Paul Gauguin Biography (1848 –1903): French Post-Impressionist Artist Complete Works People have witnessed great works from artists who captured life in their works, artists who work on naturalism and realism. On the other end are artists who style their works with heroic or ideal themes. While the former dwells on subjects in the natural world, the latter dwells on spirituality and imagination. This is called Symbolism. One of the prominent figures in Symbolism is Paul Gauguin. Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a top Post-Impressionist artist from France and made his name in the Symbolist movement as a ceramist, writer, sculptor, print-maker, and, of course, painter. He experimented boldly on coloring, directly leading to modern art’s Synthetist style. He also contributed to the creation of a path towards Primitivism and a comeback to the pastoral. He also had influences on wood engravings and woodcuts becoming conventional art mediums. It was June 7, 1848 when Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France.

His father was a journalist named Clovis Gauguin and his mother was Alina Maria Chazal, offspring of Flora Tristan, a herald of feminism. Because of the political situation during the period, Gauguin’s family moved to Peru in 1851. Clovis perished on the travel which left Paul, three years old at that time, with his mother, along with his sister, to live on their own. They stayed in Lima at an uncle’s house for four years. Peru’s scenes and images would be a big influence on Paul’s works. They went back to France when Paul was seven. They lived at Orléans in his grandfather’s house. He then studied French and became excellent with his academics. At the age of seventeen, he became a pilot’s subordinate, in the merchant marine, as fulfillment of his mandatory service in the military. Three years after that, he enlisted in the naval force of France and stayed in a span of two years. Gauguin returned to Paris in 1871. He became a stockbroker. He married the Danish Mette-Sophie Gad in 1873. She bore him five children.

In 1884, he and his family moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he became a stockbroker. After 11 years, his family fell apart after he decided to delve into painting full-time. His wife asked him to leave because he repudiated their shared values. With this, he returned to Paris in 1885. It was in 1891 when he had his last physical contact with his family. Two of his children died before him. Gauguin was a friend of Vincent Van Gogh. They painted together in Arles in 1888 for a period of two months and one week. One thing he had in common with Van Gogh was the episodes of depression he went through. At one point, he tried to commit suicide. Later, he went to Martinique in search of an idyllic landscape. There, he worked on the construction of Panama Canal as a laborer. This particular job lasted only for two weeks. Gauguin traveled to Tahiti in 1891 to get away from European Civilization. Also, to rest from conventional and artificial things. His experiences in Tahiti were written in his book Noa Noa.

Gauguin left France for good in 1895. The time he spent in the Marquesas Island and Tahiti became a subject of interest mostly because of his supposed sexual activities. He was believed to have had meetings with young native females. Some of them were depicted in his paintings. He had a number of children with his mistresses. Paul Gauguin died at the age of 54 in 1903. He had syphilis but the cause of death was morphine overdose. He died before the start of his prison sentence – received because of a libel case. Gauguin started painting during his leisure time. He also went to galleries and bought works from emerging artists. Camille Pissarro became his friend and presented him to other artists. He was eventually able to rent a studio. His paintings were exhibited in 1881 and 1882. In the duration of two holidays that summer, he worked with Pissarro and on some occasions, Paul Cezanne. In 1887, Gauguin spent a number of months in Martinique, within an area near Saint Pierre. With him was the artist Charles Laval.

He lived in a hut and enjoyed observing people’s everyday works. As time went by, the weather got into him. It was too hot during the summers while the rain leaks through the hut, and he became sick eventually. In the time he spent in that place, he made between 10 and 20 paintings. Along with some other artists, Gauguin frequented Pont-Aven, an artist colony in Britanny. He grew tired of Impressionism and European art in general while he found art from Asia and Africa to be very full of vigor and symbolisms which were mystic in nature. One of Gauguin’s famous works was Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? This painting was made when he was in Tahiti. This work now resides in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The piece depicts the answers to the questions in the title and should be read from right to left. The rightmost part shows women with newborn children, to mark the beginning of life. In the middle is a depiction of young adults, and in the left is an old woman on the verge of death.

