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- Herausgeber: Tate Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
The vivid and sensuous paintings of Paul Gauguin are among the most reproduced and recognisable in the history of art. Most books on the artist concentrate on one aspect of his story, whether it is the time he spent in Brittany, in Arles with his friend Vincent van Gogh or in the South Seas. By contrast, this concise introduction looks at his career in its entirety, reaching beyond the myths to discover one of the most fascinating and engaging artists of modern times. Written by Nancy Ireson, an acknowledged expert on French art of the period, this is the perfect place to start for anyone interested in the life and work of this extraordinary artist.
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Paul Gauguin
Nancy Ireson
Contents
Full page image (Portrait of Paul Gauguin)
intro by Nancy Ireson (5,000 words)
Gauguin was a monster. That is to say, he can’t be pigeon-holed into any one of the moral, intellectual or social categories that suffice to define most individuals…1
In 1904, just months after Gauguin’s death in the Marquesas Islands, the writer Victor Ségalen wrote an account of his visit to the painter’s last studio.2 No doubt people were curious. Gauguin’s work had sparked horror and admiration. His lifestyle – his travels, his mistresses, his complicated relationships with peers in the art world – had attracted equally disparate reactions. At the start of his text, Ségalen felt the need to offer a warning, to remind his readers that this character would not comply with their principles. To judge his art, it seemed, they would need to look beyond familiar conventions.
This dispassionate approach remains helpful today. People in Europe may still associate the places shown or evoked in Gauguin’s work with ideas of escape and fantasy. But a multicultural society rests ill at ease with the knowledge that his travels were also a hunt for a society that was ‘savage’, archaic or uncivilised. The prejudices of a colonial age – reinforced or challenged – are only one element of these paintings and sculptures, but the ingredient remains unpalatable. And to consider Gauguin’s approach to human relationships is no less comfortable a task. He left his wife and family in France, abandoned his child bride in Tahiti, argued with friends and alienated his supporters. Yet to grasp the significance of Gauguin is not to excuse his behaviour. To appreciate the distinctive physical qualities of his output (heightened colour, untreated paint surfaces, rough carving and modelling) is not to subscribe to outdated stereotypes. The fact remains that this artist produced a remarkable body of work. To look at the man and the moment, to try and understand it, is the task of this small volume.
Background and early life
In many respects, even before Gauguin was born, his family history was the stuff of legend. His maternal grandmother was Flora Tristan: a pioneering French socialist and feminist, of Peruvian ancestry, who made her name as a woman of letters. His mother Aline Maria Chazal, in contrast, was a quiet young woman. She married Clovis Gauguin, a journalist, and they had two children. Their youngest, Eugène Henri Paul, came into the world on 7 June 1848. However, by 1849, civil unrest in Paris had shattered any hopes of a quiet life. The family set sail for Peru to seek refuge with Aline’s relations, but Clovis died before they reached their destination. Forced to adjust to new circumstances, Aline and her children lived with her relatives for the next six years. Paul grew up to speak Spanish much of the time. In later life Gauguin would refer often to his foreign childhood. ‘Vincent [van Gogh] sometimes calls me the man who has come from afar and will go far’.3 He would also paint a portrait of his mother, depicting her as a young woman, in a similarly romantic vein (The Artist’s Mother, 1890/1894, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart).
In 1854, on the request of Paul’s paternal grandfather, Guillaume, in Orléans, the family returned to France. But he died soon after and, left with only a small legacy, Aline moved to Paris to earn a living. Paul remained at school in Orléans where he struggled with the language and lessons and became withdrawn. It was while he was at college, seemingly, that he began to carve – he grew interested in the silver and ceramic objects that his mother had collected during their time in South America – but he had no clear artistic ambitions at this stage.
Parisian respectability
As an older teenager, without a clear career aim, Gauguin took an apprenticeship in the merchant navy. He set out on his first voyage in 1865 on board the Luzitano bound for Rio. The post suited him; he worked well. After a second trip – and a promotion – he joined the crew of the Chili. They embarked on a journey that took in Panama, Taboga and the Polynesian Islands.
