(Eugène-Henri-) Gauguin (b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr. — d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia), one of the leading French painters of the Postimpressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. After spending a short period with Vincent van Gogh in Arles (1888), Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through colour. From 1891 he lived and worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. His masterpieces include the early Vision After the Sermon (1888) and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98).