Other works by Gauguin are Two Tahitian Women, Maternity, Vision After the Sermon, The Moon and the Earth and a lot more which are done using vivid colors and inspired by his experiences. 2 responses to “Paul Gauguin” Paul Gauguin - 505 artworks - WikiArt.org Paul Gauguin Wikipedia: Paul Gaugin was a French Post-Impressionist painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and write, and was an important figure in the Symbolist movement, and his experimentation was indicative of the Synthetist style of modern art. He also paved the way to the appreciation of primitivism, as his paintings employed many of the simplistic techniques employed by Naïve artists. He lived with his family as a child, and moved to Orleans’ France at the age of seven. As an adult, he joined the French Navy and later was employed as a stockbroker. In France, he began painting in his free time, and became friends Camille Pisarro, who introduced him to other artists. As an individual he was prone to bouts of depression and once attempted suicide.

As a painter, he was disappointed with Impressionism, as he felt that the tradition of European painting had simply become imitative, and lacked the symbolic depth that he desired. He also thoroughly enjoyed the art of Africa and Asia, which was full of symbolic depth, vigor, and meaning. In his escape from the traditional European paintings, he sought to find a tropical paradise, in which he could paint in an increasingly primitive style and live off the land. He left his wife and five children to live with her family, and spent a short time as a laborer on the Panama Canal. Lacking recognition for his work and with no money, he sailed to the tropical islands of Tahiti and Marquesas, in French Polynesia. His exploits there generated much interest, especially his reputed sexual exploits with young native girls, some of which appear as the subjects in his paintings. In Polynesia, he often sided with the natives in their conflicts with the church and colonial authorities, eventually writing a book about his experiences there. Gaugin’s physical escape allowed his stylistic escape of post-Renaissance painting, as he paid little attention to classical perspective and eliminated gradations of color and shading.

Inspired by the primitivism of the countries in which he lived, he also used primitive elements in his paintings to great success. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, 1897 This is Paul Gaugin’s most famous painting, and he considered it his masterpiece, and the culmination of his thoughts. In Tahiti, as he was painting his masterpiece, Gaugin declared that he would commit suicide upon its completion. Although this was something he had previously attempted, this was not the case, as the artist died of syphilis in 1903. The painting was meant to be read from right to left, with the three main figures in the painting representing the three questions of the title. The figures are arranged from the beginning stages of life, from young figures with a child, to the middle aged figure in the middle, to the elder figure on the left of the painting.

The idol in the background, situated behind the elder figure, represents the “Beyond.” On the trail of Gauguin in French Polynesia | The West Australian On the trail of Gauguin in French Polynesia John Borthwick Friday, July 31, 2015 7:31AM Taiohae Bay in Nuku Hiva, where mountains plunge into the sea. Picture: John Borthwick A scandalous figure, artist Paul Gauguin died penniless but left a priceless legacy. John Borthwick visits his island home. Paul Gauguin’s great- grand-daughter, Rosalie Tipaehaehae, isn’t sitting half-naked, framed by a violet sea or magenta sky, as in one of her famous ancestor’s paintings. Instead, she is sitting in jeans and T-shirt, chatting with her friends on a hot Sunday afternoon down by Atuona harbour on Hiva Oa Island. Rosalie, in her mid-twenties, laughs when I ask if she paints. No way, she says — Grandpa Gauguin’s an impossible act to follow. Not that you’d really want to around here, in the Marquesas Islands.

In 1901, Rosalie’s great- grandmother, Marie-Rose Vaeoho, was just 14 when, to the horror of the colonial missionaries, she took up with the middle-aged French painter. Although he died in 1903, we still envisage Polynesia through Gauguin’s imagery. He travelled to the Marquesas — one of the most isolated archipelagos on Earth — to storm paradise with a paintbrush. Volcanic, cloud- crowned Hiva Oa was as close as he would get. Gauguin, born in Paris in 1848, became a stockbroker but success in the city and bourgeois complacency in the suburbs were not his fate. A self-taught painter, he dropped out, abandoning his wife and children in 1885 to chase love and inspiration, usually in all the wrong places. “Her eyes were of a tawny black, full of exotic languor and coaxing softness,” French novelist Pierre Loti wrote of the Tahitian beauty who had entranced him in 1872.

