Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin, a renowned French artist initially schooled in Impressionism, broke away from its focus on the everyday world to pioneer a new style known as Symbolism. Started traveling to the South Pacific in the early 1890s he developed a new style that fused everyday observation with mystical symbolism. This style was heavily influenced by the "primitive" arts of Africa, Asia, and French Polynesia that were popular at the time.

Biography of Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was born in 1848 in Paris, France. He was the son of Clovis Gauguin, a journalist, and Alina Maria Chazal, the daughter of Flora Tristan, a leading socialist and feminist activist of her time. When Gauguin was three years old, his family fled Paris for Lima, Peru, due to France's unstable political climate, which restricted freedom of the press. Tragically, on the trans-Atlantic journey, his father became ill and passed away. Following this loss, for the next four years, Gauguin, along with his sister and mother, resided with extended relatives in Lima.

In 1855, with France entering a more politically stable period, the remaining family members returned to settle in Orleans, a north-central French city, where they lived with Gauguin's grandfather. There, Paul began his formal education and later entered compulsory service in the merchant marine at the age of seventeen. After three years, he joined the French Navy. Gauguin eventually returned to Paris in 1872 and found employment as a stockbroker.

After his mother died in 1867, Gauguin lived with his appointed guardian, Gustave Arosa, a wealthy art patron and collector. Under Arosa's care, Gauguin was introduced to the works of Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and the pre-Impressionist Barbizon school of French landscape painting. This exposure to the art of his predecessors would deeply influence Gauguin's future work.

In 1873, Gauguin married Mette-Sophie Gad. The couple and their five children moved from Paris to Copenhagen. Gauguin, now married to a Danish woman, began collecting art, acquiring a modest collection of Impressionist paintings by artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro. By 1880, Gauguin began painting in his spare time, adopting an Impressionist style evident in works like "Still Life with Fruit and Lemons" (1880). He frequented galleries and eventually rented his own studio. During this period, Gauguin also painted alongside newly befriended artists like Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne and even participated in the official Impressionist exhibitions in Paris in 1881 and 1882.

Gauguin's career as a stockbroker ended with the financial crash of 1882, and by 1885 he was searching for a new way to support himself. Struggling with bouts of depression, Gauguin made the pivotal decision to focus on painting as a new career path. Despite lacking formal artistic training, he returned to Paris to establish himself as a professional artist. Meanwhile, his wife Mette-Sophie and their children settled with extended family in Denmark.

In mid-1886, Gauguin embarked on a several-month stay in Brittany, specifically at Pont-Aven, which proved to be a significant turning point. There, he developed a Symbolist style characterized by flat, luminous colors reminiscent of stained-glass windows, reflecting the natural and spiritual experiences of the local Breton people. During this trip and another visit to Brittany in 1889, Gauguin aimed to achieve a new "synthesis" of color, composition, and subject matter. Unlike the Impressionists, who often painted from live models or landscapes, Gauguin combined numerous studies to convey the inner life of his subjects rather than their outward appearance.

Two years later Paul Gauguin embarked on a journey to Panama and Martinique. During this time, he frequently resided in a hut with his friend and fellow artist, Charles Laval. These expeditions were undertaken to explore the so-called primitive cultures, which would later influence Gauguin's artistic style and subject matter.

By the late 1880s, Gauguin's art had captured the attention of Vincent van Gogh, another talented painter who, like Gauguin, struggled with periods of depression. Despite their distinct Impressionistic styles, both artists showed potential for new artistic directions. They initiated a regular correspondence, exchanging paintings, including self-portraits. In 1888, upon van Gogh's invitation, the two artists lived and worked together for nine weeks at van Gogh's rented house in Arles, located in the south of France. Theo van Gogh, Vincent's brother and a professional art dealer, acted as Gauguin's primary business manager and artistic confidant during this period.

During their nine weeks together, both Gauguin and van Gogh produced a significant number of paintings. Gauguin created his now-famous works, such as the "Night Café at Arles (Mme Ginoux)" and the iconic "Vision After the Sermon (Jacob's Fight with the Angel)," both from 1888. At this time, neither artist had a particularly established reputation in the art world. Instead, they were seen as highly experimental painters seeking to break away from the mature Impressionism of Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro.

The intense artistic exchange between Gauguin and van Gogh came to a dramatic end after nine weeks. Van Gogh's emotional struggles, marked by depressive and occasionally violent episodes, led to the dissolution of their artistic partnership. Despite this, they would always hold mutual admiration for each other's work.

Following this period, Gauguin briefly returned to Paris. However, he had become disinterested in Impressionism and the emerging style known as Post-Impressionism. Instead, Gauguin focused on further developing his Symbolist approach to painting, characterized by flat applications of paint and bold palettes. An example of this new direction is seen in his painting "The Yellow Christ" (1889), heavily influenced by Japanese prints, African folk art, and the vivid imagery he encountered during his travels to South America and the French East Indies (modern-day Caribbean).

In 1891, after years of being separated from his wife and children, Gauguin left his family behind and moved alone to French Polynesia, where he would spend the rest of his life as a perpetual solitary wanderer. This decision marked the culmination of Gauguin's growing desire to escape what he perceived as the artificiality of European culture for a more "natural" existence.

During his final decade, Gauguin resided in Tahiti, then Punaauia, before settling in the Marquesas Islands. During this period, he painted more traditional portraits, such as "Tahitian Women on the Beach" (1891), "The Moon and the Earth (Hina tefatou)" (1893), and "Two Tahitian Women" (1899). By 1899, he satirically referred to himself in a letter to a Paris colleague, stating that he painted "only on Sundays and holidays," ironically echoing the amateur artist he once was before dedicating himself fully to art. Shortly after this self-deprecating remark, Gauguin made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide through self-poisoning. 

In early May 1903, morally conflicted and weakened by drug addiction and frequent bouts of illness, Gauguin passed away at the age of 54 due to the degenerative effects of syphilis. He died in the Marquesas Islands, where he was laid to rest.

Paul Gauguin's Art Style

Paul Gauguin was a prominent figure during the late 19th century in a European cultural movement known as Primitivism. This term describes the Western fascination with less industrialized cultures and the romantic belief that non-Western peoples might possess a more genuine spirituality or a closer connection to the fundamental forces of the universe compared to their "artificial" European and American counterparts.

Having mastered Impressionist techniques for capturing the optical essence of nature, Gauguin delved into the study of religious communities in rural Brittany and landscapes in the Caribbean. Simultaneously, he immersed himself in the latest French ideas on painting and color theory, heavily influenced by recent scientific investigations into the intricate processes of visual perception. This diverse background led Gauguin towards the gradual development of a new form of "synthetic" painting. Rather than aiming for a purely documentary or mirror-like reflection of reality, his art became symbolic.

Driven by a desire for a direct connection with the natural world, inspired by his observations of communities in French Polynesia and other non-western cultures, Gauguin used painting as a philosophical meditation. His works pondered the profound questions of human existence, contemplating religious fulfillment and the quest for a closer bond with nature.