Paul Gauguin Biography Contact Paul Gauguin Biography Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist painter. His bold experimentation with coloring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential exponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. Life Self Portrait With Palette Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France to journalist Clovis Gauguin and half-Peruvian Aline Maria Chazal, the daughter of proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan. In 1851 the family left Paris for Peru, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving three-year old Paul, his mother and his sister to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima, Peru with Paul's uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Paul in his art. At the age of seven, Paul and his family returned to France.

They moved to Orléans, France to live with his grandfather. He soon learned French and excelled in his studies. At seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his required military service. Three years later, he joined the navy where he stayed for two years. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette Sophie Gad. Over the next ten years, they would have five children. Gauguin had been interested in art since his childhood. In his free time, he began painting. He also visited galleries frequently and purchased work by emerging artists. Gauguin formed a friendship with artist Camille Pissarro, who introduced him to various other artists. As he progressed in his art, Gauguin rented a studio, and showed paintings in Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882. Over two summer vacations, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne. By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he pursued a business career as a stockbroker.

Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife (Mette Sophie Gadd) and their five children returned to her family. Gauguin outlived two of his children. Yellow Christ Like his friend Vincent Van Gogh, with whom in 1888 he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan (Japonisme). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX. Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic Édouard Dujardin in response to Emile Bernard's cloisonne enamelling technique.

Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in his art. In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour, thereby dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards Synthetism in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role. Fatata Te Miti Aka By The Sea In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional." (Before this he had made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could 'live on fish and fruit' and paint in his increasingly primitive style, including short stays in Martinique and as a labourer on the Panama Canal construction, however he was dismissed from his job after only two weeks).

Living in Mataiea Village in Tahiti, he painted "Fatata te Miti" ("By the Sea"), "Ia Orana Maria" (Ave Maria) and other depictions of Tahitian life. He moved to Punaauia in 1897, where he created the masterpiece painting "Where Do We Come From" and then lived the rest of his life in the Marquesas Islands, returning to France only once, when he painted at Pont-Aven. His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia. In Polynesia he sided with the native peoples, clashing often with the colonial authorities and with the Catholic Church. During this period he also wrote the book Avant et après (before and after), a fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, memories from his life and comments on literature and paintings. In 1903, due to a problem with the church and the government, he was sentenced to three months in prison, and charged a fine. At that time he was being supported by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. He died of syphilis before he could start the prison sentence.

His body had been weakened by alcohol and a dissipated life. He was 54 years old. Gauguin died in 1903 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. Historical significance Spirit Of The Dead Watching Primitivism was an art movement of late 19th century painting and sculpture; characterized by exaggerated body proportions, animal totems, geometric designs and stark contrasts. The first artist to systematically use these effects and achieve broad public success was Paul Gauguin. The European cultural elite discovering the art of Africa, Micronesia, and Native Americans for the first time were fascinated, intrigued and educated by the newness, wildness and the stark power embodied in the art of those faraway places. Gauguin like Pablo Picasso in the early days of the 20th century was inspired and motivated by the raw power and simplicity of the so-called Primitive art of those foreign cultures. Gauguin is also considered a Post-Impressionist painter. His bold, colorful and design oriented paintings significantly influenced Modern art.

Gauguin's influence on artists and movements in the early 20th century include Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Fauvism, Cubism, and Orphism among others. John Rewald, one of the first art historians to focus on the birth of modern art, wrote about Post-Impressionism in his pioneering publication called Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956). Rewald considered it as a continuation of his earlier volume History of Impressionism (1946). In his book about the Post-Impressionists he limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892. Rewald mentioned that a "subsequent volume dedicated to the second half of the post-impressionist period" - Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse - was to follow, extending the period covered to other artistic movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unfortunately he did not complete that volume.

An interesting essay by John Rewald entitled Paul Gauguin-Letters to Ambroise Vollard and André Fontainas, (included in John Rewald Studies in Post-Impressionism, published by Abrams in 1986), discusses Gauguin's years in Tahiti, and the struggles of his survival as seen through correspondence with the dealer Vollard and others. Legacy The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as $39.2 million US Dollars. Gauguin influenced many other painters, but one especially notable connection is his imparting to Arthur Frank Mathews the use of an intense color palette. Mathews met Gauguin in the late 1890s while both were at the Academie Julian. Mathews took this influence in his founding of the California Arts and crafts or California Decorative movement.

The Japanese styled Gauguin Museum, opposite the Botanical Gardens of Papeari in Papeari, Tahiti, contains some exhibits, documents, photographs, reproductions and original sketches and block prints of Gauguin and Tahitians. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center opened in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands. Paul Gauguin's life inspired Somerset Maugham to write The Moon and Sixpence. It is also the subject of at least two operas: Federico Elizalde's Paul Gauguin (1943), and Gauguin (a synthetic life) by Michael Smetanin and Alison Croggon. Déodat de Séverac wrote his Elegy for piano in memory of Gauguin. Mario Vargas Llosa has also based his 2003 novel The Way to Paradise on Gauguin's life. Gauguin has been sainted by the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, a modern revival of Gnosticism. (From wikipedia) Paul Gauguin's Biography.

of Paul Gauguin Paul Gauguin's Biography Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France, to journalist Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal, daughter of the proto-socialist leader Flora Tristan, a feminist precursor whose father was part of an influential Peruvian family. In 1850 the family left Paris for that country, motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving eighteen-month-old Paul, his mother, and sister, to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima with Paul's uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Gauguin in his art. It was in Lima that Gauguin encountered his first art. His mother admired Pre-Columbian pottery, collecting Inca pots that some colonists dismissed as barbaric. One of Gauguin's few early memories of his mother was of her wearing the traditional costume of Lima, one eye peeping from behind her manteau, the mysterious one-eye veil that all women in Lima went out in. "Gauguin was always drawn to women with a 'traditional' look.