His hugely popular account of their affair, Le Mariage de Loti, fanned Gauguin’s passion for “the primitive”. In 1891 he set sail for Tahiti (on April Fools’ Day), hoping to receive royal patronage from King Pomare V. On his arrival in Papeete, however, the king — an alcoholic — dropped dead. Gauguin was obliged to accept portrait commissions but his first — of a sturdy, middle-aged colonial matron with a scarlet nose — was rendered with such fidelity it ensured his first commission was also his last. In the village of Mataiea on Tahiti Island, he set up house with Teha’amana, a teenage “vahine” (by Polynesian standards of the time, a mature woman) whose face, he said, “shone like gold, tingeing everything with its lustre”. They lived in relative contentment from 1891-1893, during which time Gauguin produced 66 major paintings. With his funds exhausted, he returned to Paris but what was to be a triumphant exhibition of his Tahitian works ended as a debacle.

His idiosyncratic vision outran critics and buyers alike, and sales barely covered his expenses. In 1895 he embarked again for Tahiti. “It’s not such a bad life at present. Every night frenzied young girls invade my bed,” he wrote, mythologising himself absurdly. In fact, his life was a cycle of financial insecurity, recurrent illness and diatribes against French colonial ways, interspersed by intense bouts of painting. In 1898 he painted a fresco-like masterpiece (now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), intended as his final philosophical summation: D’ou venons nous? Que sommes nous? Ou allons nous? (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?)'''' Suicide by arsenic was to follow, but even this he botched by ingesting so much poison he vomited the lot back up. “Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfil our desires, our dreams, our passions,” Gauguin wrote. Perhaps sensing that not much time remained to him, he abandoned Tahiti in 1901 and sailed for the distant Marquesas Islands.

To ingratiate himself with the missionary authorities on Hiva Oa, he attended mass for 11 days straight. Having convinced the local bishop of his piety, he was allowed to purchase land in the village of Atuona. He soon constructed a large studio-home, gave it the scandalous name “Maison du Jouir” (House of Pleasure, plus other more carnal meanings), took a new mistress — and never darkened the church doorway again. While he further refined his imagery over his last 19 months of life, the rest of his world descended into chaos. Some accounts have him too ill to paint; others have him too ill to do anything but paint. Gauguin, who could barely walk due to his ulcerated legs, travelled by horse-drawn buggy. Having already provoked the ire of Atuona’s gendarmes, he was summoned for driving at night without lights and thus endangering other traffic. His buggy was at that time the only wheeled vehicle in the Marquesas. Morphine, absinthe, syphilis, ulcers. The contributors to Gauguin’s decline were numerous.

He retreated to his House of Pleasure and on May 8, 1903, expired miserably — officially of a heart attack but possibly by morphine overdose. The French bureaucrat who finalised his estate wrote: “The few pictures left by the late painter who belonged to the decadent school have little prospect of finding purchasers.” Today, the Marquesas archipelago is still a place of primal beauty, where the mountains plunge almost vertically to the sea. At the foot of these cathedral peaks are tiny villages tucked into a narrow coastal plain. Other than a few colonial bureaucrats and gendarmes, the faces here still seem to have stepped from a Gauguin canvas. Not far from where I meet his great-granddaughter, the artist who almost single-handedly invented our notions, right or wrong, of French Polynesia lies in a rock tomb in Atuona cemetery. Marked simply “Paul Gauguin 1903”, the grave is the main visitor attraction in Hiva Oa, if not the entire Marquesas. In the shade of frangipani and rosewood trees, it is as tranquil a place as any on Earth to spend a century or eternity.

Gauguin has creative company, too. A few paces away rests the Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel, enjoying his own extended season in the sun. FACT FILE Air Tahiti Nui flies from Papeete, Tahiti to Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands (airtahitinui.com). It’s also possible to cruise from Papeete on the passenger-cargo ships Aranui 3 and 5 (aranui.com). Topics Once Upon a Time...: "Life isn't long enough for love and art" - Paul Gauguin's death in 1903 Friday, 8 May 2015 "Life isn't long enough for love and art" - Paul Gauguin's death in 1903 8 May 1903, the French Post-Impressionist artist Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin died in Atuona on the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia at the age of 54. “D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?” (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Paul Gauguin) “Where do we come from?

Who are we? Where are we going?” 1897, arguably the climax of Gauguin’s work There is a cartoon, showing a youngster dressed up to the nines as if his career in business is already past its sell-by date, telling his hippie parents to behave themselves because he’d expect guests. It’s not passed down if Paul Gauguin the Stockbroker ever had to tell his family to keep their red gobs shut, since his grandmother Flora Tristan was a socialist writer and activist and his father Clovis a socialist journalist who had to flee from France to Peru after the failed revolution of 1848. On the other hand, the pater familias died en route when Paul was just 18 months old, but even if Clovis did not appear in a questionable shape, young Paul’s life in Peru was full of primal, formative scenes that would shape his life and art anyway.

