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Paul Eugene-Henri Gauguin
(Jun.7,1848, Paris - May 8,1903, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia) French Oil Painting Artist Biography.
Paul Eugine-Henri Gauguin is one of the leading French oil painters of the Post-impressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. Paul Gauguin was nursed in the bosom of Impressionism. His attitudes to art were deeply influenced by his experience of its first exhibition and he himself participated in those of 1880 - 1882. The son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole, whose mother had been a writer, he was brought up in Lima, Peru, joined the merchant navy in 1865 and in 1872 began a successful career as a stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he began to oil paint on weekends. In 1874 he saw the first Impressionist exhibition, which completely entranced him and confirmed his desire to become a painter and he spent 17,000 Francs on works by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir. Pissarro took a special interest in his attempts at painting, emphasizing that he should "look for the nature that suits your temperament", and in 1876 Gauguin had a landscape in the style of Pissarro accepted at the Salon. In the meantime Pissarro had introduced him to Paul Cézanne, for whose works he conceived a great respect, so much so that the older man began to fear that he would steal his "sensations". All three worked together for some time at Pontoise, where Pissarro and Gauguin drew pencil sketches of each other. In 1883 the bank that employed Gauguin got into difficulties, so he was able to paint every day. He settled for a while in Rouen, partly because Paris was too expensive for a man with five children and partly because he thought it would be full of wealthy patrons who might buy his works. Rouen proved a disappointment and he joined his wife Mette Gauguin and children who had gone back to Denmark, where she had been born. His experience in Denmark was not a happy one and he separated from his wife and five children in 1885. Having returned to Paris, he went to paint in Pont-Aven, a well-known resort for artists. Allying himself with the Impressionists, he exhibited with them from 1879 to 1886.
The next year he sailed for Panama and Martinique. In protest against the "disease" of civilization, he determined to live primitively, but illness forced him to return to France. The next years were spent in Paris and Brittany, with a brief but tragic stay with Vincent Van Gogh at Arles.
In 1888, Gauguin and Emile Bernard proposed a synthesis theory of art, emphasizing the use of flat planes and bright, non-naturalistic color in conjunction with symbolic or primitive subjects. The Yellow Christ (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo) is characteristic of this period. In 1891, Gauguin sold 30 canvases with Degas buying several paintings. There were still evident in these new works traces of pure Impressionism and of the very clear influence of Cézanne, as in the Portrait of Marie Lagadu, (1890, Art Institute of Chicago) a fact pointed up by a Cézanne still life owned by Gauguin which is shown behind her, but basically this period marked the parting of the ways between Gauguin and Impressionism. With the the proceeds of 10,0000 francs form the sale, he went to Tahiti.
Gauguin's art has all the appearance of a flight from civilization, of a search for new ways of life, more primitive, more real and more sincere. His break away from a solid middle-class world, abandoning family, children and job, his refusal to accept easy glory and easy gain are the best-known aspects of Gauguin's fascinating life and personality. This picture, Two women on the beach was painted in 1891, shortly after Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti. During his first stay there, Gauguin discovered primitive art, with its flat forms and the violent colors belonging to an untamed nature. And then, with absolute sincerity, he transferred them onto canvas.
There he spent two years living poorly, painting some of his finest oil paintings and writing Noa Noa, an autobiographical novel set in Tahiti. In 1893 he returned to France, creating a legacy and exhibited his work, rousing some interest but making very little money. Disheartened and sick from syphilis, which had afflicted him for many years, he again set out for the South Seas in 1895. There his last years were spent in poverty, despair and physical suffering. In 1897 he attempted suicide and failed, living to paint for five more years. He died on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands.
There are major examples of Gauguin's work in the United States, including The Day of the God (Art Institute of Chicago), Ia Orana Maria (1891, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and By the Sea (1892, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.)
Today Paul Eugene-Henri Gauguin is recognized as a highly influential founding father of modern art and one of the worlds artist.
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The Yellow Christ
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Two women on the beach
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The Day of the God
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By the Sea
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Mette Gauguin
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