Pola Gauguin (1883–1961)

Paul Rollon "Pola" Gauguin was born in Paris, the youngest of five children of French artist Paul Gauguin and his Danish-born wife Mette-Sophie Gad. In 1884, when he was a year old, the family moved to Denmark. The following year, his father returned alone to Paris. Pola and his siblings were raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. In 1905, he enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and made his debut as an artist at Blomqvist Kunsthandel and Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo in 1913 and at the Oslo Autumn Exhibition in 1914. He moved to Oslo and started his own art training school, which he ran until 1924. During the 1920s, he also became an author and an art critic for various newspapers. Among his books were biographies of Henrik Lund, Christian Krohg, Edvard Munch and Ludvig Karsten. He also published a memoir entitled My Father, Paul Gauguin in 1937. During World War II, he was imprisoned for 19 days at the Nazi concentration camp of Grini in Bærum, Norway. After the war, he returned to live in Denmark. Five of his paintings are in the collection of The National Gallery of Norway.