Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin [øʒˌɛn ɑ̃ˌʁi ˌpol ɡoˈɡɛ̃] (b. June 7, 1848 in Paris; † May 8, 1903 in Atuona on Hiva Oa, French Polynesia) was an influential French painter. He also produced ceramics, woodcarvings, and woodcuts. He was best known for his paintings of the South Seas. Gauguin's Post-Impressionist work strongly influenced the Nabis and Symbolism; he was a co-founder of Synthetism and became a pioneer of Expressionism. Thus, he played an important role in the development of European painting.
Paul Gauguin's Biography
Childhood and youth
Gauguin's father Clovis Gauguin (1814-1851) was a liberal journalist; his mother was Aline Marie Chazal (1825-1867), the daughter of the socialist writer Flora Tristan, a Frenchwoman with Peruvian roots. Soon after the birth of his son, his father was forced to leave France for political reasons in the course of the February Revolution of 1848.
In 1850, the family embarked for Peru, where Gauguin's mother had influential relatives and where the father planned to start a newspaper. However, he died of a heart attack on the crossing. In the years that followed, his wife and their two children - Paul and his older sister - lived with their uncle in Lima. After civil war broke out in Peru in 1853, the family returned to France.
Gauguin attended a boarding school near Orléans, the Petit Séminaire de la Chapelle-St-Mesmin. His teachers there included Bishop Félix Dupanloup, who instructed him in Catholic liturgy and philosophy.
In the meantime, he lived for a few months with his mother, who had opened a tailor's shop in Paris; Gauguin attended a naval school there. At the age of 17, his "whim to escape," as he himself put it, led him to pursue a career as a sailor.
In 1865 he joined the merchant navy as an officer candidate, later switching to the navy. In this way he came, among other places, to South America, to India and crossed the Arctic Circle on a voyage of exploration. In 1867, Gauguin was on a great voyage, when his mother died. She had appointed a family friend, Gustave Arosa, as Paul's guardian. In 1871, Gauguin ended his career as a sailor.
Bourgeois career
In 1872, through the intercession of Gustave Arosa, Gauguin took a job in a bank. Surprisingly easily he found his way into the new situation. He earned well as a stockbroker, also speculated successfully on his own account, and was soon able to afford a luxurious lifestyle. In 1873 he married the Dane Mette-Sophie Gad, with whom he later had five children.
The guardian Gustave Arosa was not only a businessman, he was also an art lover and collector. In his house, Gauguin became acquainted with works by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet and Camille Corot, among others. Inspired by this, Gauguin took lessons and began to paint himself in his spare time.
In 1876 he succeeded for the first (and only) time in exhibiting a painting at the Paris Salon: Sous-bois à Viroflay, a landscape in the typical painting style of the Barbizon school. In 1879 he was invited to participate in the fourth group exhibition of the Impressionists.
In the same year he visited the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro at his country estate to paint outdoors under his guidance. Gauguin also participated in four other so-called Impressionist exhibitions. He made the acquaintance of numerous Impressionist artists, including Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Édouard Manet, and began to collect their works.
Decision for painting
In 1882, Gauguin lost his job as a result of a stock market crash and took this as an opportunity to give up the banking profession altogether. Against his wife's resistance, he decided from then on to paint only and thus earn a living for the family.
Gauguin had expected that he would quickly establish himself with his painting, but was only able to finance a modest living with it in the last years of his life. His moodiness and quarrelsomeness did not help him to get ahead.
From now on, his life was marked by perpetual financial worries. Apart from the sale of paintings, he lived on donations from his acquaintances, on unskilled labor, and temporarily also on a small inheritance.
In 1884 the family moved to Rouen in Normandy because the standard of living was lower there, but just a few months later the wife and children returned to their family in Copenhagen. Towards the end of the year, Gauguin also traveled there; his plan to establish himself there as a representative of a canvas company failed.
After an unsuccessful exhibition of his works and heated arguments with Mette's family, he finally returned to Paris, where he led an itinerant life from that point on. Despite their separation, the couple remained in correspondence until shortly before Gauguin's death.
