The French painter Paul Gauguin {goh-gan'},
b. June 7, 1848, d. May 8, 1903, was one of the leading figures in postimpressionist art of
the 1880s and '90s (see postimpressionism). Both his
personality and his principles of coloring and composition exerted a strong influence on
modern painting.
Gauguin spent 4 years of his childhood with
his mother in Peru -- an experience of the tropics that he never forgot -- and returned to
France in 1855. In 1865 he joined the merchant navy and made several long sea voyages.
"Tahitian Women"
by Paul Gauguin
Gauguin obtained a position with a stock brokerage firm in 1871 and married a Dane, Mette Gad, in
1873, with whom he had five children. During this period he was essentially a "Sunday" painter,
pursuing his art on weekends and in the summer, but in 1875 he met Camille Pissarro and began to
work with him to improve his drawing and painting. The financial crash of 1882-83 left him without
work and prompted his decision to become a full-time artist. Successive moves -- to Rouen in 1883
and to Copenhagen in 1884 -- brought Gauguin no commercial or critical success. Finally he abandoned
his wife and family in Denmark and returned to France accompanied only by his son Clovis.
Prior to this time Gauguin's painting displayed the
marks of his gradual assimilation of the principles and techniques of impressionism. Now he began
experimenting with ceramics and sculpture, moving rapidly toward a firmness of composition and a concern
for rhythm and mass in painting. In 1887 he went to Panama and Martinique but was forced home by illness
and lack of funds. In 1888, Gauguin returned to Brittany, which he had first visited in 1886.
"A Farm In Brittany"
by Paul Gauguin
Metropolitan Museum of Art
BUY GAUGUIN PRINTS
There he painted Vision After the Sermon (1888; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), in
which Breton women returning from church see a vision of the biblical struggle between Jacob and the
angel, about which the priest has just preached. The use of bold color and strongly defined forms,
together with a subject that combines the visionary and the real in one composition, marked a decisive
breakthrough for Gauguin. After spending a few months at Arles with
Vincent van Gogh at the end of 1888, Gauguin passed the next few years in Brittany, where he continued
to paint the local people and their way of life and simple faith, and in Paris, where he established contact
with the leading writers and theorists of the symbolist movement. Although Gauguin called the style he
developed in 1888 synthetism, he now instilled into his work qualities of mystery and suggestiveness that
may be compared with symbolism in literature.
Early in 1891, Gauguin left for Tahiti, where he began
a series of paintings that depict the physical beauty of the people and the myths underlying their
traditional religion. The series evokes the Tahitian cycle of existence from birth through maturity to
old age and death. Gauguin visited France for the last time in 1893-95, then returned to Tahiti. Plagued
increasingly by ill health and poverty, he attempted suicide in 1898 after completing, by way of a last
testament to his vision of Tahiti, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
(1897-98; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). The paintings of his final years project an idealized vision of
native life, removed from both time and actuality in its conception of the physical and spiritual
dimensions of Tahitian culture. His last journey was to La Dominique in the Marquesas, where he died.
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