Imagine a book about Gauguin written by someone who truly knows, first hand, the Pacific islands, their history, their cultures. Imagine an author capable of looking at Gauguin's paintings not as illustrations of 'primitivism' or 'colonialism' but as attempts – failures, successes, improbabilities – to come to terms with another way of life. This is the book. There is no other like it.

T. J. Clark, art historian and author of The Painting of Modern Life

An expansive and meticulously researched account of Gauguin's life and art ... a valuable contribution to art history.

Samuel Reilly, ArtReview

[Thomas's] portrait of Gauguin is scrupulously fair ... If not on Gauguin's side, Thomas is always on the side of the people and places Gauguin encounters. He writes with authority on the art, craft and textiles of the different island traditions and examines what Gauguin cherry-picked and co-opted for his purposes ... He writes evocatively and exactly about the paintings.

Laura Freeman, The Times

Thomas offers a nuanced version of Gauguin's works as at once obviously open to influence and highly attentive to the particulars of the Polynesian world.

Michael Kerr, Apollo

Rewarding ... offers plenty of new perspectives on Gauguin's later years

Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper

It is Thomas's expertise in Polynesian societies that brings many of the insights here ... The Gauguin who emerges is not suddenly a more attractive figure. But his pictures gain nuance and the man himself can be seen as more than merely a sexual predator gorging himself in paradise.

Michael Prodger, Literary Review