His mother wearing the traditional garb of a Peruvian lady with the veil that covered only one of her eyes, giving her obviously an almost cubistic appearance, her predilection for pre-Columbian art and the contrast of the South American countryside of his early childhood with the Paris of the 1860s and ‘70s, just to mention a few. But Paul would be a mysterious traveller between the worlds anyway, in his life and in his art. He already started to paint when he was a successful businessman, in the Realistic manner of the Barbizon school, though not quite original in 1876, turned towards Impressionism when he decided to become a full-time artist after a stock market crash in 1882, developed into a moderately celebrated post-impressionist, ogled at Symbolism, developed a style known as Synthetism until his art culminated in the paintings created in Polynesia in the manner he is best remembered for today, simply as Gauguin, influential enough to point first and foremost expressionistic artists on their way towards the 20th century and modern art.

Aline Marie Chazal Tristán, The Artist's Mother, 1889 Gauguin had, famously, a biography that reads as if Herman Melville or Joseph Conrad had tried their hand at writing an artist novel. It was W. Somerset Maugham who finally wrote it 20 years after Gauguin’s death of general failing health and syphilis, naturally, and his own autobiography, Avant et après (Before and After), published in excerpts already in 1903. Maugham’s “Moon and Sixpence” certainly contributed to the formation of the Gauguin myth and it’s not without the usual irony of the art world that his works became posthumous top sellers while the artist himself died poor as dirt. His embracing of the idea of an Edenic primal state, leading back to Rousseau and the Age of Enlightenment, a concept that never fully passed a reality check, not even in Gauguin’s own perception, and was nonetheless elementary in transporting an image into the 20th century that had long since become a European archetype, along with the respective clichés embedded in his somewhat aseptically sensuous images from far-away places.

His own role as pioneer of Modern Art notwithstanding. “When will you marry?” 1892 And more about Paul Gauguin and his art on: Paul Gauguin Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Web Services & Hosting by The Computer Studio | Designed by DesArtLab Impressionism Impressionism A movement in painting that first surfaced in France in the 1860s, it sought new ways to describe effects of light and movement, often using rich colors. The Impressionists were drawn to modern life and often painted the city, but they also captured landscapes and scenes of middle-class leisure-taking in the suburbs. Symbolism Symbolism Symbolism is an artistic and literary movement that first emerged in France in the 1880s. In the visual arts it is often considered part of Post-Impressionism. It is characterized by an emphasis on the mystical, romantic and expressive, and often by the use of symbolic figures. Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter, commonly associated with the Post-Impressionist period. As one of the most prolific and experimental artists of his time, van Gogh was a spontaneous painter and a master of color and perspective.

Troubled by personal demons all his life, many historians speculate that van Gogh suffered from a Bipolar disorder. Primitive Art Primitive Art Nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists in the West were greatly influenced by art they deemed 'primitive' or 'naïve', made by tribal or non-Western cultures. Such art, ranging from African and Native American to naive depictions of the French peasantry, was thought to be less civilized and thus closer to raw aesthetic and spiritual experience. Romanticism Romanticism Romanticism was a nineteenth-century movement that celebrated the powers of emotion and intuition over rational analysis or classical ideals. Romantic artists emphasized awe, beauty, and the sublime in their works, which frequently charted the darker or chaotic sides of human life. Eugène Delacroix Eugène Delacroix Eugène Delacroix was a mid-nineteenth-century French painter and pioneer of European Modernist painting. Known primarily as a Romantic, Delacroix's paintings were passionate in their depictions of love, war and human sensuality, earning the artist both praise and controversy in his time. His preoccupation with color-induced optical effects and use of expressive brushstrokes were crucial influences on Impressionism and Pointillism.

Realism Realism Realism is an approach to art that stresses the naturalistic representation of things, the look of objects and figures in ordinary life. It emerged as a distinct movement in the mid-nineteenth century, in opposition to the idealistic, sometimes mythical subjects that were then popular, but it can be traced back to sixteenth-century Dutch art and forward into twentieth-century styles such as Social Realism. Gustave Courbet Gustave Courbet Gustave Courbet was a French painter and chief figure in the Realist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. His paintings often contained an emotional bleakness, and were praised for their precision and use of light. Along with Delacroix, Courbet was a key influence on the Impressionists. Camille Corot Camille Corot Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a nineteenth-century French painter and printmaker. Best known for his landscape paintings rendered in a Neo-Classical tradition, Corot's practice of painting outside in the open air was highly influential to many of the French Impressionists. Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir was one of the leading figures of French Impressionism during the late-nineteenth century.

