Moon and Sixpence

(1919)

This fictional story is told in episodic form by a first-person narrator, in a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist. The story is said to be loosely based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin.

This is the story of Charles Strickland, a London Stockbroker who takes up painting and gives up his comfortable yet tedious existence for a life of poverty in Paris where he devotes his life to the pursuit of art. His family are devastated by his desertion and persuade the narrator of the story to go to Paris and talk him into returning home but when he arrives in Paris, Strickland has left to paint in the South of France. By the time the narrator arrives there, he finds that the artist has set sail for the South Sea islands. Much of the story is told in flashback by the various characters that have interacted with Strickland and who relate their experiences of the painter to the narrator. Eventually, the narrator tracks him down to Tahiti but arrives just as the man has died in appalling poverty leaving nothing behind but a grieving native woman and works of art painted on the walls of the hut in which he lived. After his death he is recognised as a great artist whose works are considered priceless. Based on the life of French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gaugin (1848-1903) The Moon and Sixpence is a moving portrayal of a man who had no choice but to follow his calling to the bitter end.--Submitted by Brian Bean.

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