Paul Gauguin 18 x 24 inches, Acrylic on Cradled panel, 2019
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) Born Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, he was an important post-Impressionistic French painter whose work, though mostly unappreciated in his lifetime, achieved popularity and critical success after his death and had considerable influence upon 20th Century art.
Paul was born into a middle class family of social activists. His father Clovis was a liberal journalist and his maternal grandmother was an author and supporter of the early socialist movement. When, in 1850, Clovis Gauguin’s newspaper was closed down by the French government, he decided to take his wife Alina and their children to Peru. His wife’s father was from a Peruvian family of wealth and social standing and could perhaps help them. Unfortunately on the way, Clovis had a heart attack and died. Nevertheless, Alina Gauguin, with her children, 2 1/2 year-old Marie and 1 1/2 year-old Paul, was well received by her father’s family, whose members included the future president of Peru. For the next few years the Gauguins would live a life of luxury and privilege. Paul would be doted on and indulged by servants, an idyllic early childhood that he would never quite let go of.
Unfortunately, the political fortunes of Alina’s family’s fell and, in 1854, the Gauguins had to return to France, pretty much broke. Gauguin’s mother supported herself as a dressmaker and left Paul in Orléans to be raised by his paternal grandfather. Paul was able to attend prestigious schools, including a naval preparatory school in Paris. Completing his education, Gauguin became a merchant seaman, a pilot’s assistant. After three years he joined the French navy for a two-year enlistment. It was while he was in India that he heard of his mother’s death months before.
In 1871 Paul Gauguin returned to Paris and through a family friend obtained employment as a stockbroker. He was successful and became quite well-to-do. In 1873 he married Mette-Sophie Gad (1850-1920), a Danish woman, and they had 5 children together. Gauguin became interested in art and was a regular at the cafes frequented by the Impressionists, who, at that time, were the rebels of the art world. He began purchasing the work of many of these avant-garde and as yet unheralded artists and came to know most of them personally; Camille Pissarro was a particular friend. Gauguin himself tried his hand at painting and a little sculpture. No one seemed to think much of his efforts, but Paul felt compelled to spend more and more of his time with art. In 1877 he moved from the 9th arrondissement of Paris (on the right bank in central Paris) to a newer, urban area, Vaugirard. It was a poorer neighborhood, but his 3rd floor apartment had a studio. Gauguin’s efforts began to bear fruit. He was beginning to sell his work and was able to exhibit paintings in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1881 and 1882.
By 1883 stockbroker Paul Gauguin had decided to devote himself to art full time. He could not have chosen a worse time. The stock market had crashed the year before and dealers and collectors were buying little art. In January 1884 Gauguin moved his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply than in Paris. The transition from amateur to professional was a difficult one and it put strains on his family life. Mette and the children soon moved to Copenhagen in her native country of Denmark. Gauguin, bringing his art collection, followed in November of 1884. The restless and frustrated Gauguin got a job selling tarpaulins, but it was an ill-starred venture — Paul didn’t even speak Danish!
Separating from his wife, Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, taking with him his 6-year old son (who would eventually have to be sent to a boarding school, paid for by Pauls’ sister). The upcoming winter was a time of misery. Paul found no sales, no inspiration, and had to support himself in poverty taking menial jobs. In the May 1886 at the Impressionist exhibition he showed several paintings, but most of them were old work, and he only made one sale. Paul was assertive and opinionated, and art seemed to bring out his crankiness. He made no friends publicly deploring the pointillist work of Georges Seurat that was now in fashion among the avant-garde. And he quarreled with his friend Pissarro, making an enemy of his former friend, a man he had regularly painted with on Sunday afternoons.
In the summer of 1886 Gauguin stayed at the artist’s colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. This turned out to be a success: he finally found a place where he felt at home. He gave full reign to his flamboyant and aggressive personality, dressing in an outlandish manner to attract attention. Even if his artwork was not particularly admired, he thought a really neat guy: he made quite a hit there with the younger artists and students. And his skill as a boxer and a fencer only enhanced his image.
Even as he continued to copy other artists, Gauguin developed his own style. He would shun the objective representations of Impressionism and embraced a naive style inspired by the art of Asia and Africa — bold colors and lines, often featuring objects of flat color outlined in black. He rejected the classical elements of painting, eg. correct perspective and proportion, formal composition, and shadings, highlights, and gradations of color. Objecting to the superficiality of most contemporary art, he incorporated symbolic elements into his paintings. It was his intent to paint not what the eye sees, but what the mind sees and thus capture the essence rather than merely the appearance of what he chose to paint.