Renoir tended to favor outdoor scenes, gardens bathed in sunlight, and large gatherings of people. Known as a master of light, shadow and color, Renoir was also highly esteemed for his depiction of natural movement on the canvas. In terms of the French Impressionists' lasting popularity and fame, Renoir is perhaps second only to Monet. Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet was a French artist who helped pioneer the painterly effects and emphasis on light, atmosphere, and plein air technique that became hallmarks of Impressionism. He is especially known for his series of haystacks and cathedrals at different times of day, and for his late Waterlilies. Camille Pissarro Camille Pissarro Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter. Known as the "Father of Impressionism," he used his own painterly style to depict urban daily life, landscapes, and rural scenes. Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne was an influential French Post-Impressionist painter whose depictions of the natural world, based on internal geometric planes, paved the way for Cubism and later modern art movements.

Charles Laval Charles Laval Charles Laval was a French painter who was a contemporary and friend of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin and Laval went to Pension Gloanec in Pont-Aven together in 1886. Both sought exoticism in art, and in 1887, the two traveled to Panama. Theo van Gogh Theo van Gogh Theo Van Gogh was a Dutch art dealer in 1880s Paris, and the brother of painter Vincent Van Gogh. He helped to promote and encourage a variety of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism refers to a number of styles that emerged in reaction to Impressionism in the 1880s. The movement encompassed Symbolism and Neo-Impressionism before ceding to Fauvism around 1905. Its artists turned away from effects of light and atmosphere to explore new avenues such as color theory and personal feeling, often using colors and forms in intense and expressive ways.

Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso Picasso dominated European painting in the first half of the last century, and remains perhaps the century's most important, prolifically inventive, and versatile artist. Alongside Georges Braque, he pioneered Cubism. He also made significant contributions to Surrealist painting and media such as collage, welded sculpture, and ceramics. Georges Braque Georges Braque Georges Braque was a modern French painter who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed analytic Cubism and Cubist collage in the early twentieth century. Cubism Cubism Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907-1911, and it continued to be highly influential long after its decline. This classic phase has two stages: 'Analytic', in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic', in which pre-existing materials such as newspaper and wood veneer are collaged to the surface of the canvas. Fauvism Fauvism Fauvism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Labeled as "wild beasts", Fauve artists favored vibrant colors and winding gestural strokes across the canvas.

André Derain André Derain André Derain, the co-founder of Fauvism, was a French artist whose paintings exhibit the writhing energetic lines and bright colors characteristic of the movement. He strove to keep art modern and current throughout his career. Henri Matisse Henri Matisse Henri Matisse was a French painter and sculptor who helped forge modern art. From his early Fauvist works to his late cutouts, he emphasized expansive fields of color, the expressive potential of gesture, and the sensuality inherent in art-making. Edgar Degas Edgar Degas Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist painter, printmaker and sculptor with an extraordinarily long career from the mid-nineteenth century until after WWI. As one of the original group of Impressionists, although he preferred to be called a Realist, he traveled widely and employed the use of photography in his creative process. He is most renowned for his painting and drawings of ballet dancers in rehearsal and performances in the theatre. Emile Bernard Emile Bernard Emile Bernard was a Post-Impressionist painter who had artistic friendships with Van Gogh, Gauguin, Eugene Boch, and Cézanne.