This must have been the first of the colourful female costumes that were to haunt his imagination." At the age of seven, Gauguin and his family returned to France, moving to Orleans to live with his grandfather. The Gauguins came originally from the area and were market gardeners and greengrocers: gauguin means 'walnut-grower'. His father had broken with family tradition to become a journalist in Paris. Gauguin soon learned French, though his first and preferred language remained Peruvian Spanish, and he excelled in his studies. After attending a couple of local schools he was sent to a Catholic boarding school in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, which he hated. He spent three years at the school. At seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his required military service. Three years later, he joined the French navy in which he served for two years. He was somewhere in the Caribbean when he found out that his mother had died. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker.

His mother's very rich boyfriend, Gustave Arosa, got him a job at the Paris Bourse; Gauguin was twenty-three. He became a successful Parisian businessman and remained one for eleven years. In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad (1850-1920). Over the next ten years, they had five children: Emile (1874-1955); Aline (1877-1897); Clovis (1879-1900); Jean Rene (1881-1961); and Paul Rollon (1883-1961). By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he pursued a business career as a tarpaulin salesman. It was not a success: He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins. Mette became the chief breadwinner, giving French lessons to trainee diplomats. His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin was driven to paint full-time.

He returned to Paris in 1885, after his wife and her family asked him to leave because he had renounced the values they shared. Paul Gauguin's last physical contact with them was in 1891. Like his friend Vincent van Gogh, with whom in 1888 he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced many bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. He traveled to Martinique in search of an idyllic landscape and worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal construction; he was dismissed from his job after only two weeks. In 1891, Gauguin sailed to French Polynesia to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional". He wrote a book titled Noa Noa describing his experiences in Tahiti. There have been allegations by modern critics that the contents of the book were fantasized and plagiarized. Gauguin left France again on 3 July 1895, never to return. His time away, particularly in Tahiti and Hiva Oa Island, was the subject of much interest both then and in modern times due to his alleged sexual exploits.

He was known to have had trysts with several prepubescent native girls, some of whom appear as subjects of his paintings. Gauguin outlived two of his children; his favorite daughter Aline died of pneumonia and his son Clovis died of a blood infection following a hip operation. Emile Gauguin worked as a construction engineer in the U.S. and is buried in Lemon Bay Historical Cemetery, in Florida. Jean Rene became a well-known sculptor and a staunch socialist. He died on 21 April 1961 in Copenhagen. Pola (Paul Rollon) became an artist and art critic and wrote a memoir, My Father, Paul Gauguin (1937). Gauguin had several children by his mistresses: Germaine (born 1891) with Juliette Huais (1866-955); Emile Marae a Tai (born 1899) with Pau'ura; and a daughter (born 1902) with Mari-Rose. There is some speculation that the Belgian artist Germaine Chardon was Gauguin's daughter.

Emile Marae a Tai, illiterate and raised in Tahiti, was brought to Chicago by French journalist Josette Giraud in 1963 and became an artist of note. In French Polynesia, toward the end of his life, sick and suffering from an unhealed injury, he got into legal trouble for taking the natives' side against French colonialists. On 27 March 1903, while living in the Marquesas Islands, he was charged with libeling the governor, M Guicheray, and given three days to prepare his defense. He was fined 500 francs and sentenced to three months in prison. On 2 April, he appealed for a new trial in Papeete. At the second trial, Gauguin was fined 500 francs and sentenced to one month in prison. At that time he was being supported by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Suffering from syphilis, he died at 11 a.m. on 8 May 1903 of an overdose of morphine and possibly heart attack before he could start the prison sentence. His body had been weakened by alcohol and a dissipated life.

He was 54 years old. Gauguin was buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetiere Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva Oa at 2 p.m. the next day. Paul Gauguin | Biography, Artwork, & Facts | Britannica.com Paul Gauguin Odilon Redon Paul Gauguin, in full Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin (born June 7, 1848, Paris , France —died May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa , Marquesas Islands , French Polynesia), French painter , printmaker , and sculptor who sought to achieve a “primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work. The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist , Synthetist , and Symbolist , is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh as well as for his self-imposed exile in Tahiti , French Polynesia . His artistic experiments influenced many avant-garde developments in the early 20th century.