In 1868, by now accustomed to life at sea, he performed his military service in the Navy. After the Franco-Prussian War, and one last voyage, he returned to Paris. However, on his arrival he found his mother’s house in ruins (she had died the previous year). It was at this point that he sought out a family friend, Gustave Arosa, who Aline had appointed as his guardian. This was significant. The wealthy and cultured Arosa found Gauguin a job as a broker’s agent on the upmarket Rue Laffitte and exposed him to the works of art in his impressive collection, which included pieces by Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Camille Pissarro. It was with Arosa’s daughter, Marguerite, that Gauguin began to paint.
Now Gauguin established a solid middle-class life. At work he made swift progress and soon became a liquidator. He also fell in love; he married his Danish fiancée, Mette Gad, in 1873. The couple moved into a small flat on the Place Saint-George and, less than ten months later, in 1874, she gave birth to Emil, their first child.
But Gauguin’s interest in art grew nonetheless. A landscape produced at around this time suggests that he had begun to gain technical confidence (Landscape c.1873, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). At the office, he met Emil Schuffenecker, an earnest young man intent on making his name as an artist. There was a marked difference in their status – Gauguin, aged 24, earned 3,000 francs a year, whereas Schuffenecker, aged 20, was an office employee on 1,800 francs – but the two became friends.4 They went on regular sketching trips to the outskirts of the city. They visited the Louvre, they frequented open painting studios and the Académie Colarossi. Mette had experienced a difficult pregnancy and, for a brief moment, Gauguin had spent less time painting. But the baby would provide him with a new model and, despite busy times on the stock market, Gauguin was once again committed to the pursuit of his hobby.
Gauguin the Impressionist
By 1876, the aspiring artist had a work accepted at the prestigious annual Salon. The art that most attracted him, though, was not of the kind displayed in that ‘official’ arena. This was the year of the second Impressionist exhibition. Interested by what he saw, Gauguin met Pissarro, who became a great mentor and who introduced him to other painters from the Impressionist group.
The stylistic impact of his new connections is evident in a number of his early works. His 1881 Figures in a Garden (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen) shows a similarly absorbed female subject to Pissarro’s A Wool-Carder that went on show at the 1880 Impressionist exhibition (National Gallery, London), both described in the same, flickering brushwork. Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas would also prove particularly useful to his artistic development. Paintings such as the former’s Landscape, Study after Nature, which Gauguin would have seen at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877 (Rau Collection, Cologne), informed the ways in which he now began to flatten perspectival space. And the vague eroticism of The Little One is Dreaming (Collection Oskar Reinhart – Am Römerholz – Winterhur) might owe something to the latter’s Young Spartans Exercising (a fixture in Degas’s studio; National Gallery, London), with its lithe adolescents and their soft-muscled limbs. But as these comparisons suggest, though Gauguin was not averse to borrowing motifs or styles from other artists, he did so in order to create something that was very much his own.
From the late 1870s, Gauguin’s life developed in ever more conflicting directions. Mette had two more children, Aline and Clovis, in 1877 and 1879, but his passion for art pulled him away from his family responsibilities. He became increasingly involved with the Impressionists; having befriended a sculptor who lived nearby, he learnt modelling and carving techniques, which he used to create a statuette for the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879. At the 1880 show, he submitted seven paintings and an accomplished portrait bust (Portrait of Mette Gauguin 1877, The Courtauld Gallery, London).
However, even within artistic circles, there were tensions. Gauguin was still an amateur artist. Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet – perhaps partly because of his presence – had already decided not to submit works to the 1880 Impressionist exhibition.5 By the summer of 1882 he was determined to turn professional. ‘I cannot let myself stay in finance and be an amateur painter all my life; I’ve got it into my head that I’ll be a painter…’, he explained to Pissarro.6 He had, after all, received some significant praise; Degas had even purchased a canvas.7 As 1883 began, Gauguin left his well-paid job, though he continued to purchase art. It was in July the same year that he acquired The François Zola Dam by Cézanne (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff).
Yet, despite his confidence, success proved elusive. Funds ran low and Mette was dismayed at the social consequences. When Gauguin moved the family to Rouen in 1884, where he was determined he might find buyers for his art, she went with reluctance.
