Paul Gaugin by Forty Sandra

Author:Forty, Sandra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TAJ Books International
Published: 2013-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Portrait of Annah the Javanese, 1893

On April 4, 1891, Gauguin left Paris and was in Papeete, Tahiti, by June 8. Meanwhile, back in Paris, his mistress, Juliette Huais, a seamstress and former model, gave birth to his daughter, Germaine. She was the model for The Loss of Virginity.

But life in Tahiti was disappointing; it was not as cheap to live as he expected and art supplies were prohibitively expensive. The natives were friendly enough, but didn't accept him into their society. Nobody locally was interested in buying his paintings and back in Paris he was being quickly forgotten. To make matters worse, his health was deteriorating.

The only bright spot on the horizon was that Mette had secured him an exhibition in Copenhagen to which he sent eight Tahitian paintings. The show was a success. His paintings sold. His name was becoming known in Scandinavia and Germany, and his prospects seemed better–but not in Paris. He scraped together enough money to pay for his passage back to Paris in June, but by August 30 when he arrived in Marsailles he was very ill and weak.

During his two years in Tahiti, Gauguin had painted 44 pictures. His old friend, Edgar Degas, was impressed with them and persuaded the dealer Durand-Ruel to give him a one-man show in November 1893. People were attracted by his flamboyant personality and colorful appearance, but the paintings were not understood by most viewers and only 10 were sold. Back in France he found life unsatisfactory, but continued to paint his South Seas idyll with pictures such as Mahana No Atua (Day of the God). With his uncle's death, he inherited 13,000 francs and with the money rented an apartment on rue Vercingetorix, which he decorated in Tahitian fashion and where he held artistic soirées.

It was quickly apparent that his future was not in Paris, so Gauguin returned to Le Pouldu in Pont-Aven. Even there he found motivating himself to paint quite difficult. After being badly injured in a fight with four sailors, he was recovering in the hospital when his young mistress, Annah the Javanese, rushed to Paris where she ransacked his studio and stole everything of value–leaving his paintings–before disappearing from his life.

In February 1895 Gauguin held another sale at Hôtel Drouot to fund yet another return to Tahiti, but the sale was disappointing. Nevertheless, by September Gauguin was back in Papeete but money was short and his health very poor. Two years later he moved to Punaauia on the western side of Tahiti where he painted one of his greatest works, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? He claimed to have drunk arsenic at around this time in a failed suicide attempt.

In April he heard that his daughter Aline had died four months earlier of pneumonia. He blamed Mette and sent her accusatory letters. Despite his heartache and depressive bouts, Gauguin painted some of his greatest works in Tahiti, many of them portraits of his underage lovers. He lived life to excess, enjoying drinking, smoking, and fornicating with the native girls.

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