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Paul Gauguin, artist
French, 1848 - 1903
Le Sourire, circa 1897 - 1901
illustrated newspaper, Edison process, with PGO woodcut stamp top recto
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts purchase 1984.1.72v

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Artist Biography: (EugËne-Henri-) Paul Gauguin. A leading French painter of the Postimpressionist period. His development of a conceptual method of representation was an important development in the history of 20th-century art. After spending a short time with Vincent van Gogh in Arles (1888), he increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through color. From 1891 on, he lived and worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. ~~Father was journalist from OrlÈans. Mother was half French, half Peruvian Creole. After Napoleon III's coup d'Ètat, the Gauguins moved to Lima (1851). Four years later Paul and his mother returned to OrlÈans. At 17~he went to sea for six years, sailing all over the world. In 1871 he joined the stockbroking firm of Bertin in Paris and in 1873 married a young Danish woman, Mette Sophie Gad. He first started painting with a fellow stockbroker, …mile Schuffenecker. Gauguin started going to a studio to draw from models and receive art lessons. In 1876 his "Landscape at Viroflay" was accepted into the Salon. He acquired a taste for Impressionism and between the years 1876 and 1881 he assembled an impressive collection of paintings by …douard Manet, Paul CÈzanne, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Johan Barthold Jongkind. ~~Gauguin first met Pissarro in 1875-76 and started working with him, in an attempt to master the techniques of drawing and painting. In 1880 he was invited to enter the fifth Impressionist exhibition, and this invitation was repeated in the years 1881 and 1882. Gauguin spent his holidays painting with Pissarro and CÈzanne and made visible progress. Thus he was more and more absorbed by painting. In 1883 the Paris stock exchange crashed~and Gauguin lost his job, so he decided "to paint every day." This decision altered the course of his life. He had a wife and four children, no income and no patrons. In 1884 Gauguin moved his family to Copenhagen, where~his wife's parents proved unsympathetic. His marriage broke up. Gauguin went back to Paris in 1885, determined to pursue an artistic vocation, regardless of any sacrifice. From that point forward he lived in constant discomfort. His health was undermined by hardship and he became an outcast from Parisian society. Gauguin eventually came to despise Europe and civilization. ~~In 1886 Gauguin began to recognize the expressive possibilities of color through the work of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. He began to explore this aspect of painting at Pont-Aven, Brittany. Gauguin then had two pivotal experiences: he met with van Gogh in Paris (1886) and he took a trip to Martinique (1887). Van Gogh had a passionate personality and similar pictorial ideas. He tried to involve Gauguin in working them out cooperatively. However, this attempt came to a disastrous end after a few weeks in Arles in 1888. In Marinique Gauguin discovered the brilliant colors and lush textures of the tropical landscape and experienced the charm of a "primitive" community living the "natural" life. Gauguin sought an emotional release through painting, and began to react against Impressionism. ~~Gauguin set out to find "a reasoned and frank return to the beginning, that is to say to primitive art." Emile Bernard, a young artist acquainted with stained glass, manuscripts, and folk art, suggested to Gauguin a possible method for arriving at a new form of pictorial representation. He pointed out that in certain forms of art, reality is often depicted in nonimitative terms and that a picture is made up of areas of pure color separated by heavy black outlines. This is the origin of a style known as Cloisonnism, or Synthetism.~~In breaking with Impressionism, Gauguin gave up using line and color to~trick the eye into accepting the flat painted image as a re-creation of an actual scene. Instead he explored the capacity of line and color to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. His forms became ideated and his colors became suggestive abstractions. ~~Gauguin's work represents a protest against the soul-destroying materialism of bourgeois civilization. So Gauguin isolated himself in Brittany (Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu, 1889-90, 1894), Tahiti (1891-93, 1895-1901), and the Marquesas Islands (1901-03), where he could live among, and paint "natural" men and women. ~~From 1899 forward, Gauguin became increasingly ill and was in constant pain. He was also involved in frequent conflict local governments for siding with the natives against them. Nevertheless his final works still embody serenity and hope. ~~By 1889-90 a group of young admirers had gathered around Gauguin at Pont-Aven, including SÈrusier, Charles Filiger, and Maurice Denis, who transmitted Gauguin's ideas to …douard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. Edvard Munch owed much to Gauguin, as did the Fauvists -- Henri Matisse in particular -- who was influenced by Gauguin's use of color. Gauguin's "primitivism" and stylistic simplifications profoundly influenced the young Pablo Picasso and led his appreciation of African art (and hence to the evolution of Cubism). ~~Gauguin was unique for his ability to hold a balance between idea, perception, and visual image. The works make their effect visually, not as a result of any literary overtones. A great stylistic innovator, his influence was wide and long-ranging.~~Reference: GuÈrin, Marcel. L'oeuvre gravÈ de Gauguin (Paris: H. Floury, 1927)~Mongan, Elizabeth, Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Harold Joachim. Paul Gauguin, Catalogue raisonnÈ of his Printrs.(Bern: Galerie Kornfeld, 1988)~

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Sourire Le purchase Arts Graphic Achenbach Europe France Print recto top stamp woodcut PGO process Edison newspaper illustrated Paul Gauguin French 6318303131350069 A067390 1984.1.72v AFGA