(Eugène Henri) Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on June 7, 1848,
into a liberal middle-class family. After an adventurous early
life, including a four-year stay in Peru with his family (they
moved back to France after his father's death) and a stint in
the French merchant marine, he became a successful Parisian stockbroker,
settling into a comfortable bourgeois existence with his wife,
Mette Sofie Gad and five children.
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Madame Gauguin in Evening Dress
1884, National Gallery, Oslo |
In 1874, after meeting the artist Camille Pissarro and viewing
the first impressionist exhibition, he became a collector and
amateur painter. He exhibited with the impressionists in 1876,
1880, 1881, 1882, and 1886. In 1883 he gave up his secure existence
to devote himself to painting; his wife and children, without
adequate subsistence, were forced to return to her family in Denmark.
From 1886 to 1891 Gauguin lived mainly in rural Brittany (except
for a trip to Panama and Martinique from 1887 to 1888), where
he was the center of a small group of experimental painters known
as the school of Pont-Aven.
Under the influence of the painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin turned
away from impressionism and adapted a less naturalistic style,
which he called synthetism. He found his inspiration in the art
of indigenous peoples, in medieval stained glass, and in Japanese
prints; he was introduced to Japanese prints by the Dutch artist
Vincent van Gogh when they spent two months together in Arles,
in the south of France, in 1888. Gauguin's new style was characterized
by the use of large flat areas of nonnaturalistic color, as in
Yellow Christ (1889, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York).
In 1891, ruined and in debt, Gauguin sailed for the South Seas
to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial
and conventional." Except for one visit to France from 1893 to
1895, he remained in the Tropics for the rest of his life, first
in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands.
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Tahitian women on the beach
1891, Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
The essential characteristics of his style changed little in
the South Seas; he retained the qualities of expressive color,
denial of perspective, and thick, flat forms. Under the influence
of the tropical setting and Polynesian culture, however, Gauguin's
paintings became more powerful, while the subject matter became
more distinctive, the scale larger, and the compositions more
simplified. His subjects ranged from scenes of ordinary life,
such as Tahitian Women on the Beach (1891, Musée d'Orsay, Paris),
to brooding scenes of superstitious dread, such as Spirit of the
Deadwatching (1892, Albright-Knox Art Gallery).
His masterpiece was the monumental allegory Where Do We Come
From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897, Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston), which he painted shortly before his failed suicide attempt.
A modest stipend from a Parisian art dealer sustained him until
his death at Atuana in Marquesas on May 9, 1903.
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Where do we come from? What are we? Where
are we going?
(1897, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) |
Gauguin's bold experiments in coloring led directly to the 20th-century
Fauvist style in modern art. His strong modeling influenced the
Norwegian artist Edvard Munch and the later expressionist school.
