Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influential practitioner of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. While only moderately successful during his lifetime, Gauguin has since been recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism.
Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848, amidst the tumult of Europe's revolutionary year. In 1850, Gauguin's family settled in Peru, where he experienced a privileged childhood that left a lasting impression on him. Later, financial struggles led them back to France, where Gauguin received formal education. Initially working as a stockbroker, Gauguin started painting in his spare time, his interest in art kindled by visits to galleries and exhibitions. The financial crisis of 1882 significantly impacted his brokerage career, prompting a shift to full-time painting. Gauguin's art education was largely self-taught and informal, shaped significantly by his associations with other artists rather than academic training. His entry into the art world was facilitated by his acquaintance with Camille Pissarro, a leading Impressionist. Pissarro took on a mentor role for Gauguin, introducing him to other Impressionist artists and techniques.
He exhibited with the Impressionists in the early 1880s, but soon began developing his distinct style, characterized by a bolder use of color and less traditional subject matter. His work in Brittany and Martinique showcased his inclination towards depicting native life and landscapes. By the 1890s, Gauguin's art took a significant turn during his time in Tahiti, then a French colony, where he sought a refuge from the Western civilization. Gauguin's later years in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands were marked by health problems and financial struggles.
His paintings from that period, characterized by vivid colors and Symbolist themes, would prove highly successful among the European viewers for their exploration of the relationships between people, nature, and the spiritual world. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career and assisted in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. His work was influential on the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and he is well known for his relationship with Vincent and Theo van Gogh.
Biography
Family history and early life
Gauguin was born in Paris to Clovis Gauguin and Aline Chazal on 7 June 1848, the year of revolutionary upheavals throughout Europe. His father, a 34-year-old liberal journalist from a family of entrepreneurs in Orléans, was compelled to flee France when the newspaper for which he wrote was suppressed by French authorities. Gauguin's mother was the 22-year-old daughter of André Chazal, an engraver, and Flora Tristan, an author and activist in early socialist movements. Their union ended when André shot his wife Flora and was sentenced to prison for attempted murder.Paul Gauguin's maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, was the illegitimate daughter of Thérèse Laisnay and Don Mariano de Tristan Moscoso. Details of Thérèse's family background are not known; Don Mariano came from an aristocratic Spanish family from the Peruvian city of Arequipa. He was an officer of the Dragoons. Members of the wealthy Tristan Moscoso family held powerful positions in Peru. Nonetheless, Don Mariano's unexpected death plunged his mistress and daughter Flora into poverty. When Flora's marriage with André failed, she petitioned for and obtained a small monetary settlement from her father's Peruvian relatives. She sailed to Peru in hopes of enlarging her share of the Tristan Moscoso family fortune. This never materialized; but she successfully published a popular travelogue of her experiences in Peru which launched her literary career in 1838. An active supporter of early socialist societies, Gauguin's maternal grandmother helped to lay the foundations for the 1848 revolutionary movements. Placed under surveillance by French police and suffering from overwork, she died in 1844. Her grandson Paul "idolized his grandmother, and kept copies of her books with him to the end of his life".
In 1850, Clovis Gauguin departed for Peru with his wife Aline and young children in hopes of continuing his journalistic career under the auspices of his wife's South American relations. He died of a heart attack en route, and Aline arrived in Peru as a widow with the 18-month-old Paul and his 2 year-old sister, Marie. Gauguin's mother was welcomed by her paternal granduncle, whose son-in-law, José Rufino Echenique, would shortly assume the presidency of Peru. To the age of six, Paul enjoyed a privileged upbringing, attended by nursemaids and servants. He retained a vivid memory of that period of his childhood which instilled "indelible impressions of Peru that haunted him the rest of his life".
Gauguin's idyllic childhood ended abruptly when his family mentors fell from political power during Peruvian civil conflicts in 1854. Aline returned to France with her children, leaving Paul with his paternal grandfather, Guillaume Gauguin, in Orléans. Deprived by the Peruvian Tristan Moscoso clan of a generous annuity arranged by her granduncle, Aline settled in Paris to work as a dressmaker.
Education and first job
After attending a couple of local schools, Gauguin was sent to the prestigious Catholic boarding school Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin. He spent three years at the school. At the age of 14, he entered the Loriol Institute in Paris, a naval preparatory school, before returning to Orléans to take his final year at the Lycée Jeanne D'Arc. Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine. Three years later, he joined the French navy, in which he served for two years. His mother died on 7 July 1867, but he did not learn of it for several months until a letter from his sister Marie caught up with him in India.In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. A close family friend, Gustave Arosa, got him a job at the Paris Bourse; Gauguin was 23. He became a successful Parisian businessman and remained one for the next 11 years. In 1879 he was earning 30,000 francs a year as a stockbroker, and as much again in his dealings in the art market. But in 1882 the Paris stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Gauguin's earnings deteriorated sharply and he eventually decided to pursue painting full-time.