Paul Gauguin in Brittany, the Caribbean and Arles
In 1886, he went to Pont-Aven for three months. The Brittany fishing village was a popular artists' meeting place, later called the School of Pont-Aven. Gauguin's work met with the approval of fellow painters. "I work here a lot and with success," he wrote to his wife. "I am respected here as the strongest painter, yet it does not bring me a single sou more [...]
I live on credit, and money worries make me despondent altogether." Back in Paris, he began making ceramics with a potter. The imaginatively decorated vessels reflected the influence of pre-Columbian ceramics, which Gauguin had known since his childhood in Peru.
However, the hoped-for financial success failed to materialize here as well. Towards the end of the year, through the Paris art dealer Theo van Gogh, he met his brother Vincent van Gogh.
One of the reasons for Gauguin's stay in Brittany was his search for a simple, original life. In 1887, this search took him further afield: together with his artist friend Charles Laval, he embarked for Panama in April. I am going to Panama to live like a savage," he wrote to Mette Gauguin in early April 1887.
The reality, however, proved disappointing. Gauguin's financial difficulties came to such a head that he was forced to hire himself out as a laborer in the construction of the Panama Canal. In June, the two painters traveled on to another supposed paradise: " a beautiful country with an easy and cheap life - that is Martinique," Gauguin wrote to his friend Émile Schuffenecker.
At first, Gauguin was delighted by the lush nature of Martinique. However, he soon fell seriously ill with dysentery and malaria, so that he had to return to France in November, where he recovered only slowly. Despite all the difficulties, the stay was successful in artistic terms; Gauguin brought home more than twenty paintings.
For the next three years, Gauguin commuted between Paris and Brittany. There he became the focus of a small group of artists, some of whom would later become known as the Nabis. Together with Émile Bernard, he developed a new style, Synthetism.
In October 1888, Gauguin accepted a proposal from Vincent van Gogh to live and work with him in Arles in southern France. The relationship, fraught with conflict, ended two months later with the incident, never fully resolved, of van Gogh cutting off a piece of his ear after an argument.
Gauguin escaped the situation, which he found unbearable, to Paris. From February 1890 he taught for a few months at the Académie Vitti.
First stay in Polynesia
From the late 1880s, Gauguin had toyed with the idea of living and painting in the tropics. At first he wavered between the islands of Madagascar and Tahiti, but finally decided on the latter. In Gauguin's mind, Tahiti was an exotic paradise where, without having to work, he would be able to live a pristine, happy, and nearly cost-free life.
The "happy inhabitants of an unnoticed paradise in Oceania know nothing of life but its sweetness. For them, life is singing and loving," he wrote to the Danish painter Jens-Ferdinand Willumsen in late 1890.
A fairly successful auction of his paintings raised the cost of the trip, and in April 1891 Gauguin embarked for Tahiti. Once there, he found that reality did not match his expectations in any way. Christianization, trade and colonial rule (Tahiti was French since 1880 colony) had destroyed the "exotic paradise," if it had ever existed.
In the capital Papeete, the native population lived in poor corrugated iron huts, Western clothing had replaced the traditional costume, and religion and traditions had been suppressed by the missionaries. The way of life of the white upper class hardly differed from that in the motherland.
Fleeing European civilization, Gauguin rented a hut in the village of Mataiea, 40 km from Papeete. He learned - with moderate success - the local language. Soon he was living with the 13-year-old Tahitian girl Téha'amana (also called: Tehura), who often served him as a model.
He created numerous paintings with Tahitian motifs. However, they do not reflect the Tahiti that surrounded Gauguin, but rather the colorful, exotic world he had dreamed of.
During this stay, Gauguin began work on his book Noa Noa (Scent). This description of his life in Tahiti mixes the experienced with the invented; it was also his intention to use the book to awaken an understanding of his art among the European public. Noa Noa, which Gauguin illustrated himself, appeared in 1897.
In early 1892, Gauguin spat blood and was admitted to the Papeete hospital, but he soon left for lack of money. The health problems were compounded by financial ones. The money he had brought with him was exhausted, and under the pressure of circumstances Gauguin decided to return to France.
He also hoped that the 66 paintings he had made in Tahiti would finally bring him a breakthrough as a celebrated artist. By August 1893, he was back in Paris; the French government paid for his travel expenses.
