diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-0.txt | 2980 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/38848-h.htm | 3149 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg | bin | 0 -> 134150 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg | bin | 0 -> 156532 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg | bin | 0 -> 189551 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg | bin | 0 -> 159397 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg | bin | 0 -> 206164 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg | bin | 0 -> 182466 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg | bin | 0 -> 244884 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg | bin | 0 -> 178017 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg | bin | 0 -> 206737 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg | bin | 0 -> 246267 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-8.txt | 3369 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 72374 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 1966759 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/38848-h.htm | 3556 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg | bin | 0 -> 134150 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg | bin | 0 -> 156532 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg | bin | 0 -> 189551 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg | bin | 0 -> 159397 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg | bin | 0 -> 206164 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg | bin | 0 -> 182466 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg | bin | 0 -> 244884 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg | bin | 0 -> 178017 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg | bin | 0 -> 206737 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg | bin | 0 -> 246267 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848.txt | 3369 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/38848.zip | bin | 0 -> 72275 bytes |
31 files changed, 16439 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/38848-0.txt b/38848-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d649ef8 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2980 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 38848 *** + +PAUL GAUGUIN + +His Life and Art + +BY + +JOHN GOULD FLETCHER + + +_WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + +NICHOLAS L. BROWN + +NEW YORK + +MCMXXI + + + +[Illustration: Self-portrait of Gauguin.] + + + +TO + +M.T.H.S. + +WHO HELPED ME WITH + +ADVICE AND CRITICISM + + + +"Improvement makes straight roads; +but the crooked roads without improvement +are the roads of genius." + +WILLIAM BLAKE. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885 + PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889 + PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891 + PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 + PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + SELF-PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN, _Frontispiece_ + PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN'S MOTHER + THE PAINTER SCHUFFENECKER AND HIS FAMILY + STRUGGLE OF JACOB WITH THE ANGEL + THE IDOL + TAHITIAN WOMEN + HINA MARURU (FEAST TO HINA) + THE OLD SPIRIT + CALVARY + MATAMUA (OLDEN DAYS) + + + + +PAUL GAUGUIN + + + + +PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885 + + +About the middle of the last century, there occurred in Paris a series +of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future +history, secondary only to the days of the French Revolution. You will +seek Paris in vain for any public monument to these events, known as the +Revolution of 1848. Only the name of the hideously utilitarian Boulevard +Raspail may perhaps remind you, that in this year France achieved +another one of those political failures which have been so curiously +common in her history since 1789. + +In February of that year, King Louis Philippe and his ministers had fled +before the rising storm of popular feeling. It seemed at last that the +great popular revolution of the working classes, dreamed of by every +artist since 1789, proclaimed in the Rabelaisian caricatures of Daumier, +latent in the troubled Romanticism of the epoch, was at hand. A +provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the National +Assembly. But the provinces showed that it mattered little to them +whether the form of Government was changed or not. So long as the +peasant had his farm, his cow, his money safely stowed away in a +stocking, a hard-working wife, a pipe and a glass of wine, he was +content with things as they were. If the industrial classes of Paris +were starving, that was not his affair. He shared none of their fanatic +Socialism, none of their dreams of the millennium. He wanted to be left +alone. + +The National Assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate, and the +leaders of the Provisional Government discovered that they preferred to +stand with the majority rather than to fall with the Parisian +extremists. But the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle. On +the fifteenth of May, a mob attempted to take the Assembly by storm, and +failed. On the eighteenth, Lamartine, the former idol of the +Revolutionaries, was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech. The +Government found that it must either provide work and wages for the +Parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force. A scheme was +started, but it proved to be costly, and on the twenty-first of June the +Government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no +further with its project. Three days later the storm broke. Two hundred +and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets, crowned +with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men. For three days the mob +kept up a desperate resistance; then the last barricade fell, the blood +was washed off the pavements, the cause of "moderation" and "good sense" +was restored. + +There is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events. On the +seventh of June a son, Paul, was born to M. and Madame Gauguin, +residing in Paris. This infant, brought obscurely into the world to the +sound of cannon, was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of +Nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching +and as important in its effects as the great attempt of 1848. His life +was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, +the middle-class morality, of the late nineteenth century; his art was +to speak the promise of a renewed world, a world where man could again +walk naked, unashamed and free, as in Eden. He was destined to break +beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities, as the +revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the +government: but his ideas were to point the way to, new conceptions of +art and of life, which only the future can realize. + +Clovis Paul Gauguin, to give the father his full name, was a petty +journalist from Orleans. He had a post as collaborator on one of the +obscure newspapers of Liberal opinion, that so greatly flourished about +this time. His influence upon his son was slight, as is the case with +the fathers of most artists. It is to Madame Gauguin that we must turn +for an explanation of the character of her famous son. + +[Illustration: Portrait of Gauguin's mother.] + +Aline Marie Gauguin was the daughter of a certain Chazal, of whom we +know nothing, and of the then celebrated Socialist pamphleteer and +agitator, Flora Tristan. + +Flora Tristan was born in 1803 at Lima, Peru. Her father was a Spaniard +of noble descent, Mariano Tristan y Moscoso. He served as an officer in +the Peruvian Army, and probably took part in the wars of independence +which severed Peru from Spain, since we find him and his family later +occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the Republic. In 1818 +he sent his daughter to school in Paris. She eloped the next year with +Chazal and was disowned by her parents. After the birth of her child she +separated from her husband and returned to Peru, seeking a +reconciliation with her family. But the family had determined to do +nothing for the self-willed, impulsive daughter, and she drifted back to +Paris, where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of +strongly Socialistic tendencies. She became a pioneer of woman's +suffrage, of humanitarianism, of the trade-union movement. She toured +France making speeches. In 1836 she had the misfortune to meet Chazal +again in Paris, who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned +to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense. A few years later +she died in Bordeaux, and the trade-unions, remembering her zeal for +their cause and her personal beauty--which had moved them perhaps more +than the fervor of her speeches--subscribed the sum necessary to put up +a monument. + +Such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just +been born into the world. The tragic and violent union of Chazal and +Flora Tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became. +In Chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong +irritability; in Flora Tristan we see whence he drew his love of +personal and individual liberty, his hatred of moral restraint, his +scorn of the bourgeoisie, his Spanish hauteur and stoicism. Half-savage +Spanish blood flowed in his veins, a mixture of Arab, Celt and African. +Perhaps in his Peruvian descent there were even other currents--currents +of that Inca race which the Spaniards had subdued but not conquered. +Whatever else destiny held in store for him, it was certain from the +beginning that Paul Gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the +intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of Paris. + + +II + +The earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar +strands of tragedy, romance and savagery which were to recur so often in +his later life. In December, 1851, the makeshift Republic came to an end +and Louis Napoleon, by an easy _coup d'état_, restored the Empire. +Clovis Gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the Liberal +paper for which he wrote. There