Portal:Paul Gauguin
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (UK: /ˈɡoʊɡæ̃/, US: /ɡoʊˈɡæ̃/; French: [øʒɛn ɑ̃ʁi pɔl ɡoɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. Towards the end of his life he spent ten years in French Polynesia, and most of his paintings from this time depict people or landscapes from that region.
His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career and assisted in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. Gauguin was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
Selected general articles
Still Life with Profile of Laval is an 1886 oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts Gauguin's friend Charles Laval in profile with an assortment of inanimate objects, including a ceramic pot Gauguin made himself. Read more...
Jug in the form of a Head, Self-portrait (usually referred to as the Jug Self-portrait) was produced in glazed stoneware early in 1889 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. This self-portrayal is especially stark and brutal, and was created in the aftermath of two traumatic events in the artist's life. In December 1888 Gauguin was visiting Vincent van Gogh in Arles when Van Gogh hacked off his left ear (or part of it, accounts vary) before leaving it at a brothel frequented by them both. A few days later in Paris, Gauguin witnessed the beheading of the notorious murderer Prado. Gauguin shows his severed head, dripping with rivulets of blood, his ear cut off, his eyes closed as if in denial.
Gauguin portrays himself with closed eyes and a severed ear. Glaze is used to suggest blood which runs down the side of his face to congeal at his neck. As with many of his self-portraits the object is infused with self-pity. The head resembles a death mask, and the way it is modelled strongly suggests that it has been decapitated, reminiscent of Prado. The portrait evokes Van Gogh in a number of ways, most obviously with the removed ear and its dominant red colouring which gives it, according to writer Naomi Margolis Maurer, "a strong fictitious resemblance to the suffering van Gogh." Read more...
Merahi metua no Tehamana (English Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana) is an 1893 painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin, currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting is a portrait of Paul Gauguin's native wife Teha'amana during his first visit to Tahiti in 1891-1893. This marriage has always provoked controversy because of the manner it was contracted and Teha'amana's age: the marriage was arranged and completed in the course of a single afternoon and Gauguin claimed Teha'amana was just thirteen years old at the time.
A sculpted head is also known to be a portrait of Teha'amana. She is assumed to have posed for numerous other paintings of the time, including the celebrated Spirit of the Dead Watching. Read more...
Landscape near Arles is an 1888 oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts a rural scene in Provence. Read more...
Arii Matamoe, also titled The Royal End (French: La Fin royale) is a painting on coarse cloth by the French artist Paul Gauguin, created in 1892 during the painter's first visit to Tahiti. It depicts a man's severed head on a pillow, displayed before mourners, and although it did not depict a common or contemporary Tahitian mourning ritual, may have been inspired by the death of Pōmare V in 1891 shortly after Gauguin's arrival. A curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum suggested Gauguin likely painted the canvas "to shock Parisians" upon his expected return to the city. Read more...
When Will You Marry? (French: Quand te maries-tu ?, Tahitian: Nafea faa ipoipo) is an oil painting from 1892 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. On loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland for nearly a half-century, it was sold privately by the family of Rudolf Staechelin to Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, in February 2015 for close to US $210 million (£155 million), one of the highest prices ever paid for a work of art. The painting was on exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, until 28 June 2015. Read more...
Aha Oe Feii? or Are You Jealous? is a painting by Paul Gauguin from 1892, based on a real-life episode during his stay on Tahiti which he later described in the diary Noa Noa: "On the shore two sisters are lying after bathing, in the graceful poses of resting animals; they speak of yesterday's love and tomorrow's conquests. The recollection causes them to quarrel, "What? Are you jealous?" Gauguin titled the painting in Tahitian language, Aha Oe Feii?, in the lower left corner of the canvas.
The painting evokes a sense of Pacific paradise in which sexual relations are playful and harmless. According to Professor Peter Toohey, "this jealousy is not the product of a threat to an exclusive sexual relationship or jilted love affair - it is the result of one of the sisters having enjoyed more sex than the other the night before". In a letter to his friend from 1892, Gauguin wrote about the painting: "I think this is the best of what I've made so far". Read more...
Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) is an oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, completed in 1888. It is now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. It depicts a scene from the Bible in which Jacob wrestles an angel. It depicts this indirectly, through a vision that the women depicted see after a sermon in church. It was painted in Pont-Aven, Brittany, France. Read more...
Fatata te Miti is an 1892 oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, located in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC. Read more...
Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a naked Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. Gauguin said the title may refer to either the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her. Read more...
Front page of Le Sourire dedicated to the painter and art collector George-Daniel de Monfreid
Le Sourire was a monthly periodical published by the French artist Paul Gauguin. The editions contained satirical copy, illustrated by his pen and screen drawings, with one of his woodcuts used for the header. It was in part inspired by the more successful Parisian periodical Le Rire, illustrated by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec.