Soon after Gauguin's return, an exhibition of his paintings was held. It was highly praised by the artist's friends and by a group of writers, but again met with incomprehension and ridicule from the wider public.
In 1894, an inheritance enabled Gauguin to rent a larger studio, which he decorated exotically and where he lived with a woman of mixed ethnic origin. That same year, he broke an ankle in a brawl in Brittany.
The injury never fully healed. Back in Paris, he found that his mistress had cleaned out his studio - except for the paintings - and disappeared. Further failures followed, and at the end of 1894, disappointed and embittered, Gauguin decided to turn his back on the civilized world for good and return to Tahiti.
Paul Gauguin's Second stay in Polynesia and death
In September 1895, Gauguin arrived back in Papeete. Disappointed, he found that the Europeanization of the island had progressed in the meantime. With the help of his neighbors, he built a traditional hut on the coast near Papeete and again lived with a young girl, Pau'ura a Tai. She gave birth to a daughter in late 1896, who died soon after. When she returned to her parents in 1899, she gave birth to a son, Emile.
Soon after their arrival, Gauguin's health deteriorated. The pain in his leg was joined by a skin rash resulting from syphilis. The financial situation was also worrisome, as promised remittances from France failed to materialize. Gauguin lived on water and rice; he was desperate.
In early 1897, he received proceeds from the sale of paintings in Europe, which provided a temporary financial boost; however, his health continued to deteriorate. He was now also suffering from heart trouble and a chronic inflammation of the eyes. The news of the death of his daughter Aline, who had died of pneumonia in Copenhagen, further increased his melancholy.
After a heart attack at the end of the year, Gauguin mustered all his strength and within four weeks painted the 139 × 375 cm picture Where Do We Come From? Who are we? Where are we going? which has a testamentary character. He then attempted suicide with arsenic, the consequences of which he suffered for weeks. His health remained poor; several times in the following years he was forced to seek hospital treatment.
In 1898, lack of money forced him to temporarily stop painting and take a low-paid job as a draftsman at the building office in Papeete; in 1899, he became a contributor to the satirical magazine Les Guèpes (The Wasps); later, he founded his own magazine Le Sourire (The Smile).
He used both publications to campaign against colonial administration officials and missionaries, whom he accused of hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the art world in Europe gradually began to take notice of Gauguin's work.
In 1900, for example, he was able to sign a contract with Ambroise Vollard, one of the most influential art dealers of his time, which secured him a modest but regular income. Thus, for the first time, the artist was able to live off the proceeds of his painting.
Gauguin felt increasingly uncomfortable on Tahiti. The island seemed to him too much influenced by Europe, life there had become too expensive, he was also looking for new impressions and inspiration for his painting. In the fall of 1901, he moved to Atuona, the main town of the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa.
The island, about 1400 kilometers (as the crow flies Papeete-Atuona 1428 km) from Tahiti, was also part of the French colonial empire, but had preserved its originality more.
On Hiva Oa, Gauguin again built a hut. Again, a 14-year-old girl was both his companion and model: Marie-Rose Vaeoho. After she separated from him, she gave birth to a daughter of his, Tahiatikaomata, in 1902. Gauguin again championed the rights and interests of the native population and sharply attacked the Catholic Church.
His provocative and hurtful behavior soon brought him back into conflict with the authorities. The constant disputes finally culminated in the artist being sentenced to imprisonment for libel and a fine that far exceeded his financial means. Gauguin had become bedridden by then and was fighting his pain with morphine. Before he could take further legal action, he died at the age of 54 on May 8, 1903. He is buried on Hiva Oa.
Paul Gauguin's Work
Beginning as an Impressionist
Before he found his own way, Gauguin's painting was guided by models provided by his surroundings. He painted in the style of Impressionism, the most progressive style of painting at the time, to which his painter friends and his teacher Camille Pissarro were also committed.
His paintings of this period show the characteristic features of this style, for example the blurring of forms and the technique of placing different pure colors close together with many small brushstrokes, so that they appear to the viewer as mixed colors only from a certain distance.