Self-portrait by Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1890–94; in the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, … Fine Art Images/Heritage-Images/Imagestate Beginnings Gauguin’s father was a journalist from Orléans , and his mother was of French and Peruvian descent. After Napoleon III ’s coup d’état in 1848, Gauguin’s father took the family to Peru , where he planned to establish a newspaper, but he died en route, and Gauguin’s mother stayed with her children on the Lima estate of her uncle for four years before taking the family back to France. At age 17 Gauguin enlisted in the merchant marine , and for six years he sailed around the world. His mother died in 1867, leaving legal guardianship of the family with the businessman Gustave Arosa, who, upon Gauguin’s release from the merchant marine, secured a position for him as a stockbroker and introduced him to the Danish woman Mette Sophie Gad, whom Gauguin married in 1873.

Gauguin’s artistic leanings were first aroused by Arosa, who had a collection that included the work of Camille Corot , Eugène Delacroix , and Jean-François Millet , and by a fellow stockbroker, Émile Schuffenecker, with whom he started painting. Gauguin soon began to receive artistic instruction and to frequent a studio where he could draw from a model. In 1876 his Landscape at Viroflay was accepted for the official annual exhibition in France, the Salon . He developed a taste for the contemporary avant-garde movement of Impressionism , and between 1876 and 1881 he assembled a personal collection of paintings by such figures as Édouard Manet , Paul Cézanne , Camille Pissarro , Claude Monet , and Johan Barthold Jongkind . Gauguin met Pissarro about 1874 and began to study under the supportive older artist, at first struggling to master the techniques of painting and drawing. In 1880 he was included in the fifth Impressionist exhibition, an invitation that was repeated in 1881 and 1882.

He spent holidays painting with Pissarro and Cézanne and began to make visible progress. During this period he also entered a social circle of avant-garde artists that included Manet, Edgar Degas , and Pierre-Auguste Renoir . Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent Gauguin lost his job when the French stock market crashed in 1882, an occurrence he saw as a positive development, because it would allow him to “paint every day.” In an attempt to support his family, he unsuccessfully sought employment with art dealers, while continuing to travel to the countryside to paint with Pissarro. In 1884 he moved his family to Rouen , France, and took odd jobs, but by the end of the year, the family moved to Denmark , seeking the support of Mette’s family. Without employment, Gauguin was free to pursue his art, but he faced the disapproval of his wife’s family; in mid-1885 he returned with his eldest son to Paris. Gauguin participated in the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886, showing 19 paintings and a carved wood relief .

His own works won little attention, however, being overshadowed by Georges Seurat ’s enormous A Sunday on La Grand Jatte—1884 (1884–86). Frustrated and destitute , Gauguin began to make ceramic vessels for sale, and that summer he made a trip to Pont-Aven in the Brittany region of France, seeking a simpler and more frugal life. After a harsh winter there, Gauguin sailed to the French Caribbean island of Martinique with the painter Charles Laval in April 1887, intending to “live like a savage.” His works painted on Martinique, such as Tropical Vegetation (1887) and By the Sea (1887), reveal his increasing departure from Impressionist technique during this period, as he was now working with blocks of colour in large, unmodulated planes. Upon his return to France late in 1887, Gauguin affected an exotic identity, pointing to his Peruvian ancestry as an element of “ primitivism ” in his own nature and artistic vision. Early maturity Art & Architecture: Fact or Fiction?

In the summer of 1888 Gauguin returned to Pont-Aven , searching for what he called “a reasoned and frank return to the beginning, that is to say, to primitive art.” He was joined there by young painters, including Émile Bernard and Paul Sérusier , who also were seeking a more direct expression in their painting. Gauguin achieved a step towards this ideal in the seminal Vision After the Sermon (1888), a painting in which he used broad planes of colour, clear outlines, and simplified forms. Gauguin coined the term “ Synthetism ” to describe his style during this period, referring to the synthesis of his paintings’ formal elements with the idea or emotion they conveyed. The Vision After the Sermon, oil on canvas by Paul Gauguin, 1888; in the National Gallery of … Bridgeman/Art Resource, New York Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Gauguin acted as a mentor to many of the artists who assembled in Pont-Aven, urging them to rely more upon feeling than upon the direct observation associated with Impressionism . Indeed, he advised: “Don’t copy too much after nature.

Art is an abstraction: extract from nature while dreaming before it and concentrate more on creating than on the final result.” Gauguin and the artists around him, who became known as the Pont-Aven school , began to be decorative in the overall compositions and harmonies of their paintings. Gauguin no longer used line and colour to replicate an actual scene, as he had as an Impressionist, but rather explored the capacity of those pictorial means to induce a particular feeling in the viewer. Late in October 1888 Gauguin traveled to Arles , in the south of France, to stay with Vincent van Gogh (partly as a favour to van Gogh’s brother, Theo, an art dealer who had agreed to represent him). Early that year, van Gogh had moved to Arles, hoping to found the “Studio of the South,” where like-minded painters would gather to create a new, personally expressive art. However, as soon as Gauguin arrived, the two volatile artists often engaged in heated exchanges about art’s purpose.

The style of the two men’s work from this period has been classified as Post-Impressionist because it shows an individual, personal development of Impressionism’s use of colour, brushstroke, and non-traditional subject matter. For example, Gauguin’s Old Women of Arles (Mistral) (1888) portrays a group of women moving through a flattened, arbitrarily conceived landscape in a solemn procession. As in much of his work from this period, Gauguin applied thick paint in a heavy manner to raw canvas ; in his rough technique and in the subject matter of religious peasants, the artist found something approaching his burgeoning “primitive” ideal. Old Women of Arles (Mistral), oil on jute by Paul Gauguin, 1888; in … Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1934.391/Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Gauguin had planned to remain in Arles through the spring, but his relationship with van Gogh grew even more tumultuous .