He is also associated with the art movements Cloisonnism and Synthetism. Bernard also produced plays, poetry, art criticism, as well as art historical statements. Emile Schuffenecker Emile Schuffenecker Emile Schuffenecker was a French Post-Impressionist artist, painter, art teacher and art collector. He was one of the first collectors of Vincent van Gogh works, and was instrumental in establishing the Volpini exhibition, in 1889. Schuffenecker is suspected to have imitated the work of other contemporary artists, among them, van Gogh. Cloisonnism Cloisonnism Cloisonnism is a style of Post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin at the Salon des Indépendants in March 1888. Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started painting in this style in the late nineteenth century. Japonisme Japonisme Japonisme describes the influence of Japanese art, especially woodblock prints, on French artists in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Many Post-Impressionists were influenced by the flat blocks of color, the emphasis on design, and the simple, everyday subject matter. African Art African Art Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traditional African art, often seen through a primitivizing eye, began to exert a strong influence on modern Western artists. Artists were influenced by the emphasis on ritual and spiritualism, and the stylistic conventions of flattened planes and mask-like faces. Arthur Frank Mathews Arthur Frank Mathews Arthur F. Mathews was an American Tonalist painter who was one of the founders of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Trained as an architect and artist, he and his wife Lucia Kleinhans Mathews had a significant effect on the evolution of Californian art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ambroise Vollard Ambroise Vollard Ambroise Vollard was an important dealer, collector, and arts patron in late nineteenth-centry and early twentieth-century Paris. His interests were diverse, spanning Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, and modernism, and included such artists as Renoir, Cézanne, Gaugin, Matisse, and Picasso.

Orphism Orphism Orphism - a term coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire - was a little known art movement during the time of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colors influenced by Fauvism and the dye chemist Eugène Chevreul. This movement was pioneered by the Delaunays, a couple who relaunched the use of color during the monochromatic Cubist movement. Arts and Crafts Movement Arts and Crafts Movement The Arts and Crafts Movement was an international design movement that originated in England. It advocated truth to materials and traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. It also proposed economic and social reform and has been seen as essentially anti-industrial. Gauguin exhibit in D.C. salutes the spirit of an eternal wanderer - Travel - NorthJersey.com © 2017 North Jersey Media Group March 13, 2011, 11:54 AM Last updated: Sunday, March 13, 2011, 11:55 AM Gauguin exhibit in D.C.

salutes the spirit of an eternal wanderer By JOHN ZEAMAN SPECIAL TO THE RECORD | The Record Paul Gauguin is the patron saint of those travelers who dream of exotic places and harbor secret wishes of disappearing into them. Visitors to Washington can experience the legend of Gauguin and the beauty of cherry blossoms in two events. Left, the painter's "Tehamana Has Many Parents." The French artist, who lived from 1848 to 1903, is known for his mysterious, dreamy paintings of Polynesian women in lush tropical landscapes. But he is just as much known for the legend that surrounds his life, which has been catnip for generations of bored souls who fantasize about "getting away from it all." W. Somerset Maugham, no mean traveler himself, did the best-known popularization of the Gauguin legend in his classic 1919 novel "The Moon and Sixpence," which has been made, over the years, into a movie, TV dramatization and an opera. Reduced to its simplest outlines, the story tells of a seemingly ordinary middle-aged stockbroker who suddenly declares himself an artist.

He abandons his family and, in search of his inner "savage," journeys to the South Seas and a life of sensuous pleasures and primitive simplicity. He dies in a grass hut, surrounded by some of the greatest masterpieces of modern art. Who knows how many terrible paintings have been produced by those who emulated Gauguin, but lacked his talent? Nevertheless, there is a universal appeal to this story apart from the artist fantasy. A half-hour on the Web turns up plenty of people who share the desire to get away to a tropical island. These range from inquiries about where to find water as blue as "in the Corona commercials" to tips from castaway types on how to climb coconut trees to the lowdown on popular South Sea islands like Fiji, Vanuatu or Samoa. Normally, Gauguin's paintings are scattered all over the world, but every few decades a museum puts together a big loan exhibit. Luckily, one has just landed on our shores and is encamped 200 miles to the south of us. "Gauguin: Maker of Myth" will be at the National Gallery of Art in Washington through June 5. It won't be seen at any other U.S. museums.