His preferred subject, as with many Impressionists, was the landscape; the only nude painting Gauguin did during this period, Suzanne Sewing, reveals as a model the painter Edgar Degas, whom he admired.
New forms of expression
In 1888, after his trip to the Caribbean, Gauguin began to develop a new, independent style of painting. The discussions with his artist friends in Pont-Aven and with the works of Vincent van Gogh gave him important impulses. By the beginning of 1891, this process was complete.
Gauguin had now found his own pictorial language, which he retained, varied in many ways, until the end of his life. In literature, this style is sometimes referred to as Post-Impressionism, then again as Synthetism, also as Symbolism or Primitivism.
Regardless of such classifications, it can basically be said that Gauguin's concern was to return to simple, original forms in his painting. By returning to the art of ancient cultures, he hoped to rejuvenate and renew painting. In 1897, Gauguin, who liked to call himself a "savage," wrote to his friend Daniel de Monfreid: "Always keep in mind the Persians, the Cambodians, and a little of the Egyptians!"
Gauguin turned away from the goal, pursued in painting for centuries, of creating an illusion of reality. His paintings were not meant to reflect visible reality, but to be expressions of feelings and thoughts (this is the basic idea of Synthetism and Symbolism; Gauguin called himself a Synthetist and a Symbolist).
He clarified his aspirations in a letter to his friend Schuffenecker on August 14, 1888: "Do not paint too much after nature. The work of art is an abstraction. Draw it out of nature by musing and dreaming before it."
Painting style of Paul Gauguin
In order to increase the impact of his paintings, Gauguin resorted to the means of simplification. His artistic measures can be readily observed, for example, in the painting Tang Gatherers (II), painted in Brittany in 1889: Gauguin reduced and simplified the forms of people and things.
He no longer blurred the forms, as he had done in his Impressionist phase, but clearly delineated them in their different colors. Often a darker border line further emphasizes the forms (Cloisonism).
Gauguin also simplified the variety of colors that arise in nature through the effects of light and shadow by combining them into uniform areas. At the same time, the colorfulness in the painting is not necessarily based on the natural appearance of the objects depicted.
The pink beach, the turquoise-green sea, the yellow dog obey laws determined by the color composition within the painting.
Typical for Gauguin, especially for his paintings from the South Seas, is the use of extraordinarily bright colors, often set against each other in complementary contrasts, without making the paintings seem shouty or disharmonious. "It is incredible how one can wrap so much mystery in such luminous colors," the poet Stéphane Mallarmé is said to have once said in front of Gauguin's paintings.
While Gauguin greatly reduced the modeling of bodies through body shadows, he usually dispensed with drop shadows altogether so as not to disrupt the cohesiveness of the composition. Even under a tropical sun, Gauguin's people and things therefore present themselves without shadows.
Likewise, in the interest of pictorial composition, he disregarded the rules of perspective. The four female tang collectors approaching from the left in the painting of the same name do not form a common line of flight (the second person is too tall, the two behind too small).
At the right edge of the picture, the leg of a horse can be seen, which - assuming correct perspective - would have to be huge.
Now and then Gauguin designed parts of the surroundings of his figures with mere "patterns" or ornaments, for example the upper left corner of the painting How? You're Jealous? from 1892, but he never took the step toward complete abstraction; these areas of the picture always allow associations with real things (water, beach).
All of the above measures together produce the strong flatness of Gauguin's paintings (i.e., the virtual absence of a spatial impression) and create their distinctly decorative effect.
Paul Gauguin Adaptations
Gauguin's painting was open to influences from a wide variety of directions - from contemporary paintings, but above all from the art of vanished or exotic cultures. Now and then he adopted foreign pictorial solutions directly into his own works; in such cases, his extensive collection of reproductions of works of art and art postcards, which he also took with him on his travels to the South Seas, served as models.
For example, the posture of the adoring women in la Orana Maria (Hail Mary) (1891) can be traced back to figures in the wall reliefs of the temple complex of Borobudur/Java. The women in The Market (1892), on the other hand, sitting as if lined up in a row, strictly rendered in profile, have their model in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings (cf. Painter of the Nefferronpet Tomb: Ladies at a Banquet).