After what Gauguin claimed was an attempt to attack him with a razor, van Gogh reportedly mutilated his own left ear. Gauguin then left for Paris after a stay of only two months. Although this version of the story has been accepted for more than 100 years, art historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans examined contemporary police records and the artists’ correspondence and concluded, in Van Gogh’s Ohr: Paul Gauguin und der Pakt des Schweigens (2008; “Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence”), that it was actually Gauguin who mutilated van Gogh’s ear and that he used a sword, not a razor. They concluded that the artists had agreed to give the self-mutilation version of the story to protect Gauguin. For the next several years, Gauguin alternated between living in Paris and Brittany. In Paris he became acquainted with the avant-garde literary circles of Symbolist poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé , Arthur Rimbaud , and Paul Verlaine .

These poets, who advocated abandoning traditional forms in order to embody inner emotional and spiritual life, saw their equivalent in the visual arts in the work of Gauguin. In a famous essay in the Mercure de France in 1891, the critic Albert Aurier declared Gauguin to be the leader of a group of Symbolist artists, and he defined his work as “ideational, symbolic, synthetic , subjective, and decorative.” After finding Pont-Aven spoiled by tourists, Gauguin relocated to the remote village of Le Pouldu. There, in a heightened pursuit of raw expression, he began to focus upon the ancient monuments of medieval religion, crosses, and calvaries, incorporating their simple, rigid forms into his compositions, as seen in The Yellow Christ (1889). While such works built upon the lessons of colour and brushstroke he learned from French Impressionism, they rejected the lessons of perspectival space that had been developed in Western art since the Renaissance .

He expressed his distaste for the corruption he saw in contemporary Western civilization in the carved and painted wood relief Be in Love and You Will Be Happy (1889), in which a figure in the upper left, crouching to hide her body, was meant to represent Paris as, in his words, a “rotten Babylon .” As such works suggest, Gauguin began to long for a more removed environment in which to work. After considering and rejecting northern Vietnam and Madagascar, he applied for a grant from the French government to travel to Tahiti. The Yellow Christ, oil on canvas by Paul Gauguin, 1889; in the … Courtesy of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo Tahiti Eyjafjallajökull volcano Gauguin arrived in Papeete in June 1891. His romantic image of Tahiti as an untouched paradise derived in part from Pierre Loti ’s novel Le Mariage de Loti (1880). Disappointed by the extent to which French colonization had actually corrupted Tahiti, he attempted to immerse himself in what he believed were the authentic aspects of the culture .

He employed Tahitian titles, such as Fatata te miti (1892; “Near the Sea”) and Manao tupapau (1892; “The Spirit of the Dead Watching”), used Oceanic iconography, and portrayed idyllic landscapes and suggestive spiritual settings. In an attempt to further remove himself from inherited Western conventions, Gauguin emulated Oceanic traditions in his sculptures and woodcuts from this period, which he gave a deliberately rough-hewn look. The Moon and the Earth, oil on burlap by Paul Gauguin, 1893; in the Museum of Modern Art, … Photograph by Katie Chao. Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Lillie P. Bliss Collection Gauguin returned to France in July 1893, believing that his new work would bring him the success that had so long eluded him. More so than ever, the outspoken artist affected the persona of an exotic outsider, carrying on a famous affair with a woman known as “Anna the Javanese.” In 1894 he conceived a plan to publish a book of his impressions of Tahiti, illustrated with his own woodcuts, titled Noa Noa.

This project and a one-man exhibit at the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel met with little acceptance, however, and in July 1895 he left France for Tahiti for the final time. The Seed of the Areoi, oil on burlap by Paul Gauguin, 1892; in the Museum of Modern Art, New … Photograph by Trish Mayo. Museum of Modern Art, New York City, The William S. Paley Collection Before the 1890s Gauguin flattened his imagery with sometimes unsuccessful results, but throughout that decade his “primitivism” became less forced. The influences of J.-A.-D. Ingres and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes led him to create increasingly rounded and modeled forms and a more sinuous line; as a result, Gauguin’s images became more luxuriant and more naturally poetic as he developed marvelously orchestrated tonal harmonies. He achieved the consummate expression of his developing vision in 1897 in his chief Tahitian work, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897).

An enormous contemplation of life and death told through a series of figures, beginning with a baby and ending with a shriveled old woman, the work is surrounded by a dreamlike, poetic aura that is extraordinarily powerful. Mahana no Atua (“Day of God”), woodcut with watercolour on … Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1948.267/Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago Increasingly disgusted with the rising Western influence in the French colony, Gauguin again sought a more remote environment, this time on the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, where he moved in September 1901. He purchased land there and, with the help of his neighbours, he built a home that he called “the house of pleasure.” Conceived as a total work of art decorated with elaborately carved friezes, the house was possibly inspired by Maori works he had seen in Auckland , New Zealand . By 1902 an advanced case of syphilis restricted his mobility, and he concentrated his remaining energy on drawing and writing, especially his memoir, Avant et après (published posthumously in 1923).

