Paul Gauguin

By this point he'd left France for the Pacific for good and was painting what was around him — the fruit and the birds are local ones. According to Wikipedia he was broke and in bad health through most of those last years, shipping canvases back to dealers in Paris and hoping.

The women praying aren't watching a real fight — the wrestling bit is supposed to be what they're seeing in their heads after a sermon. He painted it in a Breton village and, from what I can find, offered it to the local church, who wanted nothing to do with it.

Apparently the cross here is modelled on a carved wooden one from a small local chapel, repainted bright yellow and dropped into a working field with the women dressed the way locals actually did back then.

From what I've read this comes from his last couple of years out in the Pacific, when he was ill, broke and permanently at war with the local officials. The story where a man walks away from Europe and finds paradise doesn't survive much reading.

Apparently he meant this one as a summing-up and expected to be done after it — he was ill and broke, and by his own account he tried to end his life not long after finishing. The story goes you're meant to read it right to left, from the baby at one end to the old woman at the other, though sources disagree on how literally he meant that.