Themes
Gauguin's quest for a simple, primitive, and unspoiled life is reflected in his choice of subjects. Although he spent much of his life in Paris, he painted urban subjects very rarely, apparently only once after 1888 (The Snowy Paris, 1894). He preferred rural Brittany, its landscape and its people, and later the world of the tropics, which he considered pristine.
Gauguin is best known for his paintings with motifs of the South Seas. With their bright colors, the lush plant life, the idle, colorful and lightly dressed people, they do not reflect reality, but the exotic paradise that the painter had dreamed of, but had sought in vain in reality. Paradise includes the "Eve", who usually bears the features of Gauguin's respective partner.
Although often lightly or unclothed, these female figures do not actually appear seductive. Here Gauguin's idea of the paradisiacal primordial state is reflected, to which nudity and sexuality are natural. "The purity at the sight of the naked and the unconstrained intercourse of the sexes: the ignorance of vice among savages" is his comment on this in Noa Noa.
A whole series of paintings attests to Gauguin's engagement with themes of religion and theosophy, including The Vision after the Sermon or Jacob's Struggle with the Angel (1888), The Spirit of the Dead Watches (1892), Son of God (1896), Where Do We Come From? Who are we? Where are we going? (1897).
This was in keeping with the spirit of the times; even on some of Gauguin's friends among the Nabis " the mystical and religious ideas of Theosophy and esoteric science had great influence." In Tahiti, the painter tried to find out more about the myths of the people - in vain, because the oral tradition had broken off and there had never been a written language.
As a sign of his preoccupation with the legends of the South Seas, in several paintings (The Spirit of the Dead Watches, Son of God) there is a small dark-skinned being dressed in black, which can be interpreted as the 'Spirit of the Dead'.
Hail Mary and Son of God take up motifs from the Bible, though Gauguin was not afraid to set the biblical events in a tropical setting. It was certainly his intention to counter the official church, which he fiercely opposed, with the image of a pure, uncorrupted Christianity.
Ceramics and woodcarvings
In the winter of 1886/87, which he spent in Paris, Paul Gauguin - guided by a ceramist friend - made sculptures and vessels out of clay. Among other things, he was inspired by old American head vessels, which he had become acquainted with as a child in Peru. He thus turned for the first time to the works of art of other cultures that would later influence him so strongly.
During his stays in the South Seas, Gauguin turned to woodcarving. He created wood reliefs and sculptures in which elements of the local carving art are taken up. Many of the sculptures, representing "idols", have the appearance of magical objects.
Reception of Paul Gauguin
Art market
Soon after Gauguin's death, collectors - at first isolated - began to take an interest in his work. This was due in no small part to the "Gauguin myth" that he himself, his art dealer, and friends had built up in the preceding years. Thus, Daniel de Monfreid was able to write to the artist, who was eager to return home, to Hiva Oa in 1902: "At present, you are this unheard-of, legendary artist who sends his disturbing, inimitable works from faraway Oceania.
You must not come back! In short, you enjoy the sanctity of the great dead, you have entered art history." The growing acceptance was reflected in the sums paid for Gauguin's paintings. While the price in the late 1890s was still a modest 150 to 500 francs, by 1904 it was 3000 francs and continued to rise inexorably.
In 1957, 104 million (old) francs were paid for Still Life with Apples and Flowers (1901), and in 1980, $2.9 million for The Beach at Pouldu. Today, Gauguin is among the most highly traded artists. A price record was set in 2006 for The Man with the Axe (1891), which changed hands for $45.7 million.
The record was surpassed in 2015: The painting Nafea faa ipoipo (1892) reportedly reached a record price of around $300 million and was sold to Qatar. However, the price and buyer were neither confirmed nor denied by Ruedi Staechelin, grandson of collector Rudolf Staechelin. Prior to the sale, the painting hung in the Kunstmuseum Basel as a loan from the Rudolf Staechelin'sche Familienstiftung.
Paul Gauguin's Successor
A large number of contemporary and subsequent painters drew inspiration from Gauguin's work for their own creations. By turning away from the imitation of visible reality, he pointed a way that ultimately led to abstraction, which is why he is sometimes referred to, along with Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, as one of the 'fathers of modernism'.