In 1887, with one of his new young artist friends, Charles Laval, Gauguin travelled to Panama to find inspiration in the exotic. They didn’t find there. Broke and without jobs, they appealed to the French embassy to pay for their return trip to France. On the way back, though, he and Laval stopped on the French West Indian island of Martinique and decided to stay. Sick and living uncomfortably in a leaky hut, Gauguin nevertheless enjoyed himself and found inspiration, mingling with and painting the native inhabitants.
Gauguin painted a dozen or more pictures during his 5-month stay and with them seemed to hit his stride as an artist. These, landscapes with figures, scenes of rural life with simple people, informally painted and brightly colored, epitomized what would be his style. He exhibited them when he returned to France. The work attracted the attention of an important Dutch art dealer, Theo van Gogh, who bought some of his work and showed it to his wealthy clients. Paul become friends with van Gogh’s brother Vincent, who was a struggling artist. Paul and Vincent corresponded and in his letters to him Gauguin formulated and expounded upon his philosophy of art.
At the suggestion of Theo, Vincent van Gogh asked Gauguin to live and paint with him at Arles in southern France, where van Gogh had gone for his health. Vincent had rented rooms in a residence known from one of his paintings as the Yellow House. (The house was damaged during WWII and demolished). Paul accepted the invitation and arrived at Arles on October 23, 1888. He soon learned he had made a mistake. The two may have learned from each other, but there were inevitable conflicts. Their painting styles and techniques were quite different, for instance, Gauguin did not share van Gogh’s enthusiasm for painting outdoors in all weathers and van Gogh could not adapt himself to Gauguin’s habit of painting from memory. But van Gogh idolized Gauguin. He hoped to be treated as his colleague, an equal, but Gauguin, dominating and lecturing, was not comfortable doing so. Their intense personalities clashed and their relationship deteriorated. The insecure and emotionally needy Van Gogh desperately hoped that Gauguin would not desert him. Gauguin, who had chucked his marriage and respectable life to be an artist, chafed at attachments and obligations. What’s more, Gauguin was naturally quarrelsome, while the sensitive van Gogh’s mental state was delicate at best.
In late December after being cooped up in the Yellow House for days because of rain, the two men quarreled violently. When Gauguin took a walk, van Gogh chased after him and threatened him with a razor. Afterwards Gauguin spent the night in a hotel. Vincent, distraught and apparently having a psychotic episode in which he heard voices, cut off his left ear with the razor. Although he later would not remember the episode, van Gogh bandaged his head and wrapped up the severed ear, which he delivered to a prostitute that worked in a brothel he and Paul frequented. He later passed out and was taken by the police to a hospital. As he recovered, Van Gogh repeatedly asked that Gauguin visit him, but Paul thought it best to leave Arles. He returned to Paris and never saw van Gogh again, although they did continue to correspond. (An alternative version of that night’s events has Gauguin being responsible for severing van Gogh’s ear during a physical altercation and Vincent agreeing not to say anything to implicate Paul).
Paul Gauguin hit upon the idea of going to the romantic South Seas, Tahiti, in particular, an overseas territory of France. There he could leave behind the artificialities of civilization and be free of the demands of modern life. A successful auction of his work in February 1991 provided the necessary funds for his trip. After visiting his wife and children in Copenhagen for what turned out to be the last time, he departed for Tahiti on April 1, 1991.
Gauguin spent his first three months in the capital of Tahiti, Papeete, but the city had already become so Europeanized it no longer had the primitive charm Gauguin was looking for. Consequently, he moved to a village more than 30 miles from Papeete and lived there, native-style, in a bamboo hut. This was a productive period with Gauguin executing his best and most representative work, portraits of native girls, scenes of native life, and illustrations of the lost culture and religion of Tahiti. He also produced many woodcarvings. Some of paintings were sent back to France and Gauguin encouragingly heard word of sales. During his stay in Tahiti, Gauguin contracted a marriage with a 13-year old native girl, whom he used as a model. He also found time to write a travelogue entitled Noa Noa, which he would publish in 1901 — however, the truthfulness of some of his accounts is suspect.
Gauguin was plagued by bad health, initially heart problems. He was broke as well and so felt compelled to return to France, relying as he had before on government charity to pay for his passage.