In total nine editions were printed during August 1899 and April 1900, between his stays in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. It is not known how many copies of each edition were printed, probably not more than 30. Due to a limited budget, and the fact that they were hand printed, the quality of the reproductions was often poor and blotchy, he used cheap glue to bind the leaves to the paper. However, they are admired by art critics and historians today. Read more...
The Yellow Christ (in French: Le Christ jaune) is a painting executed by Paul Gauguin in 1889 in Pont-Aven. Together with The Green Christ, it is considered to be one of the key works of Symbolism in painting.
Gauguin first visited Pont-Aven in 1886. He returned to the village in early 1888 to stay until mid-October, when he left to join Vincent van Gogh in Arles, for little more than two months. Early in 1889, Gauguin was back to Pont-Aven to stay there until spring 1890. It was only for a short visit in summer 1889 to Paris to see the Exposition universelle and to arrange the Volpini Exhibition that Gauguin interrupted this sojourn. Soon after his return to Pont-Aven he painted The Yellow Christ: Read more...- Jean René Gauguin (April 12, 1881 – April 21, 1961) was a French-Danish sculptor.
He won a bronze medal for Denmark in the art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics for his Boxer. Read more...
Le violoncelliste is a 1894 oil painting by Paul Gauguin which is kept in Baltimore Museum of Art.
Paul Gauguin painted Fritz Schneklud in 1894, a friend and professional musician. Read more...
Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens (Square Ornament with Tahitian gods) is a 1893-1895 terracotta sculpture by Paul Gauguin, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. It depicts Tahitin goddesses on both sides; one the woman is alert and confronting the viewer, on the other the goddess appears to be at rest and sleeping. Read more...
The Flageolet Player on the Cliff is an 1889 oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts a Breton couple on a narrow path precipitously overlooking the Atlantic. Read more...
Vahine no te vi (English: Woman of the Mango) is an 1892 painting by Paul Gauguin, currently in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. It is one of the earliest of about seventy paintings he produced during his first visit to Tahiti and is one of many works of modern art in the museum's Cone Collection. Read more...
Charles Laval, Self Portrait, 1888, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam
Charles Laval (17 March 1862 – 27 April 1894) was a French painter associated with the Synthetic movement and Pont-Aven School.
Laval was born in Paris, and was a contemporary and friend of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin created a portrait of him in 1886 looking at one of Gauguin's Ceramic sculptures, entitled Still Life with Profile of Laval. Read more...
Study of a Nude, or Suzanne sewing is an 1880 painting made by Paul Gauguin in Paris. It is currently in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The painting depicts a young woman who is arranging a garment in undisguised nakedness. Read more...
Theodorus "Theo" van Gogh (Dutch pronunciation: [teːjoːˈdoːrɵs ˈteːjoː vɑŋ ˈɣɔx]; 1 May 1857 – 25 January 1891) was a Dutch art dealer. He was the younger brother of Vincent van Gogh, and Theo's unfailing financial and emotional support allowed his brother to devote himself entirely to painting. Theo died at the age of 33, six months after his brother died at the age of 37.
Theo is widely known for his influence on his brother; however, this often overshadows the significant impact that Theo made on the art world as a renowned art dealer: Theo played a crucial role in the introduction of contemporary Dutch and French art to the public. Read more...
Tahitian Women on the Beach (French: Femmes de Tahiti) is an 1891 painting by Paul Gauguin. The painting depicts two women on the Pacific island of Tahiti on the beach.
The painting is currently in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, located in Paris, France. Read more...
Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses, 1889, carved and polychromed wood. 95 x 72 x 6.4 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses (Be In Love and You Will Be Happy) is a bas-relief wood panel carved and polychromed by French artist Paul Gauguin in the autumn of 1889. Gauguin depicts himself in the upper right, sucking his thumb and grasping the hand of the fleshy nude woman, a Polynesian or African, who seems to recoil in fear.
It is considered as among his most successful reliefs, but when first exhibited in 1891 at the Salon des XX in Brussels it was panned by hostile critics. It was exhibited again in 1906 during a major Gauguin retrospective; that exhibition led to a reappraisal of his wood carvings, which became major influences on artists such as Matisse, the Fauves, Brancusi, and Picasso. Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses is one of three similarly themed artworks that Gauguin prepared in 1889 for the Salon; the other two, possibly pendants to this panel, are the paintings In the Waves and Life and Death. The latter shows a white Eve and dark-skinned mummy against an ominous dark background. Read more...
Still Life with Apples and Grapes by Paul Gauguin (1889)
Fruits on a Table or Still Life with Apples and Grapes ( Nature Morte a la Comptesse de N) is a still life painting by French artist Paul Gauguin painted in 1889. It was one of two works stolen from the private collection of Terence F. Kennedy in London in June 1970 and recovered by the Carabinieri in Italy in April 2014. Read more...
