© Copyright 2005 Paul van Rensburg.
IMPRESSIONISM:
BIOGRAPHIES:
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM:
Paul Gauguin 1848-1903
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on 7 June, 1848, the son of Clovis Gauguin, a Republican editor, and his wife Aline Marie Chazal. The family emigrated to Peru in 1849 and Clovis Gauguin died on the way. His widow and 2 children, Paul and his elder sister Mari, stayed in Lima with their rich relatives and did not return to France until 1855.
On their return they settled with their uncle Isidore Gauguin in Orléans. In 1865, Paul became a sailor and spent the next three years voyaging between France and South America, and also made a voyage around the world. In 1868, Paul joined the navy, which he left after the Franco-Prussian War and started to work as a broker’s agent in Paris. The first known drawings by Gauguin dated 1871, when he was in his late twenties.
In 1873, Gauguin married a Dane, Mette Sophie Gad (1850-1920), who gave birth to his 5 children: Emile, Aline, Clovis, Jean René and Pola.
In the broker’s agency Gauguin met and befriended Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (1851-1934), who shared his interest in painting, and they both started to study painting at the Colarossi Academy, working together en plein-air and in the Louvre and meeting Pissaro and other Impressionists.
Trading at the stock exchange provided a comfortable income and Gauguin bought many of the Impressionists' paintings and had a handsome collection. Pissarro took a special interest in his attempts at painting, emphasizing that he should look for the nature that suited his temperament and, in 1876, Gauguin had a landscape in the style of Pissarro accepted at the Salon.
He also exhibited paintings and sculptures with Impressionists and the Indépendents in 1879, 1880 and 1882. His works of this period are close to Impressionism as he was greatly influenced by Pissaro, who gave his advice generously, and later by Cezanne. However, Gauguin gradually broke away from Impressionism. Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic Édouard Dujardin in response to Emile Bernard's cloisonne enamelling technique.
Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in his art. In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour, thus dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards "Synthetism" in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role. This development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. Both Gauguin and Emile Bernard are regarded as the founders of this new style of “synthetic symbolism”.
IMPRESSIONISM:
BIOGRAPHIES:
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM:
In 1883, Gauguin quit the stock exchange to dedicate himself to his art full-time, but he soon found that he could no longer provide for his family. In 1885, he left his family in Copenhagen with his parents-in-law, and returned to Paris to paint and once again be surrounded by like-minded artists. From 1886 and 1888, he worked in Brittany and executed some of his most expressive works, such as "Vision after the Sermon; Jacob Wrestling with the Angel" (1888) and “The Yellow Christ (1889).
In 1895 Gauguin left for Tahiti a second time. Although glad to be back in the tropics and painting again he was plagued by illness. His health deteriorated through the effects of alcohol, syphilis, depression and financial worries which led in 1898 to an attempted suicide. Throughout it all Gauguin still continued painting numerous masterpieces.
In 1900, after signing a contract with the Parisian art dealer Vollard, his financial position improved, but his health was irreparably ruined. In 1901 he moved from Tahiti to Atuana on the beautiful Island of Dominique in the Marquesas, where he built a cabin he called the House of Joy. His works of this period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia. In Polynesia he clashed often with the colonial authorities and with the Catholic Church. During this period he also wrote the book Avant et Après (before and after), that is a fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, memories from his life and comments on literature and paintings.
His paintings flourished during this time while his colours grew even more luxurious and he produced such pink and mauve paintings as "Horsemen on the Beach" (1902) and "The Call" (1902).
In October-December 1888, following the persistent suggestions of his art-dealer, Theo van Gogh, Gauguin visited with his brother, Vincent van Gogh, in Arles. His stay with the sick and tortured van Gogh was very turbulent, and though they painted together daily and found solace in one another, Gauguin found himself disliking and even despising his roommate at times. With little food at times and no money things came to a head when Vincent lashed out at Gauguin and then cut off his own ear. Gauguin simply packed and left while Vincent recuperated and they never saw one another again. After this episode, Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through colour.
In 1889 he stopped working exclusively out-of-doors, as Pissarro had taught him, and generally began to adopt a more independent line. His meeting with van Gogh, the influence of Seurat, the doctrines of Signac, and a rediscovery of the merits of Degas, especially in his pastels, all combined with his own streak of megalomania to produce a style that had little in common with the work of his mentor Pissarro. There were still evident in these new works traces of pure Impressionism, and of the very clear influence of Cézanne, but basically this period marked the parting of the ways between Gauguin and Impressionism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.lilithgallery.com/arthistory/postimpressionism/images/1893-94-PaulGauguin
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gauguin/
http://www.abcgallery.com/G/gauguin/gauguinbio.html
http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/gauguin/gauguin_bio.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin
Gauguin continued struggling and painting until he managed, in 1891, to organize a trip to Tahiti at the expense of the French government. There he acquired a native hut in the Mataiea district and continued to paint uninterrupted in the warm climate for two years before he fell seriously ill, still managing, however, to paint and send pieces back to Paris where he did not return until 1893.
In 1903, just as it looked like things were improving Gauguin was sentenced to three-months in prison and fined 1,000 francs because of problems with the church and the colonial administration. Before he could begin his sentence however, he died alone, surrounded by his work at his home in Atuana. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.
Besides legitimate children Gauguin also had several illegitimate ones. A daughter Germaine Chardon, herself an artist, was born on 13 August 1891, from Juliette Huais, who was Gauguin’s model and lover in 1890. A son Emile was born in 1899 from Tahitian Pau’ura and another daughter was born on 14 September 1902, by Tahitian Mari-Rose Vaa’oho.