Schedule your visit roughly between March 26 and April 10, and you can catch the National Cherry Blossom Festival, a real-world display that might be a nice complement to the paradisiacal imagery of Gauguin's canvases. Gauguin's quest took him first to the French region of Brittany, a rocky stretch of coastline jutting into the Atlantic. "Little Britain" was – and still is, to some extent — a culturally detached community rooted in its own language and costume, with superstitions dating to their Druid origins. Gauguin, drawn to this Old World culture and its people, even wore their wooden shoes, which you can see here, personalized with the artist's own folkish carvings of figures and animals. "When my wooden shoes echo on this granite ground," he wrote, "I hear the dull, muted, powerful sound I am looking for in a painting." In 1887, he set sail for Central America, writing to his wife: "I am off to Panama to live like a savage." When plans there went awry, however, he was forced to take work digging the Panama Canal. Two weeks of that and he was off to the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Hiking into the interior, he found an empty hut along a well-worn path. There, in view of women taking crops to market, he did his first paintings of the tropics, declaring that in this work he had found his "real self." Back in Paris, he went to the 1889 World's Fair and was drawn to the Tahitian pavilion. He saw the simple grass-roofed abodes and noted the ease with which fruit could be plucked from trees, writing, "The Tahitian just has to raise his arms up to gather his food." Photographs of Gauguin on arrival in Tahiti in 1891 show him wearing a cowboy hat purchased at another World's Fair attraction, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. If he looked like a tourist, he also suffered a typical tourist disappointment. Papeete, the capital, had lost its innocence to colonization and Christian missionaries. "The Tahitian soil," he wrote, "is becoming completely French and little by little the old order will disappear." Gauguin found less spoiled villages in the interior and began to produce the paintings for which he is best known.

In these, many of which are in this show, he orchestrated his canvases like musical pieces, boldly simplifying shapes, finding new harmonies of hue in minor keys, and spraying notes of color across sun-dappled clearings and swirling pools of water. A mood of languor pervades these pictures of women bathing, picking fruit or gossiping. Gauguin titled some of them with snatches of conversation in the Tahitian language, such as "Aha oe Feii?" (What! Are You Jealous?) from 1892. It's natural to assume that the religious statues and idols you see in these scenes reflect the reality Gauguin found in Tahiti. In truth, this was theatrical dressing. No idols of the ancient Maori religion remained. Gauguin simply painted them in anyway, drawing on sketches he had made at an anthropological museum in New Zealand. And when it suited him, he inserted images from Easter Island, Hindu art or some synthesis of his own invention. Sales of paintings were disappointing when Gauguin returned to Paris in 1893. In 1895, he sailed back to Tahiti and picked up where he'd left off.

But his wanderlust and his yearning for a truly primitive paradise eventually drew him to another group of islands, the Marquesas. Located about 900 miles northeast of Tahiti and 3,000 miles from the nearest landmass, the Marquesas are the most isolated points of land on earth. On this still "almost cannibalistic island," Gauguin wrote "… completely uncivilized surroundings and total solitude will revive in me, before I die, a last spark of enthusiasm which will rekindle my imagination and bring my talent to its conclusion." He settled on the small island of Atuona and built a house on stilts. He framed his front door with chunky wooden reliefs, which are on display in the last gallery of the Washington exhibit. They are decorated with nude women, animals and the name he gave his abode, Maison du Jouir (House of Pleasure), which was designed to irritate the local clergy. The Marquesan paintings have a wistful, elegaic quality. Suffering from the terminal stages of syphilis, Gauguin was often too weak to hike or even to stand at his easel, so the paintings are generally simpler and more rapidly done.

In some of them, you can see Marquesans riding wild horses against a backdrop of black volcanic sands glowing pink in the sunset. Today, the Marquesas are still described as the most primitive of the islands in French Polynesia. Visitors to Tahiti can expect luxury resorts, but those going to the Marquesas are more likely to stay in bungalows. The islands retain many of the natural features that Gauguin put in his paintings, including the wild horses and black sand beaches. In 1902, Gauguin wrote to a friend that he was thinking of returning to Europe, where he might regain his health. His friend wrote back that it would be a mistake for him – now a legend — to return. "You enjoy the same immunity as the great dead," he wrote. "You have passed into the history of art." A year later, it was true. Gauguin died of heart failure in 1903 and was buried in the village's Calvary Cemetery. In the decade after, there were 46 exhibits of his work in 15 European cities.

Two modest institutions keep his memory alive in the South Seas: the Japanese-styled Gauguin Museum in Papeari, Tahiti, and the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center in Atuona. Van Gogh and Gauguin letter tells of artistic hopes that turned sour | Art and design | The Guardian Van Gogh Van Gogh and Gauguin letter tells of artistic hopes that turned sour 'Electrifying' missive written by artists on pages of French exercise books goes on sale in Paris next month Part of the letter written by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin which is being sold at Christie’s Paris. Close This article is 4 years old The handwritten letter, penned jointly by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin on cheap paper torn out of a school exercise book, speaks of friendship and hope. Written at a critical point in the careers of both men, it refers to dreams of founding a utopian community of brother artists, of a new artistic renaissance, and of paintings now recognised as masterpieces. The reality was to be less idyllic.

