the colours seem to set off the astonishingly powerful treatment of the subject.