After a quarrel with French authorities, he considered moving again, this time to Spain, but his declining health and a pending lawsuit prohibited any change. He died alone in his “house of pleasure.” Assessment Gauguin’s influence was immense and varied. His legacy rests partly in his dramatic decision to reject the materialism of contemporary culture in favour of a more spiritual, unfettered lifestyle. It also rests in his tireless experimentation. Scholars have long identified him with a range of stylistic movements, and the challenge of defining his oeuvre , particularly the late work, attests to the uniqueness of his vision. Along with the work of his great contemporaries Cézanne and van Gogh, Gauguin’s innovations inspired a whole generation of artists. In 1889–90 many of the young followers who had gathered around him at Pont-Aven utilized Gauguin’s ideas to form the Nabis group. The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch owed much to Gauguin’s use of line, and the painters of the Fauve group— Henri Matisse in particular—profited from his use of colour in their own daring compositions.

In Germany, too, Gauguin’s influence was strong in the work of German Expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner . Gauguin’s use of Oceanic iconography and his stylistic simplifications greatly affected the young Pablo Picasso , inspiring his own appreciation of African art and hence the evolution of Cubism . In this way, through both his stylistic advances and his rejection of empirical representation in favour of conceptual representation, Gauguin helped open the door to the development of 20th-century art. Self-portrait by Paul Gauguin, oil on wood, 1889; in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery … Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.150 Researchers investigating Paul Gauguin’s unconventional printmaking technique. Courtesy of Northwestern University (A Britannica Publishing Partner) Paul Gauguin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) (1848-1903). The leading French painter of the postimpressionist period, Paul Gauguin was at his best when he could paint what he called "natural" men and women living with their fears, faiths, myths, and primitive passions.

He created many of his works while living on Tahiti from 1891 to 1893 and 1895 to 1901 and the Marquesas Islands from 1901 to 1903 in the southern Pacific Ocean. Gauguin was attracted to primitivism because while working in this style he could present clearly intelligible images, use simple color harmonies, and make pictures that were decorative and pleasing to the eye. Article Contributors Paul Gauguin, Bio, Paintings, Tahiti, Van Gogh Paul Gauguin Biography Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was a Post-Impressionist painter. Paul was born on June 7, 1848 in Paris, France and is best known for his experimentation of combining arts into modern art to capture the core of his drawings. He was influenced by the colonist style of painting, which opened the door to a primitivism style of work and later back to pastoral. More than just a painter, Gauguin influenced wood engraving and woodcuts as a form of art. In 1851, Paul's family moved from France to Peru, due to their current political times.

His father died during the travel to Peru, which left his mother and sister to fend for themselves. Paul lived in Peru with his uncle and remaining family. A place that would later influence some of Paul's art. At the age of seven, Paul moved back to France, where he began to learn French and did very well in his studies. When Paul turned seventeen, he signed up as a merchant marine where he was a pilot's assistant. After three years he joined the navy, serving for just two years. In 1871, he returned to Paris and became a stock broker. In 1873, he married a woman named Mette Sophie Gad and had five children. Ever since Gauguin was a child, he was interested in art, painting in his free time and visiting art galleries. Paul would also buy work from up and coming artists, around this time he developed a friendship with Camille Pissarro, who would introduce him to other artists. Over time Gauguin rented a studio and showed his paintings in impressionist exhibitions from 1881 to 1882.

In 1884, Gauguin and his family moved to Copenhagen, where he once again chased a business career as a stock brocker. In 1885, Paul left his family in Denmark and moved back to Paris. In 1887, Paul spent several months in Saint Pierre in Martinique, with his artist friend Charles Laval. The two lived in a place together, referring to it as the 'negro hut'. During his stay, Paul would put out between ten and twenty pictures a day. He traveled all over the city and eventually fell into contact with a small community of indian immigrants. The meeting influenced Gauguin to begin incorporating indian symbols into his artwork. While in Martinique, he would suffer from dysentery and marsh fever. Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers by Gauguin One of Paul's best friends was fellow artist, Vincent Van Gogh. Much like Van Gogh, Paul also suffered from severe depression, even attempting suicide one time. Gauguin would later tire of impressionism, so he turned to African and Asian art styles. At the time, there was a big calling for other cultures of arts in Europe.

Paul was invited to be a part of the 1989 exhibition organized by Les XX. Later, Gauguin made a move back towards Cloisonnism, an art that was named by Edouard Dujardin. After that, Paul began to take his style towards a Synthetism style. In 1891, Gauguin moved to a village in Tahiti and painted "Fatata te Miti", "Ia Orana Maria", and other parts of Tahitian life. Paul moved to Punaauia in 1887, where he painted "Where Do We Come From". He then lived the remainder of his life in the Marquesas Islands and only went back to France once. In 1903, Paul was sentenced to three years in prison because of problems with the church and government. However, he died before sitting his prison sentence out. Paul Gauguin died on May 8, 1903, due to syphilis. He was only 54 years old and is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Atuona, Hiva 'Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