was only one hope remaining: that Flora +Tristan's relations in Lima might do something for Paul and his sister +Marie. So the family set out for Peru. On the way, during the terrible +passage through the Straits of Magellan, Clovis Gauguin was seized with +heart failure and died. His body was taken ashore and buried at Port +Famine, or Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in the world, in Chile. + +The mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by +the head of the family, Flora Tristan's uncle, Don Pio Tristan y +Moscoso. Concerning this personage Gauguin himself told many anecdotes +in later years. Probably most of these were inexact to the point of +being fable pure and simple. We must remember that Gauguin at this time +was scarcely four years of age. We know that the family were wealthy +nobles, of high social standing, who lived in the old Castillian manner +of luxury and indolence. From such surroundings Gauguin doubtless +derived much of the "hidalgo manner" that distinguished him throughout +life--a blend of haughtiness, reserve and egoism, masking often a real +shyness before people. And here he saw, also for the first time, works +of art produced by a non-European civilization: ceramics, jewelry, +fabrics of Inca origin. The remembrance of these specimens of savage, +primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years. + +Gauguin's stay in Lima did not last long. Four years later his paternal +grandfather died in France, and his mother returned to that country in +order to obtain her share of his estate, which proved to be only a small +sum. + +In later years, the painter believed, or affected to believe, that if +his mother had remained in Peru and had neglected her relations in +France she would have been left heiress to Don Pio Tristan's property. +It is probable that Gauguin was here merely romancing, as he often did, +when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life. It is an +enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's +mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the +influence of Peruvian life. Peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the +tropics, for exotic, out-of-the-way, old-fashioned places, unspoiled by +the nineteenth century. Unconsciously many of the traits that made his +character so little comprehensible to the Frenchmen of his day were +planted in him during these years. + +France was now to give him something different. He was to be educated, +or rather to receive what passed for an education. He remained at a +seminary at Orleans till the age of seventeen, hating his studies, +becoming more and more intractable and unteachable. This seminary, as +all such institutions in France at the time, was conducted by Jesuit +priests. + +In later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he +had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy, false virtue and +spying. And with malicious irony he said: "And I also learnt there a +little of that spirit of Jesuit casuistry, which is a force not to be +despised in the struggle with other people." + +His sole ambition was to escape, to get to sea again, to make voyages to +the tropics. His mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy, +but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination. He was +therefore placed in the merchant marine. This decision of his mother he +regretted bitterly to the end of his life. + +In 1865 he embarked aboard the _Luzitano_, a cargo boat, on a voyage +from Havre to Rio de Janeiro. His grade aboard this ship was that of a +pilot's apprentice. + +Of this voyage, which enabled him to see again the tropics, Gauguin +retained in later years important memories. + +In the fragmentary note-books he kept in Tahiti he declared that it was +during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of +the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the Society +Islands in the Pacific. The remembrance of that story may have +influenced him later in his choice of Tahiti as an ideal residence. At +least the appearance of Rio de Janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind +fresh enthusiasm for the tropics. The stay at Rio was further signalized +by a liaison with an actress, of that eminently casual kind which +Gauguin was to experience so often later on. Finally the return voyage +brought about another liaison, this time with a Prussian woman, and in +defiance of ship's discipline. It was certain that his character--was +not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of +self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer. At all +events, the next thing we hear is that Gauguin quitted the merchant +service and enlisted in the French Navy as a common sailor, in February, +1868. Probably by this time his mother had refused to support him, and +he was forced into this position through necessity. + +The cruiser _Jerome Napoleon_, on which he found himself, was, to his +chagrin, ordered to cruise in northern waters. So instead of seeing the +tropics again, Gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound +Greenland coast and the barren North Cape. This was bad, but still worse +was to follow. The vessel was on its way to Spitzbergen when news was +brought to its captain that France had declared war upon Prussia. + +"Where are you going?" said the second officer, seeing the Captain put +the helm about. + +"To Charenton," replied the indignant first officer; Charenton being the +great lunatic asylum near Paris! + +The vessel got no nearer to France than Copenhagen, when the melancholy +news of Sedan came. The name _Jerome Napoleon_ was painted out, that of +_Desaix_ substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain +in the waters off Copenhagen till the close of the war in 1871, +contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize. + + +III + +In 1871, after the cessation of hostilities, Gauguin obtained leave, +renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. He was now +heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome +discipline that he had now endured aboard the _Desaix_ for three years. +Besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he +felt that he must seize it. + +His mother had died in the interval since he had last seen France and, +in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do +Paris banker, Gustave Arosa. This man immediately found for Paul a place +at Bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. And now there +opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in +retrospect the most amazing of his career. + +Though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an +instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan +savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing +prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the Bourse, without +troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position +might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. He had not been +long at Bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. +Possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the Paris stock +market had been utterly disorganized by the events of 1870-71, and, now +that peace was signed, France was making one of those rapid recoveries +that have been so common in her history. Stocks were going up and trade +was booming. Gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances +to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as +forty thousand francs. + +In 1873 he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was +never wholly to shake off. His wife, Mette Sophia Gad, was the daughter +of a Protestant clergyman of Copenhagen. The family was a good one and +enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the Danish capital. The +daughters had been educated at Paris, and one of them had married a +member of the Norwegian Parliament, while another had become the first +wife of the painter, Fritz Thaulow. + +When or where Gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it +was probably during the stay of the _Desaix_ at Copenhagen. At any rate +it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil +one, owing to his wife being a Protestant) was delayed owing to the loss +of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of St. Cloud. + +At this time, through his wife's friends and connections, through +Gustave Arosa, through Emile Schuffenecker--a fellow employee at +Bertin's--and through others, a new interest came into his life. He +began to paint, although pressure of work did not permit him to regard +this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first. Arosa was, in +his way, an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by +French artists of the day--among them Delacroix and Courbet. These works +he engraved in photogravure--an art then in its infancy--and sent copies +of the engravings to his personal friends. Through Schuffenecker Gauguin +was brought closely into touch with the Impressionists, who were then +making a sensation in Paris. Gauguin bought brushes and colors and began +by painting on Sundays and holidays. It was only slowly that he began to +look upon painting as anything but a distraction. + +His first essays in art were purely academic. He painted in the +prevailing style of the Salons and even sent one picture to the Salon of +1876. At the same time he began to attempt sculpture. He worked at first +in marble, a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more +coarsely-grained surface of wood, clay or paste. He liked a rough +surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order +to emphasize this roughness. + +Gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature. His early years at +sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity. He had a tremendous +interest in the technical processes of art. During his life he was able +to do almost equally well at painting, lithography and sculpture. He +also attempted etching, stained glass and pottery. His writings, +particularly his share in "Noa Noa," show a considerable grasp of +direct, poetic narrative--a gift that might very possibly have made of +him a good poet. Throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely +as a