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is a painting by French artist Paul Gauguin. Gauguin inscribed the original French title in the upper left corner: D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous. The inscription the artist wrote on his canvas has no question mark, no dash, and all words are capitalized. In the upper right corner he signed and dated the painting: P. Gauguin / 1897. The painting was created in Tahiti, and is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, US. Read more...
Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866 – 21 July 1939) was a French art dealer who is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous then-unknown artists, including Paul Cézanne, Aristide Maillol, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Georges Rouault, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. He was also an avid art collector and publisher. Read more...
Christ On the Mount of Olives is an 1889 painting by French artist Paul Gauguin. It is both a self-portrait and a representation of Jesus about to be taken by the soldiers. Read more...
Camille Pissarro (French: [kamij pisaʁo]; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the "pivotal" figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the "dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality". Cézanne said "he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord," and he was also one of Gauguin's masters. Renoir referred to his work as "revolutionary", through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur". Read more...- Lust for Life is a 1956 American biographical film about the life of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Irving Stone and adapted by Norman Corwin.
It was directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by John Houseman. The film stars Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, James Donald as his brother Theo, with Pamela Brown, Everett Sloane, and Anthony Quinn. Douglas won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance, while Quinn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Read more...
Paul Gauguin, Oviri (Sauvage), 1894, partially glazed stoneware, 75 × 19 × 27 cm (29.5 × 7.5 × 10.6 in), Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Oviri (Tahitian for savage or wild) is an 1894 ceramic sculpture by the French artist Paul Gauguin. In Tahitian mythology, Oviri was the goddess of mourning. She is shown with long pale hair, and wild eyes, smothering a wolf with her feet, while clutching a cub in her arms. Art historians have presented multiple interpretations—usually that Gauguin intended it as an epithet to reinforce his self-image as a "civilised savage". Tahitian goddesses of her era had passed from folk memory by 1894, yet Gauguin romanticises the island's past as he reaches towards more ancient sources, including an Assyrian relief of a "master of animals" type, and Majapahit mummies. Other possible influences include preserved skulls from the Marquesas Islands, figures found at Borobudur, and a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in central Java.
Gauguin made three casts, each in partially glazed stoneware, and while several copies exist in plaster or bronze, the original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay. His sales of the casts were not successful, and at a low financial and personal ebb he asked for one to be placed on his grave. There are only three other surviving comments of his on the figure: he described the figure as a strange and cruel enigma on an 1895 presentation mount of two impressions of a woodcut of Oviri for Stéphane Mallarmé; he referred to it as La Tueuse ("The Murderess") in a 1897 letter to Ambroise Vollard; and he appended an inscription referencing Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphîta in a c. 1899 drawing. Oviri was exhibited at the 1906 Salon d'Automne (no. 57) where it influenced Pablo Picasso, who based one of the figures in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon on it. Read more...
Émile Henri Bernard (28 April 1868 – 16 April 1941) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and writer, who had artistic friendships with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugène Boch, and at a later time, Paul Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and Synthetism, two late 19th-century art movements. Less known is Bernard's literary work, comprising plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as art historical statements that contain first-hand information on the crucial period of modern art to which Bernard had contributed. Read more...
The Volpini Exhibition was an exhibition of paintings arranged by Paul Gauguin and his circle held at the Café des Arts on the Champ de Mars, not far from the official art pavilion of the 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris. A poster and an illustrated catalogue were printed, but the show of "Paintings by the Impressionist and Synthetist Group", held in June and early July 1889, was ignored by the press and proved to be a failure. Read more...
Arearea is a 1892 work by French painter Paul Gauguin. It was one of the works Gauguin exhibited at his 1893 Durand-Ruel exhibition in Paris. It was bequeathed to the French state in 1961, and was in the collection of the Louvre. From 1986, the painting has been in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay. The prominence in his paintings of collarless free range dogs has been the subject of much speculation as to their symbolic or metaphorical meaning. Read more...
Flora Tristan (7 April 1803 – 14 November 1844) was a French-Peruvian socialist writer and activist. She made important contributions to early feminist theory, and argued that the progress of women's rights was directly related with the progress of the working class. She wrote several works, the best known of which are Peregrinations of a Pariah (1838), Promenades in London (1840), and The Workers' Union (1843).
Tristan was the grandmother of the painter Paul Gauguin. Read more...
Still Life with Head-Shaped Vase and Japanese Woodcut is an 1889 still life painting by French artist, Paul Gauguin. It is currently in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran. Read more...
Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake, also known as Self-Portrait, is an 1889 oil on wood painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, which represents his late Brittany period in the fishing village of Le Pouldu in northwestern France. No longer comfortable with Pont-Aven, Gauguin moved on to Le Pouldu with his friend and student Meijer de Haan and a small group of artists. He stayed for several months in the autumn of 1889 and the summer of 1890, where the group spent their time decorating the interior of Marie Henry's inn with every major type of art work. Gauguin painted his Self-Portrait in the dining room with its companion piece, Portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan (1889).
The painting shows Gauguin against a red background with a halo above his head and apples hanging beside him as he holds a snake in his hand while plants or flowers appear in the foreground. The religious symbolism and the stylistic influence of Japanese wood-block prints and cloisonnism are apparent. The portrait was completed several years before Gauguin visited Tahiti and is one of more than 40 self-portraits he completed during his lifetime. The work reached the art market in 1919 when Marie Henry sold it at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris as part of her collected works from the Le Pouldu period. American banker Chester Dale acquired the painting in 1928, gifting it upon his death in 1962 to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Read more...- Paul Gauguin's exhibit at Les XX in 1889 was the first important display of Paul Gauguin's works, and added to the recognition that he had begun to receive in 1888. The annual exhibition was organized by Les XX, and participation was by invitation only. Gauguin's exhibit comprised paintings from Martinique, Britanny and Arles. Many of these can be identified easily, but for several items the discussion is not yet closed. Read more...
Émile Schuffenecker (8 December 1851 – 31 July 1934) was a French Post-Impressionist artist, painter, art teacher and art collector. A friend of Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon, and one of the first collectors of works by Vincent van Gogh, Schuffenecker was instrumental in establishing The Volpini exhibition, in 1889. His own work, however, tends to have been neglected since his death—and even worse, recent season campaigns in the media have reactivated resentments virulent since the late 1920s, when Schuffenecker was suspected to have imitated the work of other contemporary artists, among them, Van Gogh. Still a contentious issue, it has not been established whether or not he produced forgeries. Meanwhile, serious scholarly research at least has provided the base for a sober art historical approach to Schuffenecker's life and work. Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that Arii Matamoe, an 1892 painting of a Pacific Islander's severed head, may have been inspired by the death of Pōmare V shortly after Paul Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti?
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Selected images
Garden in Vaugirard (Painter's Family in the Garden in Rue Carcel), 1881, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
Jules Agostini's 1896 photograph of Gauguin's house in Punaauia. Note the sculpture of a nude woman.
The Market Gardens of Vaugirard, 1879, Smith College Museum of Art
Self portrait, 1903, Kunstmuseum Basel
Ta Matete, 1892, Kunstmuseum Basel
Aline Marie Chazal Tristán, (1825–1867) "The Artist's Mother", 1889, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
Maternité II, 1899, Private collection, Sold at auction in Papeete, 1903.
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897, oil on canvas, 139 × 375 cm (55 × 148 in), Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret), 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Paul Gauguin, 1894, Oviri (Sauvage), partially glazed stoneware, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. "The theme of Oviri is death, savagery, wildness. Oviri stands over a dead she-wolf, while crushing the life out of her cub." Perhaps, as Gauguin wrote to Odilon Redon, it is a matter of "not death in life but life in death".
Paul Gauguin, Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?), 1892, sold for a record US$210 million in 2014.
L'Esprit Moderne et le Catholicisme (front and back covers, 1902, Saint Louis Art Museum
Paul Gauguin, 1893–95, Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens, terre cuite, rehauts peints, 34 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Winter Landscape, 1879, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Reconstruction of Gauguin's home Maison du Jouir (House of Pleasure) at Atuona, Paul Gauguin Cultural Center.
Oviri figure on Gauguin's grave in Atuona.
Martinique Landscape 1887, Scottish National Gallery
Portrait of Madame Gauguin, c. 1880–81, Foundation E.G. Bührle, Zürich
Gauguin, c. 1895, playing a harmonium at Alphonse Mucha's studio at rue de la Grande-Chaumière, Paris (Mucha photo)
Père Paillard (Father Lechery), 1902, National Gallery of Art. Gauguin's lampoon of Bishop Martin.
Four Breton Women, 1886, Neue Pinakothek, Munich
Tahitian Woman with Evil Spirit, traced monotype, 1899/1900, Städel
Maruru (Offerings of Gratitude), 1894, woodcut sheet, Yale University Art Gallery
The Universe is Created (L'Univers est créé), from the Noa Noa suite, 1893–94, Princeton University Art Museum
Vahine no te tiare (Woman with a Flower), 1891, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
Door lintel at Maison du Jouir, 1901, Musée d'Orsay
Poster of the 1889 Exhibition of Paintings by the Impressionist and Synthetist Group, at Café des Arts, known as The Volpini Exhibition, 1889.
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