Daniel Wildenstein, art historian and publisher, has been a member of the Paris Académie des Beaux-Arts since 1971. He began comanaging the Wildenstein Galleries in New York, London, and Tokyo in 1939, and later assumed sole responsibility for them. He has also headed two art journals of international reputation: Arts (1956-1962) and, since 1963, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Through the Wildenstein Institute, he has enhanced the prestige of French culture by supporting numerous art exhibitions. He edits and directs the publication of catalogues raisonnés of 18th, 19th, and 20th century artists; a renowned authority on the Impressionist painters, he is the author of the Manet and Monet catalogues in particular.

This two-volume set launches a glorious project in art history for a central figure of French Post Impressionism: the multi-volume catalog raisonne of the work of Paul Gauguin. But this is no ordinary catalog raisonne, not a book just for scholars, but more of a biographical or narrative catalog raisonne, with extensive sidebars and texts detailing different aspects of the Gauguin's life and work. These first volumes center on a Gauguin less well known to the general public, and featuring the paintings made from 1873 to 1888, works that offer a wide range of styles from youthful experiments to the realized work of a mature and innovative painter. This is Gauguin in France - the period before he sought inspiration in Tahiti. Here is the countryside on the coast of Brittany, on Martinique, and the environs of Paris as only Gauguin saw them. Here are all the still-lifes and portraits, including 9 never before published pieces.

This is deluxe slip-cased set of books is distinguished by its scholarly provenance and by its more accessible progression of material from Gauguin's daily life: sketches, letters, family photographs, extracts from his writings, with individual entries on his models, the locales, and his friends and family. The combination makes for a marriage of true scholarship and a deeper enjoyment of this singular painter.