Marriage
In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad. Over the next ten years, they had five children: Émile ; Aline ; Clovis ; Jean René ; and Paul Rollon. By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he pursued a business career as a tarpaulin salesman. It was not a success: He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins. Mette became the chief breadwinner, giving French lessons to trainee diplomats.His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin was driven to paint full-time. He returned to Paris in 1885, after his wife and her family asked him to leave because he had renounced the values they shared. Gauguin's last physical contact with them was in 1891, and Mette eventually broke with him decisively in 1894.
First paintings
In 1873, around the time he became a stockbroker, Gauguin began painting in his free time. His Parisian life centered on the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Gauguin lived at 15, rue la Bruyère. Nearby were the cafés frequented by the Impressionists. Gauguin also visited galleries frequently and purchased work by emerging artists. He formed a friendship with Camille Pissarro and visited him on Sundays to paint in his garden. Pissarro introduced him to various other artists. In 1877 Gauguin "moved downmarket and across the river to the poorer, newer, urban sprawls" of. Here, on the third floor at 8 rue Carcel, he had his first home with a studio.His close friend Émile Schuffenecker, a former stockbroker who also aspired to become an artist, lived close by. Gauguin showed paintings in Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882. His paintings received dismissive reviews, although several of them, such as The Market Gardens of Vaugirard, are now highly regarded.
In 1882, the stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' primary art dealer, was especially affected by the crash, and for a period of time stopped buying pictures from painters such as Gauguin. Gauguin's earnings contracted sharply, and over the next two years he slowly formulated his plans to become a full-time artist. The following two summers, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne.
In October 1883, he wrote to Pissarro saying that he had decided to make his living from painting at all costs and asked for his help, which Pissarro at first readily provided. The following January, Gauguin moved with his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply and where he thought he had discerned opportunities when visiting Pissarro there the previous summer. However, the venture proved unsuccessful, and by the end of the year Mette and the children moved to Copenhagen, Gauguin following shortly after in November 1884, bringing with him his art collection, which subsequently remained in Copenhagen.
Life in Copenhagen proved equally difficult, and their marriage grew strained. At Mette's urging, supported by her family, Gauguin returned to Paris the following year.
France 1885–1886
After a brief period in Italy, spent in the small towns of San Salvo and Ururi, Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, accompanied by his six-year-old son Clovis. The other children remained with Mette in Copenhagen, where they had the support of family and friends while Mette herself was able to get work as a translator and French teacher. Gauguin initially found it difficult to re-enter the art world in Paris and spent his first winter back in real poverty, obliged to take a series of menial jobs. Clovis eventually fell ill and was sent to a boarding school, Gauguin's sister Marie providing the funds. During this first year, Gauguin produced very little art. He exhibited 19 paintings and a wood relief at the eighth Impressionist exhibition in May 1886.Most of these paintings were earlier work from Rouen or Copenhagen and there was nothing really novel in the few new ones, although his Baigneuses à Dieppe introduced what was to become a recurring motif, the woman in the waves. Nevertheless, Félix Bracquemond did purchase one of his paintings. This exhibition also established Georges Seurat as leader of the avant-garde movement in Paris. Gauguin contemptuously rejected Seurat's Neo-Impressionist Pointillist technique and later in the year broke decisively with Pissarro, who from that point on was rather antagonistic towards Gauguin.
Gauguin spent the summer of 1886 in the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. He was attracted in the first place because it was cheap to live there. However, he found himself an unexpected success with the young art students who flocked there in the summer. His naturally pugilistic temperament was no impediment in the socially relaxed seaside resort. He was remembered during that period as much for his outlandish appearance as for his art. Amongst these new associates was Charles Laval, who would accompany Gauguin the following year to Panama and Martinique.
That summer, he executed some pastel drawings of nude figures in the manner of Pissarro and those by Degas exhibited at the 1886 eighth Impressionist exhibition. He mainly painted landscapes such as La Bergère Bretonne, in which the figure plays a subordinate role. His Jeunes Bretons au bain, introducing a theme he returned to each time he visited Pont-Aven, is clearly indebted to Degas in its design and bold use of pure colour. The naive drawings of the English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, used to illustrate a popular guide-book on Brittany, had caught the imagination of the avant-garde student artists at Pont-Aven, anxious to free themselves from the conservatism of their academies, and Gauguin consciously imitated them in his sketches of Breton girls. These sketches were later worked up into paintings back in his Paris studio. The most important of these is Four Breton Women, which shows a marked departure from his earlier Impressionist style as well as incorporating something of the naive quality of Caldecott's illustration, exaggerating features to the point of caricature.
Gauguin, along with Émile Bernard, Charles Laval, Émile Schuffenecker and many others, re-visited Pont-Aven after his travels in Panama and Martinique. The bold use of pure colour and Symbolist choice of subject matter distinguish what is now called the Pont-Aven School. Disappointed with Impressionism, Gauguin felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan. He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX.