after Gauguin left that profession. By 1873, Gauguin's success at the job qualified him as an approved match for a well-bred Danish girl named Mette Sophie Gad, and he married her in November of that year.
One of the issues of Gauguin's life that is not fully resolved is when he first ventured into painting. It is clear that he had already started in oils in the early 1870s, and in 1874, the year when his first child was born, Gauguin became a regular Sunday painter and occasionally went to the Atelier Colarossi with Schuffenecker to draw from a model. Gauguin's early painting style shows the strong influence of the Barbizon School tradition and recalls in particular the work of Corot and Daubigny (Nicholls 5-6).
In 1875 he met Pissarro, another influence on his developing style, and Pissarro taught Gauguin, as he taught CTzanne and Van Gogh, the techniques of Impressionism. Gauguin also met other Impressionists as a result of his association with Pissarro, and these painters met at the CafT de Nouvelle-AthFnes in Paris. Gauguin became something of an art collector in his own right and with some money he had amassed in the stockmarket began buying works by Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Degas, as well as some by CTzanne (Nicholls 6-7).
Gauguin's meeting with Pissarro was momentous for the younger man. Pissarro lived only for art and planted a germ in the stockbroker that completely changed his life. At the CafT, Gauguin listened to the discussions among the various painters and was fired with artistic ambition. He certainly began to paint seriously during this period, and when the Montmartre artists continued to view him as an amateur, as the Sunday painter he had been, he gave up his job and devoted himself entirely to painting (Kielty 174).
Earlier, Gauguin had submitted several works to the fifth Impressionist Exhibition of 1880, landscapes in Pissarro's style. The following year he entered a wooden statuette,...