Tahitian boys at table Art Print by Paul Gauguin at King & McGaw About the artwork After being unable to conform to the life of a bourgeois gentlemen Paul Gauguin left his put upon wife, five children and job at the bank to pursue his dream of becoming an artist, travelling to Tahiti to paint the island and its community. Imagining an exotic paradise, the artist's hopes were dashed upon arrival to find a colonised, christianised community. In spite of this Gauguin's depictions of the place show a tropical paradise, free from the burdens of respectability and sexual restraint, with the focus of his work overwhelmingly the native women. In keeping with this ideal the works are painted in bold vibrant colours, signalling a clear break from impressionism. With infrequent trips made back to Paris Gauguin became an increasingly tragic figure, his work failed to make any impact and he became attached to the myth he'd created, unwilling to move back to France in fear of losing face. Despite being unable to sell his works during his lifetime, Gauguin's Tahitian paintings sell for tens of millions, considered amongst the most important of post-impressionist works.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art Works of Art (16) Essay Paul Gauguin styled himself and his art as “savage.” Although he began his artistic career with the Impressionists in Paris, during the late 1880s he fled farther and farther from urban civilization in search of an edenic paradise where he could create pure, “primitive” art. Yet his self-imposed exile to the South Seas was not so much an escape from Paris as a bid to become the new leader of the Parisian avant-garde. Gauguin cultivated and inhabited a dual image of himself as, on the one hand, a wolfish wild man and on the other, a sensitive martyr for art. His notoriety helped to promote his astonishing work, which freed color from mimetic representation and distorted form for expressive purposes. Gauguin pioneered the Symbolist art movement in France and set the stage for Fauvism and Expressionism. Early Career and Training Gauguin came late to art.

There is little in his early life to presage his phenomenal artistic career; however, his peripatetic upbringing established his restless need for voyage to exotic destinations. Descended on his mother’s side from Peruvian nobility, he spent his early childhood in Lima. He would later misrepresent his ancestry to portray himself as an Incan savage. Gauguin’s nomadic life continued when he joined the merchant marines and visited ports as far flung as India and the Black Sea. By 1873, he was married and settled in Paris as a stockbroker, thanks to his guardian Gustave Arosa, a wealthy Spanish financier in Paris with a formidable collection of modern French painting. Through Arosa, Gauguin developed an amateur interest in art. He met Camille Pissarro at Arosa’s home and by 1879 became an unofficial pupil as well as patron of the artist. Pissarro soon invited the ambitious Gauguin to exhibit with the Impressionists. After the stock market crashed in 1882, Gauguin decided to become a full-time artist.

He painted Impressionist landscapes, still lifes, and interiors heavily influenced not only by Pissarro but also by Paul Cézanne , whom he had met through Pissarro. Gauguin adopted and adapted Cézanne’s parallel, constructive brushstrokes; he in fact bought several paintings by Cézanne in order to study the brushwork more carefully. Nevertheless, Gauguin’s pictures showed a preoccupation with dreams, mystery, and evocative symbols that revealed his own artistic inclinations. He also sculpted, carved wood reliefs and objects, and made ceramics , signaling an interest in three-dimensional decorative objects from the beginning of his career ( 67.187.45a,b ). Brittany and Beyond Gauguin’s retrogressive form of modernism brought him to Brittany ( 22.82.2(9) ), Panama, and Martinique ( 22.82.2(4) ) in 1886–87 in the hopes of retrieving some lost, uncorrupted past from which art could be renewed.

During his second visit to Pont-Aven, Brittany in 1888, his encounter with the artist Émile Bernard resulted in the groundbreaking painting Vision After the Sermon ( National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh ). This work became the clarion call for Symbolist art. Dropping the Cézannist brushstroke, Gauguin used broad, matte fields of stridently non-naturalistic color to express the transcendent visions of Breton peasant women. In October of 1888, Gauguin left Brittany for Arles, where he joined Vincent van Gogh , whose brother Theo was his art dealer. Gauguin encouraged Van Gogh to paint as he himself did, from memory and imagination ( 22.82.2(10) ), rather than from motifs in nature. Their collaboration ended abruptly when Van Gogh had a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear. Back in Paris, Gauguin was eager to make his new work known to a Parisian public. He helped organize a renegade exhibition of his and his friends’ work at a café owned by a Mr. Volpini on the official grounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle.

The Volpini exhibition, as it became known, included a suite of ten zincographs printed on dazzling yellow paper; Gauguin came to associate this color with modernity and spirituality after his time with Van Gogh. Gauguin’s Volpini suite represented his first foray into printmaking and was meant to be a summary of his work since the last Impressionist exhibition of 1886. However, the zincographs present both reproductions of recent paintings ( 22.82.2(10) ) and evocative translations of paintings that become unique, independent works themselves ( 22.82.2(4) ; 22.82.2(9) ). Working with black crayon directly on a zinc plate forced Gauguin to simplify his compositions even more than in his paintings and focus on form and tonal contrast as a means of expression. First Tahitian Trip The Volpini exhibition was a commercial failure and a dejected Gauguin continued his peregrinations in Brittany, where he painted a series of self-portraits relating himself to Jesus Christ .