He returned to Paris in August 1893. A show of his work in November 1893 was arranged by his long-time friend Edgar Degas. Gauguin had bought Degas’ works when he was a collector in the ‘70s. Now, Degas collected Gauguin’s works and lent him support and approval — even as other artists, Pissarro, Renoir, and Monet, scoffed at his works.
Continuing to produce “Tahitian” paintings, Paul set himself up in a studio in Montparnasse, an artist district in Paris. He held a weekly salon where he would bedeck himself in Polynesian attire and show off his latest mistress, an exotic teenager from Java.
A show in November 1994 resulted in sales, but subsequent exhibitions were financial failures. Even though he had received an inheritance from an uncle, Gauguin was again short of funds. He had become disillusioned with the European art world that had rejected him and embittered by the critical attacks directed against him and his work. He yearned to go back to Tahiti. And with help of friends he secured passage back to French Polynesia in June 1895. He would never see Europe again.
In Tahiti he was able to support himself with sales of his artwork and enjoyed a comfortable life among the French colonists. He was able to build a large house in an area outside Papeete where the rich people lived. He became a journalist and took part in local politics. He acquired another native wife, a 14-year old who bore him two children. During his first year back in Tahiti he worked on nothing but woodcarvings. When he returned to painting, he found himself catering to his fellow colonists rather than the avant garde of Paris.
In April 1897 he was in the process of building a new home, a lavish one, since the land on which his former home was situated had been sold. Unfortunately, he was hard pressed financially and despaired of paying his debts. His health was poor. An injury to an ankle received during a drunken brawl back in France never healed and he had painful leg sores. (These were long thought to be due to advanced syphilis, but recent examination of Gauguin’s teeth reveal no trace of mercury, which was commonly used to treat syphilis. Therefore, it seems likely that he did not have the disease). After finishing what he regarded as his masterpiece, the 14-foot wide tableau Where Do We Come From? What are We? Where Are We Going, he contemplated committing suicide. But he did not go through with it. His mood was soon buoyed and his fortunes were restored after several successful shows in Paris. It seemed critics now liked his work. And there was a new dealer who guaranteed him a regularly monthly advance.
Paul Gauguin could now fulfill his dream of settling in the more primitive Marquesas Islands, a French colony to the east of Tahiti. He arrived there in September 1901 and built a fine two-story house in the center of the capital Atuona. The Marquesas could not have been as he dreamed, though. Its population had been decimated by European diseases so that only a few thousand inhabitants remained. The Catholic Church indoctrinated the natives as the government oppressed them and traders exploited them. Although it was not long before he antagonized the Catholic bishop, the iconoclastic Gauguin befriended a Protestant pastor who had some medical training and was able to treat Gauguin’s legs. Gauguin employed several servants and lived with another 14-year old girl who was probably as much nurse as wife. They had a child together. With no lack of models, Gauguin set out painting and sending his work back to France. Back in Europe he had become a mysterious and legendary figure and his exotic art was at last appreciated.
By 1902 Gauguin’s health deteriorated, and he found it difficult to paint. In addition to heart problems and the leg sores, he came to have vision loss. He took morphine and laudanum, but was careful to avoid becoming addicted. Still full of spirit, though, Gauguin turned his attention to writing, recording reminiscences and penning complaints to the local government. His criticisms of the constabulary led Gauguin to be charged with libeling a gendarme. He received a prison sentence of three months. Although in failing health, Gauguin endeavored to raise funds to go to Papeete to appeal his sentence. He was very weak, in great pain, and suffering from fainting fits. On the morning of May 8, 1903 he was found dead, either the victim of a heart attack or of an overdose of drugs he might have administered to ease his pain.
Gauguin’s effects were immediately auctioned off. Some disappeared, but most of them eventually reached his wife Mete in Denmark. His paintings increased in value and his reputation as an artist soared after his death. Recently, one of his paintings was sold for 210 million dollars! His primitive style has exerted considerable influence upon many early 20th Century artists, Pablo Picasso being the most notable. He is still remembered in French Polynesia. There is a Paul Gauguin Cultural Center in Atuona and a Paul Gauguin Museum in Tahiti. He left descendants in Europe, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, some of whom became artists.
Gauguin and his colorful life inspired many literary works, among them Somerset Maugham's novel, The Moon and Six Pence. Gauguin was memorably portrayed in the 1956 van Gogh film biography Lust for Life, with Anthony Quinn, himself an outstanding primitive artist and collector, winning an Academy Award for his performance.
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