Shortly after the missive was sent, the pair quarrelled violently and in one of history's most notorious acts of self-mutilation, Van Gogh sliced off his right ear. It was an act that marked the Dutchman's final decline into madness and suicide. Now, the four-page letter signed by both artists has emerged from a private collection before its auction in Paris next month, where it is expected to fetch up to €500,000 (£405,000). Thomas Venning, an expert with the auction house Christie's, said the document offered an insight into the "most famous artistic menage in history". "I spend my life dealing with letters and this is one of the greatest, most electrifying I have ever seen," he said. "It takes you into their house, into their lives at this particular moment. "You can imagine Van Gogh sitting down to write the letter on cheap paper because they didn't have much money, then saying to Gauguin: 'You finish it off'." The letter is written on the square-ruled paper of French exercise books and addressed to Emile Bernard, a young avant garde artist who inspired both men.

It was composed in November 1888 at Arles in Provence, where Van Gogh had rented two floors of a private house, 2 Place Lamartine, the subject of the painting La Maison Jaune. The previous week, after months of procrastination, Gauguin had arrived to live and paint with Van Gogh for one or two years. At the time, the French art world was moving from impressionism to modernism and surrealism, but Van Gogh and Gauguin had yet to be widely recognised. Van Gogh, mentally fragile and prone to violent mood swings, was fired up with childlike excitement. In the letter, he gives his first impressions of the French painter. "Gauguin interests me much as a man – very much – I have long thought that in our dirty profession as painters we have the greatest need of people with the hands and stomachs of a labourer – and more natural tastes – more amorous and benevolent temperaments – than the decadent and exhausted Parisian boulevardier. "Now here without the slightest doubt we are in the presence of a virgin creature with the instincts of a wild animal.

In Gauguin, blood and sex prevail over ambition." He adds: "We have made several excursions to the brothels and it's likely that we will end up working there often. Gauguin has at the moment a painting under way of same night café that I also painted, but with figures seen in the brothels. It promises to become a beautiful thing. "I've made two studies of falling leaves in an avenue of poplars and a third study of this whole avenue, entirely yellow." [Les Alyscamps.]" Van Gogh writes that he and Gauguin are discussing "the terrific subject of an association of certain painters" and of his "presentiment of a new world … and a great artistic renaissance" that will find its home in the tropics. On the final page, Gauguin adds: "Don't listen to Vincent, as you know he's prone to admiration and ditto indulgence. His idea about the future of a new generation in the tropics seems absolutely right to me as a painter, and I still intend to return there when I have the means to do so.

Who knows, with a bit of luck …?" Eight weeks later, on 23 December, the partnership came to a violent end when the pair quarrelled violently over, it is believed, Van Gogh spending the meagre household budget on prostitutes, and his refusal to stop drinking absinthe. Van Gogh threatened his "friend" with a razor before slicing off his own ear. Shortly afterwards he entered the first of a series of asylums and died in 1890 aged 37 after shooting himself. Gauguin returned to Paris and later set up a studio in French Polynesia where he died in 1903, aged 54. The pair never met again, though they subsequently corresponded. Venning says the letter reveals the two men's different characters, and the calm before the storm in their relationship. "It's a moment of friendship, optimism and shared work. It looks like everything is going to be OK and they achieved a lot of work in a short period of time." He added: "The dramatic events that followed the writing of this letter make it rather sad.

It's a mind blowing document." The letter is part of the Pierre Berès Collection, being sold at Christie's Paris on 12-13 December. Syrian artists' works reflecting the horror of civil war will be shown in exhibition to support those suffering in the uprising Published: 23 Nov 2012 He made his name as a crooner with the Walker Brothers, then disappeared. Back with a new avant-garde album, Scott Walker tells Simon Hattenstone that the darkness has always been there Published: 23 Nov 2012 1000+ images about Paul Gauguin on Pinterest | Paul gauguin, Javanese and Biography Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (French pronunciation: [øˈʒɛn ãˈʁi ˌpol ɡoˈɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist, who was not well appreciated until after his death. Gauguin was later recognized for his experimental use of colors and synthetist style that was distinguishably different from Impressionism.

His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. 15 Pins315 Followers

Question: What was the name of the artist who died in French Polynesia in 1903, aged 54?
Answer: Paul GAUGUIN