This is the 1919 novel by W Somerset Maugham that is partially modeled on the life of Paul Gaughin, a figure I don’t know much about personally before this novel, but looked him up for this. In the novel, Charles Strickland is a near 40 year old business guy who leaves his wife and teen children after seventeen years of marriage to move to Paris and become an artist. After several years of working at it he moves to Tahiti and starts a new life there, became sick and died. All much like the real life Paul Gaughin.
The difference with this novel is that this is not a Lust for Life celebration of an artist. Instead, it’s narrated by a young man (at least at the start) who is enlisted by the family to find Strickland in Paris and bring him back. While there, he tries to convince him, but becomes fascinated and somewhat allured by Strickland. It’s never quite the the friendship/obsessive kind of sense of things, but he’s caught by a sense that he is experiencing a genius at work and at his craft, so he’s uncomfortable with the disruption of this process. He also has no illusions at the absolute depravity of Strickland’s behavior. He’s caught in this kind of tension throughout the novel, but remains faithful to his role as witness to Strickland via the family.
Oddly, the book that most reminds me of is Heart of Darkness, but the trappings of art life have captured our Kurtz, not the total dehumanizing effect of colonialism. It’s a curious book that has a lot of 2019 resonance to it and asks some interesting questions without giving the unsatisfyingly pert answers we tend to get today.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Sixpence-W-Somerset-Maugham/dp/0099284766/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3BD54XB4VV4IA&keywords=the+moon+and+sixpence&qid=1573130735&sprefix=the+moon+and+%2Caps%2C302&sr=8-6)