PAUL GAUGUIN

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PAUL GAUGUINS ISLAND SCENES
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Paul Gauguin Biography

Born 1848 Died 1903 Gender Male Nationality French"I am a great artist and I know it. It is because I am that I have endured such suffering." Paul Gauguin.
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Paul Gauguin was born in the Paris at the height
of the 1848 Revolution. His childhood was spent
in Lima but in 1865 joined the merchant marines
for two years followed by three years with the
French Navy. In 1871 he joined the stock exchange
and painted in his spare time. He collected works
by artists such as Manet, Monet and Cezanne which
he studied intently. It was Camille Pissarro who
was his greatest influence and in 1883 Gauguin
moved to Rouen to be closer to the man. By this
time, with his wife Mette Gad, he had a family
based in Copenhagen. As he gave up his job he
could no longer support them financially and
effectively abandoned them and everything besides
for his art.
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By 1891 he was gaining quite a reputation but
instead of consolidating this new found success
he fled to Tahiti. It was not the paradise he had
been seeking yet he remained for two years and
produced almost 80 paintings. Poverty and illness
drove Gauguin back to France but after receiving
an inheritance from the death of an uncle he
headed back to Tahiti once more. In 1897 his
daughter, Aline dies and falling into a deep
depression completes one of his finest works,
'Where do we come from...?' Soon after he makes
an attempted suicide then eventually takes up a
post as government draughtsman in Papeete. Three
years after his death a huge exhibition of his
work took place at the Salon d'Automne in Paris.
It is regarded as one of the most influential
exhibitions of the 20thcentury. His richly
coloured, highly evocative work has inspired
countless artists.
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1. How do the colours of Gauguins paintings portray
   the atmosphere of the Island setting?
2. What sort of brush strokes did Gauguin use to
   place his colours on his paintings?
3. Which colours complement each other in his
   paintings, and which contrast against each other?
4. Gauguin said I shut my eyes in order to see.
   What did he mean? Can you see evidence of this in
   his paintings?

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Femmes de Tahiti OR Sur la plage (Tahitian Women
OR On the Beach)1891
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We Hail Thee Mary1891
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There is the Marae 1892
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Aha oe feii? (What! Are You Jealous?) 1892
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Matamoe1892
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Market Day 1892
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The White Horse1898
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Contes barbares1902 Who is the man in the
background?
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Riders on the Beach 1902
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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We
Going?1897Oil on canvas54 3/4 x 147 1/2 in.
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1. How do the colours of Gauguins paintings portray
   the atmosphere of the Island setting?
2. What sort of brush strokes did Gauguin use to
   place his colours on his paintings?
3. Which colours complement each other in his
   paintings, and which contrast against each other?
4. Gauguin said I shut my eyes in order to see.
   What did he mean? Can you see evidence of this in
   his paintings?

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Commentary on Where Do We Come From? What Are We?
Where Are We Going?

• from "Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces"
• "This is Gauguin's ultimate masterpiece - if all
  the Gauguins in the world, except one, were to be
  evaporated (perish the thought!), this would be
  the one to preserve. He claimed that he did not
  think of the long title until the work was
  finished, but he is known to have been creative
  with the truth. The picture is so superbly
  organized into three "scoops" - a circle to right
  and to left, and a great oval in the center -
  that I cannot but believe he had his questions in
  mind from the start. I am often tempted to forget
  that these are questions, and to think that he is
  suggesting answers, but there are no answers
  here there are three fundamental questions,
  posed visually.
• "On the right (Where do we come from?), we see
  the baby, and three young women - those who are
  closest to that eternal mystery. In the center,
  Gauguin meditates on what we are. Here are two
  women, talking about destiny (or so he described
  them), a man looking puzzled and half-aggressive,
  and in the middle, a youth plucking the fruit of
  experience. This has nothing to do, I feel sure,
  with the Garden of Eden it is humanity's
  innocent and natural desire to live and to search
  for more life. A child eats the fruit, overlooked
  by the remote presence of an idol - emblem of our
  need for the spiritual. There are women (one
  mysteriously curled up into a shell), and there
  are animals with whom we share the world a goat,
  a cat, and kittens. In the final section (Where
  are we going?), a beautiful young woman broods,
  and an old woman prepares to die. Her pallor and
  gray hair tell us so, but the message is
  underscored by the presence of a strange white
  bird. I once described it as "a mutated puffin,"
  and I do not think I can do better. It is
  Gauguin's symbol of the afterlife, of the unknown
  (just as the dog, on the far right, is his symbol
  of himself).
• "All this is set in a paradise of tropical
  beauty the Tahiti of sunlight, freedom, and
  color that Gauguin left everything to find. A
  little river runs through the woods, and behind
  it is a great slash of brilliant blue sea, with
  the misty mountains of another island rising
  beyond Gauguin wanted to make it absolutely clear
  that this picture was his testament. He seems to
  have concocted a story that, being ill and
  unappreciated (that part was true enough), he
  determined on suicide - the great refusal. He
  wrote to a friend, describing his journey into
  the mountains with arsenic. Then he found himself
  still alive, and returned to paint more
  masterworks. It is sad that so great an artist
  felt he needed to manufacture a ploy to get
  people to appreciate his work. I wish he could
  see us now, looking with awe at this supreme
  painting."

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Gauguin on Painting

• "Notes Synthetiques", by Paul GauguinFrom the
  manuscript, c. 1888
• Excerpted from "Theories of Modern Art", by
  Herschel B. Chipp
• "Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In
  it, all sensations are condensed contemplating
  it, everyone can create a story at the will of
  his imagination and-with a single glance-have his
  soul invaded by the most profound recollections
  no effort of memory, everything is summed up in
  one instant. -A complete art which sums up all
  the others and completes them. -Like music, it
  acts on the soul through the intermediary of the
  senses harmonious colors correspond to the
  harmonies of sounds. But in painting a unity is
  obtained which is not possible in music, where
  the accords follow one another, so that the
  judgment experiences a continuous fatigue if it
  wants to reunite the end with the beginning. The
  ear is actually a sense inferior to the eye. The
  hearing can only grasp a single sound at a time,
  whereas the sight takes in everything and
  simultaneously simplifies it at will.
• "Like literature, the art of painting tells
  whatever it wishes, with the advantage that the
  reader immediately knows the prelude, the
  setting, and the ending.