Editing Paul Gauguin (section)

=== Family history and early life ===
[[File:Gauguin La mère de l'artiste.jpg|thumb|upright|''Aline Marie Chazal Tristán, (1825–1867) "The Artist's Mother"'', 1889, [[Staatsgalerie Stuttgart]]]]
[[File:Flora Tristan 1838.JPG|thumb|upright|right|Gauguin's maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan (1803–1844) in 1838]] 
Gauguin was born in Paris to Clovis Gauguin and Aline Chazal on 7 June 1848, the year of [[Revolutions of 1848|revolutionary upheavals]] throughout Europe. His father, a 34-year-old liberal journalist from a family of entrepreneurs in Orléans,{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=Clovis came from Orléans, and there is nothing in the Gauguin family history of market gardeners and small businessmen to suggest an artistic temperament.}} was compelled to flee France when the newspaper for which he wrote was suppressed by French authorities.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=His father, Clovis Gauguin, was a 34-year-old journalist, who worked for a liberal newspaper that was soon to be suppressed.}}{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3-4|loc=Like many other European intellectuals, Clovis was forced by the failure of the 1848 revolutions to look to the new world [Western Hemisphere]. There was no future for a liberal journalist in the France of [[Louis Napoleon|Napoleon III]].}} Gauguin's mother was the 22-year-old daughter of André Chazal, an engraver, and [[Flora Tristan]], an author and activist in early socialist movements. Their union ended when André shot his wife Flora and was sentenced to prison for attempted murder.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=Flora Tristan, author and social reformer…" and "Theirs had been an ill-matched, short-lived marriage; it culminated in Chazal attempting to murder his wife and being sentenced to twenty years' hard labor}}<ref>{{harvnb|Prideaux|2024}}{{rp|pages=3,4}}: "She survived, but the ball was lodged three centimetres from her heart, too close to be safely removed.... She died ... aged forty-one, her life probably shortened by the pistol ball lodged so close to her heart"</ref>

Paul Gauguin's maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, was the illegitimate daughter of Thérèse Laisnay and Don Mariano de Tristan Moscoso. Details of Thérèse's family background are not known; Don Mariano came from an aristocratic [[Spanish immigration to Peru|Spanish]] family from the [[Viceroyalty of Peru|Peruvian]] city of [[Arequipa]]. He was an officer of the [[Dragoon#Early history and role|Dragoons]].{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=… Thérèse Laisnay, whose background nothing whatever is known…whether she was an aristocrat or adventuress, it is impossible to say.}} Members of the wealthy [[Pío de Tristán|Tristan Moscoso]] family held powerful positions in Peru.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=The Tristan Moscoso family belonged to the old Aragonese nobility, and was among the early Spanish settlers in Peru, where they had become powerful and extremely wealthy.}} Nonetheless, Don Mariano's unexpected death plunged his mistress and daughter Flora into poverty.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=They moved to Paris where Flora was born in 1803: the liaison was a stable one, but Don Mariano died suddenly before bringing himself to marry his mistress. This catapulted [Thérèse] from luxury to penury, and the rest of her miserable life was spent pleading the claims for herself and her daughter.}} When Flora's marriage with André failed, she petitioned for and obtained a small monetary settlement from her father's Peruvian relatives. She sailed to Peru in hopes of enlarging her share of the Tristan Moscoso family fortune. This never materialized; but she successfully published a popular travelogue of her experiences in Peru which launched her literary career in 1838. An active supporter of early socialist societies, Gauguin's maternal grandmother helped to lay the foundations for the 1848 revolutionary movements. Placed under surveillance by French police and suffering from overwork, she died in 1844.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3|loc=Followed by police spies, she travelled France addressing meetings of the urban proletariat whom she called upon to unite. Physically exhausted by such activities, she collapsed and died in Bordeaux in November 1844, less than four years before the revolution of 1848 toward which she had made such a signal contribution.}} Her grandson Paul "idolized his grandmother, and kept copies of her books with him to the end of his life".{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=3}}

In 1850, Clovis Gauguin departed for Peru with his wife Aline and young children in hopes of continuing his journalistic career under the auspices of his wife's South American relations.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=4|loc=…impressed with his wife's South American connections, he decided to emigrate to Peru and start a newspaper there.}} He died of a heart attack en route, and Aline arrived in Peru as a widow with the 18-month-old Paul and his 2{{frac|1|2}} year-old sister, Marie. Gauguin's mother was welcomed by her paternal granduncle, whose son-in-law, [[José Rufino Echenique]], would shortly assume the presidency of Peru.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=4|loc=…Aline was well received by her Spanish grandfather's younger brother, Don Pio Tristan Moscoso. His position in Peruvian society is indicated by the fact that, only a few months after Aline's arrival, Don Pio's son-in-law, Echenique, became President of Peru.}} To the age of six, Paul enjoyed a privileged upbringing, attended by nursemaids and servants. He retained a vivid memory of that period of his childhood which instilled "indelible impressions of Peru that haunted him the rest of his life".{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=4|loc=Aline and her two small children consequently found themselves in a tropical paradise where every material need was met and every sense was indulged…Aline and her two children were looked after by a Negro nursemaid and a Chinese manservant; and the racial diversity of Peru was matched by a rich extravagance of dress and by the brightly painted buildings everywhere in the city.}}{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=4|loc=I have a remarkable visual memory, and I remember that period, our house and a whole lot of events.}}

Gauguin's idyllic childhood ended abruptly when his family mentors fell from political power during [[Peruvian Civil War of 1856–1858|Peruvian civil conflicts]] in 1854. Aline returned to France with her children, leaving Paul with his paternal grandfather, Guillaume Gauguin, in Orléans. Deprived by the Peruvian Tristan Moscoso clan of a generous annuity arranged by her granduncle, Aline settled in Paris to work as a dressmaker.{{sfn|Bowness|1971|p=4|loc=…[C]ivil war in Peru resulted in Don Pio's family losing political power." And "[Aline returned] to France anticipating grandfather Gauguin's death, life with Clovis's bachelor brother in Orleans, a small legacy from the Gauguins, and  a large annuity from  Don Pio, which [the Tristan Moscoso clan] prevented Aline from ever receiving. Eventually she established herself as a dressmaker in Paris…}}