painter of pictures; his influence in opening new channels for +art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work. Even in +literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration. The +problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that +occupied his English contemporary, William Morris, almost as varied as +those that occupied Leonardo da Vinci. + +He acquired knowledge easily; his problem was always how to weigh, sift +and make use of it. But his growth to artistic maturity was slower than +in the case of artists who limit their field of effort, because he +attacked many subjects at the same time. + +It may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof, +not of a complex, but of a primitive nature. Yet it is undoubtedly true +that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost +everything. The interchangeability, the essential unity of all the arts, +is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages. As +civilization and consequently technique become more advanced, it grows +more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch +of art. Perhaps that is why, in our modern industrialized states, the +arts tend to disappear, to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly +diminishing minority. + +[Illustration: The painter Schuffenecker and his family.] + +All this was not suspected by Gauguin at the time, nor for years +afterwards. For the time he was content to paint and to follow the +prevailing fashions in his painting. And he soon found that the +prevailing fashion of the day in Paris was Impressionism. + + * * * * * + +To define Impressionism it is not necessary, as many professional +art-critics have done, to enter into long dissertations as to the +supremacy of pure colors, nor to see in Constable or Turner the ancestry +of the movement. + +Impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of Realism--or to +speak better, Naturalism--carried out in painting. This cult had already +possessed in painting one important precursor, Gustave Courbet. But it +is to literature, always the advance guard of the arts, that we must +turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed. + +A little before 1870, which year marks a turning point not only in +France's political but also in her intellectual life, there came a +change over her literature. Romanticism, which had startled the world in +1830 with Lamartine, de Musset, de Vigny, Hugo and Balzac, was now dead. +The heroic, the Napoleonic, the Byronic attitude had somehow gone out of +life. Under the Second Empire, the bourgeois triumphed over the +Tuileries. + +A few years before the crash of 1870, Charles Baudelaire gave to the +world his _Fleurs du Mal_--the exasperated cry against life of a soul +tortured with too great a sensibility. Almost at the same time Gustave +Flaubert, in _Madame Bovary_, erected his monument of infamy to the +memory of the bourgeois. These two books opened the path to Naturalism, +to the "human document," to the de Goncourts, to de Maupassant, and to +Zola. + +Impressionism was the logical outgrowth, in another sphere, of the work +of these Naturalist writers. + +It abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural +sunlight. + +It abolished the classical "subject" and left the painter free to paint, +as Manet said, "_N'importe quoi_." + +Thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric +vibration, foreshadowed by Constable and Turner, but not by them +elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with +equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon Nature, +and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. It was, as Manet said +again, "Nature seen through a temperament." + +Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared +to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending +from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres. +This was the Norman, Puvis de Chavannes. + +But Puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of +walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in +the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while Impressionism was the +_succès de scandale_ of the day. + +Gauguin heard of Impressionism and became a devout follower of its +theories. He painted pictures in the manner of Camille Pissarro, who was +a compatriot of Madame Gauguin, having been born in the Island of St. +Thomas in the Antilles, then Danish territory. Gauguin took part in the +exhibitions of the Impressionist group in 1880 and 1881. + +Huysmans, then as later the disciple of Naturalism pushed to its extreme +limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. Gauguin began to be +talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. +But his work at the Bourse was exhausting his strength and his time. + +Although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, Gauguin +in January, 1883, took the rash step of quitting the financial world and +devoting himself solely to art. + +This decision was, as Dr. Segalen says in his valuable Preface to the +letters Gauguin wrote from Tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. +When Paul Gauguin said to himself, "Henceforward I will paint every +day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition +and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great +impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not +only of his own nature but of modern art. + + +IV + +It is important to note that Gauguin was thirty-five years of age when +he came to this decision. This proves that the decision was no hasty +one, of which he was liable to repent later. At such an age a man has +arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a Paul +Gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of +living from a mere desire for change. Gauguin had something to express +and knew it. He had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and +shares. And to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all +opposition. + +But had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage, with the desire +for freedom, for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes +only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts, this decision +might never have been taken. As a husband and father he now had others +dependent upon him. That he set aside their claims to follow the deeper +call proves that, as he later said, he believed himself to have the +right to dare everything. And he was probably at first confident of +success, thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as +that of a speculator. + +Madame Gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision. She was +naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful +man, and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his +success. In any case, she was soon destined to sad disillusionment. + +Gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the +sums he had saved. As for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well +known to sell. It was necessary, above all things, to gain time. So he +decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought +with the proceeds of his career on the Bourse, in order to support +himself. The list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly +the direction of his tastes at this period. It included a Manet, several +Renoirs, some Claude Monets, two Cézannes (still life and landscape), an +early Pissarro, together with examples of Guillamin, Sisley, Jongkind, +Lewis Brown and, most significant of all, two designs by Daumier. + +Whether it was that Gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a +style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not +know. Nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an +appreciable sum or not. Probably the amount was small, for the +Impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely +commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. In any +case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. He had +ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in Paris. He +found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the +place of Bertin's. So it was Madame Gauguin's turn to act. She decided +on a removal to Copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their +influence in obtaining a position for her husband. + +Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband +and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid +Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the +passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he +hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and +provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian +Bohemianism--everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he +took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in +maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking +on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. +Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin +for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately +and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment +when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. +Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the +nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her +mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. +But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable +scandal. + +Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield +nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family +change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A +separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came +about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the +painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We +shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that +Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into +which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate +with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with +his wife. + +It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with +her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than +accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame +Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now +disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian +art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to +try his fortune. + + +V + +He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had +been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more +consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore +necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the +man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual +equipment. + +Gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of +strong physical development. His hair, which later grew thinner and lost +much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in +large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. The +eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which +were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color--the eyes of one who +has spent many years at sea. The nose was large, thick and aquiline. A +thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the +mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. The chin was +pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted +beard similar in color to the mustache. + +After Gauguin's return from the Antilles in 1887 it is the testimony of +all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an Indian's, and +that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. Even his excessive +devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his +health, had something sailor-like in it. Gauguin rolled his own +cigarettes in the Spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. +His hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman--coarse, +square and red. Altogether he was in appearance curiously Creole; he did +not resemble a Frenchman of France. The dark tint of his skin and the +formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and +hair. + +His personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those +with whom he came in contact. It must be remembered, however, that he +was by nature reserved and even suspicious, as are many people of +fundamental genius. He differed from those about him in that he worked +by instinct, while they worked according to some conscious method. He +therefore obtained out of himself, by means of slow thinking and +laborious effort, the knowledge which many have at the beginning. +Further, the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of +physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little +reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world. Finally, +Gauguin was shy, actually and by nature shy. People took this shyness +for rudeness and this reserve for disdain. And Gauguin was not always +unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding. He carefully cultivated +his rudeness, both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance. + +As regards his work, he was on the way to find his path, although he +never entirely found it, even to the end of his career. His versatility +prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead, like that of many +popular and highly successful painters. + +Mention has already been made of his appearance in 1880 among the +Impressionists and of the praise bestowed by Huysmans on one of his +pictures for its frank realism. This very nude, however, shows Gauguin +massing his shadows, making them heavy and dark, which was the direct +contrary to Impressionist practice. A year later we find Huysmans +complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures; another proof +that the painter was already trying to mass tones, to escape from the +division of tones employed by the Impressionist group. + +We are safe in assuming also that Gauguin felt already an inward desire +to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics. His early years had +shown him the tropics; and the art of the greatest masters, as well as +of the worst daubers, is based on the instinctive knowledge they have +obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later +years. Pissarro, too, had seen the tropics; but they had not in any way +influenced his color sense, which, indeed, grew colder and grayer as his +years advanced. But he may have had something to do with Gauguin's +inclination towards tropical subjects, though the feeling of kinship +with Nature which Gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own. + +If Gauguin had but known it, there waited for him not the future of fame +and fortune of which he dreamed, but seventeen years of life-and-death +struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means +of living nor the slightest encouragement, but only hampered him in +every way, so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures +on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls. He was to +quit his own country, and to go to the ends of the earth, only to find +that the system of civilization possessed by his country, whatever its +other advantages, did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the +fruits of his labor. He was finally to sink into an unmarked grave, to +be almost forgotten, and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when +no longer able to profit by it. Even if Gauguin could have realized +this, it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind. Ready to dare +everything, he strode forward into the future. + + + + +PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889 + + +I + +With the return of Gauguin to Paris there opened for him the second +stage of his career, the struggle to maintain himself on the productions +of his brush and chisel. During the first stage his character had been +formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative +leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor, during which he found +time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the +latest French tradition. He had not only met and talked with men like +Manet, Pissarro, and Cézanne, he also visited the museums of Paris, and +did not confine himself to the Louvre, but made a special study of the +Musée Guimet with its collection of art works from the far East, and +later of the Trocadero, with its casts of Cambodian sculpture. His stay +at Bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment, +the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic +independence. + +Yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these +important years of development than in the case of most of his +contemporaries. "He was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in +art that was going on," says one who knew him in this period, "but not +to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody." What he absorbed +was by instinct; and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge +with people who might fail to make good use of it. + +Amid the noisy chatter of Parisian art-circles he passed silent and +unnoted. He rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of +experimental projects, particularly with sculpture. But very shortly +his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience +of hunger. + +For a time he suffered extreme privation. He was forced at last to +accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting +advertisements on the walls of the Gare du Nord in order to save himself +from starvation. + +"I have known," he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter +Aline, "extreme misery, that is to say hunger and everything that +follows upon hunger. It is nothing, or almost nothing. One grows +accustomed to it and, with will-power, one can end by laughing at it. +But what is terrible is to be prevented from working, from developing +one's intellectual faculties. It is true that suffering sharpens one's +ability. But it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will +kill you. + +"With a great deal of pride I have ended by having a great deal of +energy, and I have forced myself to be full of will-power. + +"Is pride a fault, or must one develop one's pride? I believe pride must +be developed. It is the best weapon we have against the human animal +that is in us." + +This quotation gives us the man entirely. He was one of those who are +not to be beaten, one of those who do not turn back. He was to go +forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path. + +In 1886 he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition +of the Impressionist group, together with a relief in wood, which seems +to foreshadow the later creator of _La Guerre et la Paix_. + +Most of these early works of Gauguin seem to have disappeared. Very few +can recall seeing one. It is therefore interesting to read the following +appreciation by Felix Fenéon, which shows that Gauguin was already +traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other +impressionists:-- + +"The tones of M. Paul Gauguin's pictures are very little separated from +each other; because of this, there is in his work a dull harmony. Dense +trees rise from the fertile soil, abundant and humid, invade the frame, +pursue the sky. The air is heavy. Bricks seen between the trunks +indicate a nearby house; things are lying about, muzzles are scattered +in the thicket--cows. These reds of roofs and of cattle the artist +constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters, +encumbered with long grasses, which run between the tree-trunks." + +This shows clearly that Gauguin was treating landscape at this period +already as a synthesis, a decorative whole and not, like Manet, Pissarro +or the Divisionists, as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric +vibration. As for the relief on wood, Fenéon writes: + +"On the pear-tree wood, which we regret to see left in monochrome, a +naked woman stands out in half relief, her hand to her hair, seated +rectangularly in a landscape. This is the only number of sculpture. +Nothing in painted wood, in glass-paste, in wax." + +Paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach Gauguin. He must +find his own way, create his own tradition. Aloof alike from the +theories of the Impressionists and from those of their successors, the +Pointillists--theories of the disassociation of tones and of the +analytic disintegration of light, based on the scientific treatises of +Chevreuil and Helmholtz--he was painfully tending back to the old +decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit, the harmonious +expression of a single emotion. Hunger proved again the best friend of +the independent artist. He fled from Paris and sought refuge in the +country. + + +II + +The place of refuge which Gauguin found was the village of Pont-Aven in +the district of Finistère in Brittany. + +There is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon +his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by Tahiti. +Indeed the charm of Tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence. + +The Celtic fringe of Europe--Cornwall, the Highlands of Scotland, +Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia--presents everywhere a great +similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants. +The Celt is an outcast. Driven backward by successive waves of +civilization and conquest, he has finally occupied those lands which +were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in +them undisturbed. Long residence in these desolate places has made of +him a natural mystic, a conservative. Perhaps he might never have been +anything else had not the nineteenth century--with its railroads and the +life-weariness of its cultivated classes--made of him a curiosity. The +hordes of tourists, of bad artists, of dealers in journalese, who rave +about Brittany, Cornwall, or Ireland as picturesque summer-resorts, show +that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to +remain a savage. + +Paul Gauguin did not assuredly go to Brittany to discover the +picturesque. Had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher +than the painting of Charles Cottet or of Lucien Simon. His real home as +an artist, as he was later to discover, lay elsewhere--under less +troubled skies, in the midst of more tropical vegetation. But the gloom, +the melancholy inertia, the mystic faith, the simplicity of this land of +wind-mills, small trees, granite coasts and menhirs, worked strongly on +the yet untamed primitive in him. Stronger still perhaps was the appeal +of the sea, the most restless and yet the most changeless element in +nature. Gauguin was in appearance, as in manners, a sailor--the eye, the +direct curt speech, the reserved disdain, the freedom of manners, all +these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences. In Brittany +he found the sea; he found an unspoiled people; he found, above all, +repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that, like the +bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne, frothed eternally in +the cafés of Paris. Brittany gave him greater faith in himself; Brittany +began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly +stifling him. + +[Illustration: Struggle of Jacob with the Angel.] + +His first stay in Pont-Aven was destined to be short. It is chiefly +remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by Emile Bernard, then +only about seventeen years of age, whose relations with Gauguin and +other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be +examined in detail. + +Bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up, +mushroom-like, in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary +controversy. At the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic +and extremely bad poetry. He next went in for painting, raced off to +Brittany to see Gauguin, was received with coolness, ran back to Paris. +Here he found Van Gogh fresh from Holland and, when Van Gogh in turn +went to Arles, became his most industrious correspondent. Later he heard +that the crazy old hermit, Paul Cézanne, was living at Aix--so off to +Aix went Bernard. More letters were the outcome of the visit. + +Meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and +neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of Gauguin's Breton +style, then to a combination of Cézanne and Gauguin, to conclude with +painting of Oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from +that of Gerome. He imitated everyone in turn, only to end by becoming +that drab eclectic thing--what the French call a "pompier" or we an +"Academician." Thus he justified Gauguin's sardonic prophecy that +"Bernard would end up something like Benjamin Constant!" + +We owe Bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful +letters which Van Gogh wrote to him, and--more precious debt--that he +has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic +Cézanne revealed a glimpse of his agony. But we owe Bernard nothing in +that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose +style he was the first to copy--Paul Gauguin. But of this more later. + + +III + +The winter of 1886 found Gauguin again in Paris. Here he met another +artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite +different from that of Emile Bernard. + +This was Vincent Van Gogh, newly arrived from Holland. Gauguin has left +on record in a piece of prose called _Les Crevettes Roses_ his first +impression of Van Gogh, which proves beyond dispute that Gauguin loved +Van Gogh and admired him, despite his habitual reserve and the haughty +disdain with which he was already looking upon all things European. + +At this time Gauguin was still painfully seeking, still patiently and +laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization. Van Gogh, +although five years younger, had fully realized himself in essence--was, +in fact, realized from the beginning. The difference between them was +that Van Gogh was an humble Dutch peasant, with the mystic blend of +religion and animality which is common to Flemish and Dutch artists (for +example, Breughel, Rubens or Verhaeren), while Gauguin was a Spaniard, +hard and aristocratic, but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the +strain of French blood. + +For Van Gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of +the sun, which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric +ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it. For Gauguin the +future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left +him half-an-European to the end, his work only a broken fragment of what +he had dreamed. + +It is a pity, in a way, that these men ever met. But their meeting and +the drama which was played out later between them, had in it the +inevitable quality of Greek tragedy. For the moment their meeting was +without result, except that perhaps it woke Gauguin to a realization +that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art. In +short, one must be religious. But where was Gauguin to find his +religion? + +Certainly not in Paris, the capital of intellectual skepticism. Nor, for +the moment, in sleepy and mournful Brittany. The memories of his early +initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he +undertook, in 1887, a voyage to the Martinique in company with a young +painter, Charles Laval. + +There is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to Gauguin his +own primitivism, although it left him for the time an invalid, +threatened with dysentery, suffering from constant intestinal pains, and +although it brought Laval to the brink of the grave. + +If the reader wishes to know something of what Martinique was at this +time, he should turn to Lafcadio Hearn's "Two Years in the French West +Indies." Hearn, like Gauguin, was a disillusionized cosmopolite, +disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the +pedantic and Puritanic hypocrisy of our Occidental civilization. Like +Gauguin, Hearn found in the West Indies a revelation of a world which +had not lost touch with Nature--a world of men who were content to +remain, in Nature's eyes, something as ephemeral and as harmonious as +the trees, the flowers, the beasts among which they lived. Like Gauguin +again, Hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision, but yet kept faith +with it to the last. + +[Illustration: The Idol.] + +In the pictures which Gauguin produced during his stay in Martinique, we +find the first rude indications of his later manner--the manner of a +mystic poet who sees all life, the life of man, of vegetation, of the +earth and the sea, as being parallel, harmonious manifestations of the +same Divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other. + +If Gauguin did not realize himself in Martinique, he at least found +himself on the road to realization. But the unchecked power of the sun, +steadily sapping not only the white race, but also the race of mixed +blood, with which he, like Hearn, felt so much sympathy, banished him +from this Eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future. + +His health demanded a return to France. He came back, bringing with him +pictures--experimental, tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and +gloom of the tropics with Pissarro's analysis of paler northern +sunlight. He brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures +which he, as yet, could not paint. He brought back with him an idea. + + +IV + +After seeing the Antilles and returning to Paris, Gauguin was again +brought face to face with the problem against which he had already +struggled--the problem of his poverty. + +He had obtained at Martinique the vision of a new world of art, which he +knew he was some day destined to realize. But for the present he had +neither lodging and studio, nor resources of any kind. He was forced to +live on charity. + +Charity came to him in the shape of Emile Schuffenecker, who had also +given up finance for a career as artist. + +Schuffenecker was not a genius, but he knew ability when he saw it, and +opened his doors freely to this needy colleague. It is a pity that +Gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting +Schuffenecker as an artist. + +Gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful +episodes of his life. One is almost inclined to think with Emile Bernard +that "the basis of Gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism," or, +with Meier-Graefe, that Gauguin was nothing but a great child. Neither +of these views is, however, wholly correct. + +Gauguin was the son, be it remembered, of a radical journalist and the +grandson of