From Wealthy Banker
to Poor Artist
Gauguin's early career was out of the
normal. He first worked as a sailor for the French
merchant fleet for six years. Then he turned to banking
and became a successful stock-broker at the Paris
stock-exchange.
In 1871 Paul Gauguin started to paint as
a hobby. He had seen an exhibition of
Impressionist paintings and was deeply impressed.
The passion for painting should dominate his life for
the good and for the bad. But he was still firmly rooted
in his bourgois life and he had a solid job as a banker.
In 1873 he married Mette Gad, a Danish from Copenhagn.
He had five children with her.
With his good income as a stockbroker,
Gauguin could afford to buy several paintings by Manet,
Claude Monet,
Auguste Renoir and other Impressionists. His own
artistic activities were restricted to painting over the
weekends. Later he attended evening classes at the
Colarossi Academy. He was assisted and influenced by
Pissarro and later by Paul Cezanne. In 1876 a landscape
painting by Gauguin was accepted for the Salon
d'Automne. He was now 28 years old.
In 1883/1984 Gauguin's life changed
dramatically. At the age of 35 Paul Gauguin gave up his
bourgois life as a stockbroker and moved from Paris to
Rouen. Financial difficulties of the company which
employed him, may have made this step easier. His wife
Mette, upset with her husbands plans, went back to her
parents in Denmark. In 1884 he visited her and the
children in Copenhagn but soon returned to France.
In 1885 Paul Gauguin separated from his
wife and left his 5 children. The last ties with a
bourgois life were cut off and from now on he led an
unsteady life as a painter and printmaker.
Panama and Martinique
Gauguin first went to Pont-Aven in
Brittany and joined a group of avant-garde artists for 6
months. Later he returned to Paris.
In 1887 he went to Panama to work for
the Panama canal project. But he was dismissed after
only two weeks. His next destination was Martinique. By
that time Gauguin had developed an antipathy against the
Western civilization. But he returned to Paris and Pont-Aven.
There he saw better chances of making a living as an
artist.
Painting with van Gogh
1988 was the year when Gauguin's
painting style made a distinctive turn into what should
become his trademark style - the use of bold,
unrealistic colors, large flat areas and the use of
mystic subjects. The painting The Yellow Christ
is typical for this period. The influence of
two-dimensional Japanese art is clearly visible.
Everything Japanese was very en vogue towards the
end of the nineteenth century and had an important
influence on impressionist and post-impressionist
painters.
Gauguin went to Arles in Southern France
where he stayed and worked with van Gogh for two months.
The two men first understood each other well. But soon
conflicts and quarrels became frequent. It culminated in
van Gogh's cutting of his own ear and his subsequent
mental and nervous breakdown. After the incident Gauguin
abruptly returned to Paris.
Tahiti
In 1891 Paul Gauguin could sell about
thirty paintings. One of his clients was
Edgar Degas. The money from these sales enabled him
to sail to Tahiti in the South Sea. He lived in Papeete
for two years in rather primitive conditions. During
this period the artist created some of his finest
paintings. He stayed in Tahiti for two years. In 1893 he
returned to France.
But in April 1894 he sailed back to the
South Sea. He spent his last five years in great poverty
and in bad health as the result of a venereal disease.
His financial situation was depressing. In 1897 he tried
to commit suicide. But he continued to paint until his
death in 1903 on the Marquesas Islands.
Three years after his death, in a
retrospective show of his works at the Salon
d'Automne the public finally recognized the
outstanding importance of Paul Gauguin for the
development of modern art. For him, it came too late.
Paul Gauguin Prints
With his predilection for "primitive"
and exotic art, Gauguin discovered woodcuts as an
interesting printmaking technique. After his return from
his first voyage to the South Sea, he planned to publish
a book, Noa Noa, about his experience in Tahiti.
The book was never published, but Gauguin made a set of
ten color woodcuts meant as illustrations.
After the Noa Noa set, Gauguin
created his largest woodblock Manao tupapau. Back
in the South Sea in Tahiti and from 1901 on the
Marquesas Islands, Gauguin produced some thirty more
woodcuts - mostly monotypes. |
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