The painters of the artist group 'Les Nabis' explicitly referred to Gauguin as a teacher and admired model. They adopted from him the principles of synthetism, flatness and decorative pictorial effect. Henri Matisse and other Fauvists took their cue from his pictorial composition through color planes and his luminous colorfulness.
The German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker became acquainted with paintings by Paul Gauguin during one of her trips to Paris in 1906 and for some time adopted not only his luminous colorfulness but also tropical-like motifs in her own work.
A few years later, Gauguin's paintings had in the meantime become known in Germany - especially through the collector Karl Ernst Osthaus - and the German Expressionists received important impulses from him. The painters of the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter not only took up his simplification of form and subjective colorfulness, many of them, like Gauguin, looked to the art of 'primitive' cultures for models for a renewal of their own painting.
In an art exhibition planned by the British painter and art critic Roger Fry and shown from November 1910 in the London Grafton Galleries, Manet and the Post-Impressionists, Gauguin was represented as the front-runner with 46 works. Along with Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, he was one of the most important artists in the exhibition, which had set out to replace Impressionism. Fry coined the art term Post-Impressionism with the name of the exhibition.
Paul Gauguin in Fiction
Since Gauguin's adventurous life resembled a novel in many respects, fiction adaptations were not lacking. In 1919, W. Somerset Maugham wrote the novel The Moon and Sixpence, about a stockbroker who leaves his family to devote himself entirely to painting and eventually dies in Tahiti.
In 2003, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa published Paradise is Elsewhere, a dual literary biography of French socialist and women's rights activist Flora Tristan and her grandson Paul Gauguin. Some episodes of Gauguin's life and especially his friendship with Vincent van Gogh are dealt with in the novel Unconditionally.
Van Gogh and Gauguin in the Yellow House by Jürgen Volk. In 2013, Christophe Gaultier and Maximilien Le Roy published a graphic novel about Gauguin.
Paul Gauguin in Films (selection)
- Vincent van Gogh - A Life of Passion. (OT: Lust for life.) Feature film, USA, 1956, with Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh and Anthony Quinn (Oscar for Quinn) as Gauguin.
- Rebel in Paradise. Documentary, USA, 1960, directed by Ralph Luce, Oscar nomination for best documentary 1961.
- Eyes of the Wolf. (OT: Oviri / Gauguin, le loup dans le soleil.), feature film, Denmark, France, 1985/1986, 87 min., directed by Henning Carlsen, with Donald Sutherland as Gauguin and Max von Sydow as August Strindberg, among others.
- Paradise Found. (Eng: Paradise - The Passions of Paul Gauguin.) Feature film, Australia, 2003, 89 min., directed by Mario Andreacchio, with Kiefer Sutherland as Paul Gauguin and Nastassja Kinski as Mette Gauguin, among others.
- OT: Gauguin - Voyage de Tahiti. (Eng: Gauguin.) Feature film, France, 2017, 101 min, written and directed by Édouard Deluc; starring Vincent Cassel as Paul Gauguin and Tuheï Adams as Tehura.
- Gauguin - "I Am a Savage." (OT: Gauguin - "Je suis un sauvage.") Documentary with computer animation, France, 2017, 52 min, written and directed by Marie Christine Courtès, production: arte France, Nord-Ouest Documentaires, Rmn - Grand Palais, Musée d'Orsay, first broadcast: 29 Octobear 2017 on arte, synopsis by ARD, online video by arte.
Paul Gauguin in Exhibitions (selection)
- 2010/2011: Gauguin. Tate Modern, London, September 30, 2010-January 16, 2011.
- 2015: Paul Gauguin. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, February 8, 2015 - June 28, 2015.
- 2017/2018: Gauguin l'alchimiste. Grand Palais, Paris, October 11, 2017 - January 22, 2018.
- 2018/2019: Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin: Czech Artists in Brittany 1850-1950. National Gallery Prague, Palais Kinsky, November 16, 2018 - March 17, 2019.
- 2022: Paul Gaugin - Why Are You Angry? Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, March 26, 2022-July 10, 2022.
Eponyme
In 1999, the asteroid (10136) Gauguin was named after him.