a Socialist pamphleteer. Journalism in France is not the +same thing as in England. There is scarcely any polite journalism in +France. Gauguin himself was always talking, according to Bernard, of art +and life needing "the blow of the fist." Paul Déroulède, Edmond Drumont, +Henri Rochefort, Octave Mirbeau, Zola, Clemenceau, and other celebrated +journalists of the Dreyfus period (the heyday of French journalism) knew +quite well what this "blow of the fist" meant, and practiced it upon +every opportunity. + +Moreover, Gauguin was nearly forty, had knocked about the world a great +deal, banging himself against many sharp corners in the process, and +was face to face with want. It is also possible that he felt bound, for +the sake of his wife and children, to make as much money as possible. +Finally, he believed in himself as an artist, if no one else did. The +world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either +hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt. As he +put it himself, "Is it necessary to be modest, or, in other words, an +imbecile?" + +So he accepted the use of Schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his +own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at Schuffenecker's attempt +to paint. Later on we find him accepting similarly Van Gogh's +hospitality, irritating Van Gogh to the pitch of madness, and--after Van +Gogh's death--sending to Bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed +exhibition of Van Gogh's pictures on the ground that Van Gogh was only a +madman. And later still, when Van Gogh's reputation began to rise in +public esteem, Gauguin declared that Van Gogh had learned from him and +had called him master. + +Such traits are deplorable, if we consider Gauguin as an ordinary man. +But if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it +conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite +certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. Gauguin +sinned in good company, with Michaelangelo who thought Raphael had +plotted against him, and with Berlioz who has left on record his opinion +of Wagner's music. To understand Gauguin one must share to some extent +the opinion of Flaubert--which, incidentally, Browning almost +endorses--that the man is nothing, the work is all. + +It is not easy to read between the lines of Gauguin's self-imposed +reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. If we +attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was +almost without friends. Van Gogh he loved without understanding. Daniel +de Monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. The shadowy figure of +Tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly +moved him. + +Puvis de Chavannes, an artist to whom Gauguin owed much, similarly held +himself aloof from all. So did Degas and Ingres, two other artists of +Gauguin's stamp. So in ancient Greece did Sophocles. + +The truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on +the surface of things. One can only sympathize with them, share their +imaginings through long and patient study. Gauguin was not altogether +strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. But his work +increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. +Schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in Paris just long +enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy Manet's +_Olympia_, a picture he greatly admired. Then once more he took the road +to Brittany. + + +V + +Despite the fact that Gauguin had, before leaving Paris, held his first +one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation +was not improved. He was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined +at Martinique, remained bad. + +He was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock +of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. In Gauguin's +case the chances were very small. He was crushed by his own impotence to +realize the art he had dreamed. + +It was at this juncture that Vincent Van Gogh, now at Aries, came +forward and offered him a lodging, despite the fact that he himself +could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the +self-sacrificing efforts of his brother Theodore. + +For a time Gauguin did not respond to Van Gogh's generous offer to +share their fortunes in common. But he sent his own portrait to Vincent, +a gloomy, powerful piece of painting which, in the opinion of some, so +startlingly resembles Robert Louis Stevenson--like Gauguin a wanderer, +but with what a difference! To Vincent this portrait suggested a +prisoner, with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows. He was more than +ever determined to draw Gauguin out of the slough of despond into which +he was falling, and to work together with him for the better +establishment of both their reputations. + +One can only admire Van Gogh for this decision. An artist of a childlike +simplicity of soul, a combination of Don Quixote, the Good Samaritan and +that Jesus of Nazareth whom he loved, Van Gogh was even greater as a man +than as an artist. But Gauguin was, as he knew himself later, greater as +an artist than as a man. It was natural for him to accept the invitation +of a man whom he knew, after all, very slightly, because he saw in this +acceptance possible advantages to himself. + +Van Gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed, as was Gauguin's, by +a strong reserve of nervous strength. His was one of those souls whose +longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced +by William Blake:-- + + I will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death + Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate, + And I be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood. + +Gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen +by Whitman:-- + + O, to struggle against odds, to meet enemies undaunted! + To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand + To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium face to face, + To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect + nonchalance, + To be indeed a God! + +Van Gogh was a lyric painter. His desire was to lose himself in the +ecstacy of the divine. Gauguin was a narrative, an epic painter. His aim +was to grow to divine stature through self-realization. + +What could there be in common between the fervent admirer of Rembrandt, +Delacroix, Monticelli, Ziem, and the brooding, patient workman who was +building up his art on the classic tradition of Ingres, Cézanne and +Degas? Surely even less than between Michaelangelo and Tintoretto. + +A drama between these men was inevitable. It was not slow in declaring +itself.[1] Of what actually occurred we have only Gauguin's account, of +how Van Gogh first attacked him, and then strove to take his own life. + +Van Gogh, upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent +itself, went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at Arles, where, as his +grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that +devoured him, he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun. Gauguin +returned to Brittany, as he said, "armed against all suffering." But he +had seen something. In striving to paint Van Gogh's portrait he had seen +a vision, once again to quote his own words, of "Jesus preaching +goodness and humility." And perhaps, in Vincent's hour of agony, while +he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he +had loved and had painted so lovingly, Gauguin had another vision--of +the sombre Garden of Gethsemane. + +Thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that +desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul, between nature and +God, between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth, which he +was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize, despite the +baseness of that other part in him, the civilized, unprimitive part, +which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of +baseness. + + +[Footnote 1: Gauguin and Van Gogh were actually together from the 20th +October to the 23d December, 1888.] + + + + +PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891 + + +I + +In 1889 there opened in Paris on the Champ-de-Mars the Universal +Exposition, to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the Bastile. Of +this exhibition and of the palace built to house it, nothing now remains +except the melancholy Eiffel Tower. + +The pictures admitted to the exhibition were, rather naturally, of a +kind sanctioned by academic officialdom. Wherefore visitors who happened +to patronize the Café Volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled +to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock +all their susceptibilities in art matters. Their perplexity cannot have +been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title: +"Catalogue of the Exposition of Pictures of the Impressionist and +Syntheticist Group, held on the Premises of M. Volpini, at the +Champ-de-Mars, 1889." + +The exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the Café +Volpini had for the most part never heard. Their names were:--E. +Schuffenecker, Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, Louis Roy, +Léon Fauché, Georges Daniel, Ludovic Nemo (a pseudonym of Bernard's) and +lastly, Paul Gauguin. Lithographs, printed in black upon yellow paper +and not less extraordinary than the pictures, were also visible upon +request. These were by Bernard and Gauguin. + +The result of this exhibition was that the public laughed, the papers +protested, the young students of art in the various ateliers of Paris +were stimulated to furious discussion. But a few spirits, more +venturesome or more prophetic, took the trouble to test the new ideas. A +few, chief among them Sérusier of the Académie Julian, even set out to +visit the birthplace of the new movement, a lonely inn kept by a family +of the name of Gloanec at Le Poldu, a short distance from Pont-Aven. + +A brief survey of the history of Syntheticism is necessary to an +understanding of the theories of the new school. Here we enter upon +debatable ground. It has already been said that the chief opponents of +the academicism of Cabanel and Bougereau were the Impressionists. Their +movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its +third. The earliest of the Impressionists, led by Manet, insisted that a +picture was only nature seen through a temperament; in other words, that +a picture must be naturalistic. This doctrine found parallel literary +expression in the writings of the de Goncourts, de Maupassant and Zola. +The first phase in Impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained +a belief in form. + +It was succeeded by an analytical phase, based upon the application to +color of the scientific theories of light, of Rood, Chevreuil and +Helmholtz. To Claude Monet, the founder of this new school of +Impressionism, nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere. Form +was abandoned. + +After Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Guillamin, a new group, of whom +the chief were Seurat and Signac, attempted to combine the tenets of +their two sets of predecessors. They retained formal composition but +broke up color into minute points or dots. This third generation of +Impressionists were originally termed Neo-Impressionists but now, more +frequently, Pointillists. + +Three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory. +Puvis de Chavannes had, within the very precincts of the official salon, +created an art based on something wholly distinct, alike from the +photographic and frigid eclecticism of Cabanel and Bougereau and from +the work of both Manet and Monet. Puvis was a decorator who could think +and paint only in terms of walls. He had achieved, after a long +struggle, a decorative synthesis of his own, based upon the ruthless +simplification of masses, contours and coloring. Reserved, cold, +solitary, he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his +old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of Giotto, that +father of all European painting. + +Paul Cézanne, the hermit of Aix, had faced the problem of painting with +the Impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his +true spiritual ancestors--the Venetians and El Greco. As a result he was +thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth, for he lived +far from Paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited. +Finally, Degas, associating himself with the Impressionists at the +outset, had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of +Ingres, who might be called the last of Florentines. Degas was +considered an artist of small importance because, unlike Manet, he +scorned to give himself airs. He lived a retired life in Paris, and did +not exhibit. + +These three men--Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas--had, through +their own inner necessity, become syntheticists. But no one of them +preached Syntheticism, because their adherence to the creed was +unconscious. The doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with +Paul Gauguin at the Café Volpini in 1889, who lived and worked with him +at the Gloanec inn, near Pont-Aven. It was from these men that the +reaction against Impressionism started, a reaction which, in its turn, +was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of +mathematical and analytical abstraction of line, color and form, which +we know as Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. It was these men surrounding +Gauguin, who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition +which goes back through Giotto and Cimabue to the Byzantine mosaics, +and, through these, to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages. +With Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning +of a new tradition. With Gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance +of an old one. + + +II + +As early as 1886, in an article in the _Revue Indépendante_, the +well-known critic Eduard Dujardin had spoken of a group calling +themselves the Cloissonists, who painted in flat patches of tone, +divided from each other by black lines. + +Cloissonism, as the name indicates, was borrowed from the Japanese. But +as a method of painting, it had been derived less from cloisonné enamel +than from the technique of the Japanese color-print artists. + +The artistic gods of the Cloissonists were Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. +It may be remembered that since 1865 men like Zola, Manet, Monet, +Whistler, the de Goncourts--in short the entire generation of the +naturalists--had collected these color prints, written about them, +talked about them. + +Gauguin himself, when he returned to Paris at the close of this year +1889, pinned a frieze of Hokusai and Utamaro prints round the walls of +his studio. + +But the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of +Cloissonism, of which the leader was Anquetin (later ranked with the +Syntheticists), does not fully explain the use of Syntheticism with its +greater insistence upon decorative unity, and its clearer affinities to +the work of the Italian primitives. + +As to the origin of Syntheticism we have divergent statements from +contemporary witnesses. + +The English artist, A.S. Hartrick, who was studying in Paris from 1886 +to 1889 and who knew personally both Gauguin and Van Gogh, ascribes the +Synthetic theory to Gauguin in these terms:-- + +"From a study of thirteenth century glass he (Gauguin) got an idea of +design and color which exactly suited his state of development, and he +then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own, using oil paint +as a vehicle."[1] + +Of similar opinion is the well known French artist and writer, Maurice +Denis, whose work has done so much to popularise Gauguin. He declares in +his book "Theories,"[2] that Gauguin was the "incontestable originator" +and master of the new movement, to which he gives two names: +Neo-Traditionism and Symbolism. In the first account which he wrote of +the movement in 1890, an account obtained from the lips of Paul +Sérusier, one of the earliest of Gauguin's disciples after 1889, Denis +includes the following interesting paragraph: + +"Did not Paul Gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history +of modeling? + +"At the beginning there was the pure arabesque, as little deceptive of +the eye as possible; a wall is empty; cover it with symmetrical spots +of form, harmonious in color:--stained glass, Egyptian pictures, +Byzantine mosaics. + +"From this comes the painted bas-relief:--metopes of the Greek temple, +the church of the Middle Ages. + +"Then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye +practised in Antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the +Italian primitives, who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings +modeled to imitate bas-relief, but in other respects preserve the first +idea of decorative unity. Recall also under what conditions +Michaelangelo, a sculptor, decorated the Sistine ceiling. + +"Perfection of this modeling; modeling in high-relief. This leads from +the first academy of the Caracchi to our decadence." + +Emile Bernard holds a contrary opinion. His view was originally +published in the _Mercure de France_ and reasserted in his preface to +the letters written to him by Van Gogh.[3] Bernard, who revolted from +the Atelier Cormon with Anquetin, had, as we have seen, been repulsed +by Gauguin in in 1886. After a brief return to Paris he went off to +Saint-Briac, where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and +painted the windows, in imitation of stained-glass, employing essence of +turpentine as a medium. In 1888, before Gauguin came to Arles, Bernard +was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of +Theodore Van Gogh and, although young enough to be Gauguin's son (being +about twenty at this time), shared with him the honors of the Volpini +exhibition. + +Bernard claims that he, and he alone, invented Syntheticism, and bases +his claim on the evidence of the pictures (all dated) which Gauguin +painted previous to 1888, and in which Gauguin was still definitely +Impressionist in technique. He maintains that Gauguin abruptly changed +his style after the second meeting in 1888, when he first saw what his +younger rival had been doing. Furthermore, Bernard contends that this +style was solely based upon the application of Cézanne's discoveries in +technique. + +Against these contentions there are three objections to be made. + +In the first place it is known that Gauguin, during his stay in +Martinique in 1887, painted pictures that are undeniably essays in +syntheticism. Martinique showed Gauguin the impossibility of painting +tropic sunlight by means of the Impressionistic division of tones. +Always purely intuitive as an artist, Gauguin began to realize at +Martinique, however vaguely, that one cannot reproduce the natural +decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color +attempted by Pissarro and the other Impressionists. He therefore sought +to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the +contrast of colors. + +In the second place, Bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was +not he, but Gauguin, who after 1888 painted those magnificent pictures +_Le Christ Jaune, Le Christ Vert_ and _La Vision après le Sermon_[4] and +carved the two superb bas-reliefs _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez +Heureuses_ and _Soyez Mystérieuses_. Moreover, the careful reader of Van +Gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout '88 and '89 +Bernard stood in relation to Gauguin as a pupil to a master. Finally, +even if Bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did +induce Gauguin to reject the last vestiges of Impressionism, his story +fails to account for the masterly grasp of Synthetic Symbolism shown by +Gauguin immediately after their second meeting. + +It is quite impossible to trace to Cézanne's essays in Synthetic +Impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either +Bernard or Gauguin. Cézanne, later on, even went so far as to assert +that Gauguin had misunderstood him. Therefore it is clear that the +opinions of A.S. Hartrick and of Maurice Denis better fit the facts. +Gauguin was the sole originator of the Synthetic style. That style was +derived, perhaps mainly, from the careful study of thirteenth century +glass, which does perfectly what Gauguin wished to do: translate the +effect of sunlight into