[chumali]

> decided to stop being a wealthy stock broker to live as a painter

He lost everything after the 1882 market crash and eventually moved to Tahiti to pursue the allure of the 'free-spirited and noble savage'. Whilst there he took three teenage brides and infected them with syphilis, from which he himself eventually died.

[wickerman]

Yep, fully aware of his pedophilia. But the thread is not about morally upstanding people, rather of people who chose to start something in their middle age.

You might also want to point out that by the time he became a full time painter sale of paintings was also super low so it wasn't that the decision was purely because stock brokering was a less desirable outcome. He knew he was choosing a life of poverty.