But the colonial pavilions at the 1889 Exposition Universelle had planted a seed in the artist’s mind: to move to an exotic, preindustrial locale and escape his money troubles. He eventually set sail for Tahiti in 1891. His first major Tahitian canvas, Ia Orana Maria (Hail Mary), dresses a Christian theme in Polynesian guise ( 51.112.2 ). A Tahitian Virgin Mary is worshipped by two other Tahitian women dressed in colorful pareus in a lush, tropical landscape. The composition is based on a photograph that Gauguin had brought with him of a bas-relief in the Javanese temple of Borobudur. Another photograph that Gauguin packed, of Manet ‘s Olympia, inspired the master work from his first Tahitian trip, Manao Tupapau (Spirit of the Dead Watching) (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures are thus a hybrid of various Western and Eastern sources, creating a new synthetic style that combined decorative abstract patterning with figuration.

In The Siesta, to take a further example, Gauguin updates the fête galante genre as a languorous scene of Tahitian women relaxing on a porch in the humid tropical heat ( 1993.400.3 ). After he returned to Paris in 1893, he began creating a book accompanied by woodcuts , entitled Noa Noa (Fragrant), to explain and contextualize the bizarre paintings he had made in Tahiti ( 37.97 ). The intentionally crude, richly textured woodcuts reconfigured motifs from his paintings to evoke an atmosphere and a vision of Tahiti as mysterious, erotic, and savage ( 36.6.2 ; 36.6.3 ). Gauguin experimented with various colored papers, inks, and processes such as offset printing to explore different artistic and emotional effects ( 36.6.4 ; 36.6.5 ). Second Tahitian Trip and Death With financial success continuing to elude him in France, Gauguin decided to return to Tahiti permanently in 1895.

He was suffering from syphilis by this time, yet between hospitalizations, he was able to paint his masterpiece, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? ( Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ). This monumental allegorical painting served as a synthesis or culmination of his art. Afterwards, his Tahitian work became increasingly self-referential; he drew and painted the same figures over and over again, cutting and pasting them in different configurations and settings ( 1996.418 ; 49.58.1 ). For instance, the young women in Two Tahitian Women appear in two other monumental paintings in 1898 and 1899. Despite the arcadian content of his pictures, Gauguin became disillusioned with the Westernization and colonial corruption of Tahiti. He left in 1901 for the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa, perpetually searching for a lost paradise. He died there in 1903, having become a legend for a new generation of artists halfway across the world in Paris. Cindy Kang Institute of Fine Arts, New York University March 2011 Citation Kang, Cindy.

“Paul Gauguin (1848–1903).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (March 2011) Further Reading Brettell, Richard, et al.. The Art of Paul Gauguin. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1988. Eisenman, Stephen. Gauguin's Skirt. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997. Ives, Colta, et al.. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. See on MetPublications Jirat-Wasiutynski, Vojtech. Technique and Meaning in the Paintings of Paul Gauguin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Shackelford, George T. M., and Claire Frèches-Thory. Gauguin Tahiti. Exhibition catalogue. Boston: MFA Publications, 2004. Silverman, Debora.

Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. Additional Essays by Cindy Kang Kang, Cindy. “ Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) .” (May 2011) Related Paul Gauguin, Life of Paul Gauguin, Paul Gauguin Artwork | MisterArt.com Woman with a Flower (1891) Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897) Paul Gauguin was raised in Peru, where he developed a deep appreciation and understanding of non-western cultures that is apparent in his life's work. Gaugin resettled in France as a twenty-three year old and became a stockbroker. It was during this time that Gauguin began to paint. A friendship with the Impressionist, Pissarro, helped Gaugin to nourish his own talent and meet other artists. In 1887, Gauguin visited Panama and Martinique, and despite the harsh conditions was inspired to complete several paintings.

Gauguin became increasingly frustrated with Impressionism, feeling that it was insufficient to capture the essence of the exotic places and people he was so powerfully drawn to. When Gauguin was 35, he left his family and career to devote his life to painting. Gauguin created paintings marked by free composition and brilliant coloration. The bright colors of his paintings, with their heavy outlines, coined a new style, cloisonnisme, named after the craft of staining glass. Around 1888 Gauguin left France to live in Martinique and, later, Tahiti. It was here that he sought to break loose from what he perceived to be a contrived sense of reality and immersed himself in the lives of the natives of the area. He painted the Polynesian culture from daily observation and folk tales. The space and depth in his canvases became flattened, the forms were reduced to essential shapes, and his colors gained in intensity. Gaugin attempted to return to France and reintroduce his work, but was not successful and soon found himself back in Tahiti. Gauguin had found a world in which he could devote himself to his paintings.

Two posthumous retrospectives in Paris brought Gauguin's work to light, where it garnered considerable acclaim from artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Similar Artists Paul Gauguin - Biography - IMDb Paul Gauguin Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Personal Quotes (15) Overview (3) Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin Mini Bio (1) Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, 1848, in Paris, France. His father, Clovis Gaughin, was a Republican editor who died on his way to Peru while escaping from Louis Napoleon. His widowed mother was a Peruvian Creole daughter of writer Flora Tristan. Young Gauguin spent early childhood in Lima, Peru, until 1855, then studied in Orleans, France. He joined the Merchant Marine in 1865 and spent the next six years sailing between France and South America, then spent a hitch in the French navy. In 1871 he returned to France, settled in Paris and became a stockbroker.

