Paul Gauguin had seen the first Impressionist…

Paul Gauguin had seen the first Impressionist exhibition, which had completely entranced him and confirmed his desire to become a painter.

He spends some seventeen thousand francs on works by Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir and Guillaumin.

Pissarro takes a special interest in his attempts at painting, emphasizing that he should “look for the nature that suits your temperament”.

The twenty-seven-year-old Gauguin begins to study under the supportive older artist, at first struggling to master the techniques of painting and drawing.

The orphaned son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole, whose mother had been a writer and a follower of Saint-Simon, had been first aroused by his mother’s very rich lover, businessman Gustave Arosa, and by a fellow stockbroker, Émile Schuffenecker, with whom he had begun painting.

The collection of Arosa, who had become the Gauguin family's legal guardian, includes the work of Camille Corot, Eugéne Delacroix, and Jean-François Millet.

Upon Gauguin's release from the merchant marine in 1872, Arosa had secured a position for him as a stockbroker and introduced him to the Danish woman Mette Sophie Gad, whom Gauguin had married the following year.)

Gauguin had soon begun to receive artistic instruction and to frequent a studio where he could draw from a model.