Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a self-indulgent Victorian clergyman. Shedding his religious faith as a young man, he begins to study art in Paris, but finally returns to London to qualify as a doctor.
Based closely on the life of the painter Paul Gaugin, this book relates the life of Charles Strickland, a London stockbroker who abandons his home and career in mid-life to live as an artist in Tahiti.