In 1874 Gauguin saw the first Impressionist exhibition, which gave him his desire to become an artist. Enchanted with art, he spent some 17,000 francs on paintings by Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and other impressionists. Gauguin discovered art as a way to escape from the pressures of civilization. He met Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne in 1874, and joined them for painting on weekends and holidays. His debut in the Salon took place in 1876. He also participated in the Impressionist exhibitions in 1879, 1880 and 1882. By 1884 he became a full-time artist, partly because the bank that employed him had difficulties. Paris became too expensive and Gauguin moved with his wife and five children to Rouen, then to Copenhagen, Denmark, and then back to Paris. In 1885 he and his wife separated and she took the children with her to her family. Gauguin went into depression and at one time attempted suicide.

He met Vincent van Gogh in Paris in 1886 and they became friends. Van Gogh's brother Theo was also Gauguin's art dealer. In 1888 he received an invitation from Vincent and joined him in October of that year in Arles. There Van Gogh presented him several paintings of sunflowers, but their cooperation lasted only for two months. Their arguments about art and life were exacerbated by drinking and rivalry for prostitutes. Van Gogh's mental state was alternating between fits of depression and lucidity. At times his madness led to aggressive actions. In December of 1888 Van Gogh attacked Gauguin with an open razor, was stopped, but eventually cut part of his own ear off and gave it to a prostitute. Gauguin sent a note to Van Gogh's brother Theo and left forever. In 1891 Gauguin organized an exhibition to finance his project of living and working in places where he could "live with ecstasy, calmness and art." His paintings were bought by Edgar Degas and others, and the proceeds amounted to 10,000 francs.

He started his flight from the trappings of civilization by becoming a full-time artist and this time he sailed to the tropics for good. Gauguin left behind "everything that is artificial and conventional." He settled in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands. There he was accepted by the native community and adopted their traditional lifestyle. He fathered a son by his Tahitian model Pau'ura and a daughter with his Tahitian model Vaa'oho. From 1893 to 1895 he made farewell visits to Paris and Copenhagen. There he brought some of his Polynesian-inspired works to show. Gauguin gradually parted from Impressionism. He discovered the primitive art of Polynesia and was influenced by it. He was calling his new style "synthetic symbolism." Gauguin transformed his art to radical simplifications of composition by giving his paintings an ornamental character. His "Arearea" (Joyousness 1892), "Nave", "Nave Moe" (Miraculous Source 1894) and other paintings made in Tahiti are sincere depictions of an untamed nature with people being an organic part of it.

His largest work was painted in Tahiti, the philosophical and highly decorative "D'ou venons nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous?" (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1897), now in the permanent collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Art. Paul Gauguin moved around several islands of Polynesia and finally settled in Atuona, Marqueses. He was fined by the colonial administration, had problems with the Catholic church and was sentenced to three months in prison. Before he could begin his sentence, however, he died on May 8, 1903, and was laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery, Atuona, Hiva'Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Shelokhonov Spouse (1) (1873 - 8 May 1903) (his death) (5 children) Personal Quotes (15) Paul Gauguin / Te raau rahi / 1891 Preview the AMICA Library Public Collection in Luna Browser Now Cultures and time periods represented range from contemporary art, to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian works. Types of works include paintings, drawings, watercolors, sculptures, costumes, jewelry, furniture, prints, photographs, textiles, decorative art, books and manuscripts. Gain access to this incredible resource through either a monthly or a yearly subscription and search the entire collection from your desktop, compare multiple images side by side and zoom into the minute details of the images. Visit for more information on the collection, click on the link below the revolving thumbnail to the right, or email us at amica@luna-img.com .

Creator Name: Gauguin, Paul Materials and Techniques: oil on canvas Dimensions: Unframed: 74cm x 92.8cm Inscriptions: signed lower right: P Gauguin 91 [inscribed lower left: Te raau rahi] AMICA Contributor: The Cleveland Museum of Art Owner Location: Cleveland, Ohio, USA ID Number: 1975.263 Rights: Context: Leaving behind his family and successful career as a stockbroker, Gauguin left France in 1891 and went to live on the Polynesian island of Tahiti. Disgusted with the materialistic values of European civilization, he sought to capture the expressive and magical qualities inherent in Tahitian art. He wrote, "I have escaped everything that is artificial and conventional. Here I enter into Truth, become one with nature." This canvas is among the first paintings he completed on the island. The simplifiedforms and rich colors were intended to be both symbolic and mysterious, evoking private thoughts and emotions.

"I obtain symphonies," he wrote, "harmonies that represent nothing real in the absolute sense of the word." AMICA ID: CMA_.1975.263 AMICA Library Year: 1998 Media Metadata Rights: Copyright, The Cleveland Museum of Art AMICA PUBLIC RIGHTS: a) Access to the materials is granted for personal and non-commercial use. b) A full educational license for non-commercial use is available from Cartography Associates at c) Licensed users may continue their examination of additional materials provided by Cartography Associates, and d) commercial rights are available from the rights holder.

Question: In 1891, Paul Gaugin left France to live where?
Answer: Tahiti