luminous color. But it was also derived from +Egyptian painting, Byzantine mosaics and the Kakemonos of the Japanese. +In short, it was as complete a rejection of Impressionism as possible +and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced +color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved, +in the nineteenth century, in the works of artists whom Gauguin admired: +Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas. + + +[Footnote 1: "Post-Impressionism," by A.S. Hartrick. _Imprint,_ May, +1913.] + +[Footnote 2: Paris, l'Occident, 1912.] + +[Footnote 3: Paris, Vollard, 1911.] + +[Footnote 4: Now known as _La Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange_.] + + +III + +The exhibition at the Café Volpini brought notoriety to Gauguin. Various +young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art"--the phrase is +Gauguin's--which they were being taught in the ateliers of Paris, took +the road for Pont-Aven. Among these were Paul Sérusier, Chamaillard, and +the Dutchman, De Haahn. + +Acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of +Sérusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with Neo-Platonic +mysticism, Gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite +doctrine. Hitherto he had been an artist of the type of Ingres, working +purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. +But his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula +this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create. + +Artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves. +Whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been +greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy. The public always +takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods. +All art is a synthesis, and no artist can be at the same time synthetic +and analytical. + +Gauguin was no exception to this rule. Take for example, his +often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors:-- + +"Always use colors of the same origin. Indigo is the best basis. It +becomes yellow in saltpeter, red in vinegar. You can obtain it at any +chemist's. Keep to these three colors." + +Gauguin himself did not follow this precept. An examination of his +palette shows that it was arranged thus, from left to right: +--ultramarine, silver white, emerald green, veronese green, yellow +ochre, burnt sienna, yellow chrome, vermilion, and crimson lake. No +artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously +fugitive, whether used pure or in mixture. + +So with another celebrated saying: "Seek harmony and not contrast, the +agreement and not--the clash of color." This saying not only goes +contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors, +but is opposed to those equally famous dicta: "Does that trunk of a tree +seem to you blue? Paint it as blue as possible," and, "A mile of green, +is more green than half a mile." + +It is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of Gauguin's +teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark. Gauguin was not +a man holding a high-school debate on theory, but a creator. He refused +even to be called a decorator, he preferred the title of artisan. He +declared outright that he had no technique. "Or perhaps I have one, but +very vagabond, very elastic, according to the way I feel when I awaken +in the morning, a technique which I apply to my own liking in order to +express my thought, without taking account of the truth of Nature, +externally apparent. People think nowadays that all the technical means +of painting are exhausted. I do not believe it, if I am to judge by the +numerous observations which I have made and put into practice.... +Painters have still much to discover." + +Gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them +this remark: "Do what you please, so long as it is intelligent." This +did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition. He +knew that tradition is not a "recipe for making art," but the sum-total +of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same +problems that face the artists of to-day. He realized that the essential +substance of art is always the same. Art is an eternal renewal of this +substance. "The artist is not born of a single unity. If he adds a new +link to the chain already begun, it is much. The artist is known by the +quality of his transposition." + +The "transposition" that he himself strove for may be clearly read in +his pictures. He strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art +of the great Venetians, by blending the Venetian glow of color with the +calm line of Primitive and especially of Egyptian Primitive design. His +problem was essentially the same as that of Puvis de Chavannes, the +problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to +leave it still essentially a wall and not, as Veronese and Tiepolo left +it, an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery. Puvis had solved the +problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by +simplifying his drawing. Gauguin solved his by the elimination of +modeling, and of graduations of tone, and by reducing his drawing to the +strongest possible arabesque of outline. In everything he sought for the +essential form, the form that contains all the other inessential forms. +As Sérusier puts it: "The synthetic theory of art consists in reducing +all form to the smallest possible number of component +forms:--straight lines, arcs of a circle, a few angles, arcs of an +ellipse." And to express this form he sought for the most harmonious +balance of color. Maurice Denis says:--"Recall that a picture, before +being a war-horse, a nude or some anecdote, is essentially a flat +surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order." + +[Illustration: Tahitian Women.] + +Therefore and above all, Gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the +model, but from memory. He admitted that it was useful for young +painters to have a model, as all knowledge of facts could only be +obtained from the study of models. But he added that it was better to +draw a curtain before the model while painting it. One of his pupils +declared: "We went into the country to paint seascapes and to the +seashore to do landscapes." + +Gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods +practiced for centuries by the great Chinese and Japanese painters. He +would have enjoyed that story of a Chinese painter, who was sent out by +the Emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the Empire, +and who returned without having painted anything. When the Emperor asked +him: "But where are your pictures?" he replied: "I have them here"--and +pointed to his forehead. Gauguin, with his hatred of copying either from +nature or from the masters of the past, would also have appreciated the +Chinese idea of a "copy"--a free rearrangement of old material according +to one's temperament. + +Lastly, he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose. "Let +everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul. Avoid all animated +attitudes. Each of your figures should be perfectly static. Give +everything a clear outline." This counsel sounds strange to ears +deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of +Cubists, Futurists and Vorticists. But to Gauguin it was the basis of +his own mystical religion. He gave it to the world, however, not for +this reason, but because he realized that painting to be decorative +must be architectural. He himself was a builder, an artisan. In Brittany +he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived; he made +furniture, carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself, +worked at bas-reliefs, decorated pottery. Movement, restlessness, would +have but troubled the lines of that ideal building, which, even then, he +was erecting in his dreams. + +Such was the doctrine of Paul Gauguin. It may seem strange that such +ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary. In the Far East at +all events, they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries. +Revolutionary or not, Gauguin went on his way undisturbed. From an +examination of his letters, and of the statements of those who knew him, +the fact emerged that this "anarchist" preserved throughout his life a +great respect for artists of the past. Rembrandt especially, in his +mystical and visionary phase, appealed to him and Rembrandt's influence +may be traced in more than one of Gauguin's Tahitian pictures. +Velazquez, Rubens, Proudhon, Corot, Whistler--Gauguin was able to learn +something from all these men as well as from Memling and Holbein. As for +his pupils, the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following +his precepts may be judged by the fact that Gauguin remarked about one +of them: "His faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be +considered a master," and by the fact that the first synthetic picture +of another was, according to Maurice Denis, painted on the lid of a +cigar box! + + +IV + +It is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of +Gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that +went on in his soul: a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of +civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at Tahiti. + +Gauguin, as has been seen, was not naturally but only deliberately a +teacher of others. Especially in his intimate and personal concerns, he +commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve. In the matter of views on +art, he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and +paradoxical opinions which, if disputed, were merely affirmed with +greater violence. + +It is related of him that, if any one persisted in holding an opinion +contrary to his own, Gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from +those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an +embarrassed silence. + +Nevertheless, we owe to the fortunate preservation of various +fragmentary notes, made in the solitude of his last desperate years, +indications of what Gauguin's religious and political opinions were. +Here are some of them:-- + +"If I gaze before me into space, I have a vague sense of the Infinite; +nevertheless I am the conclusion of something that has been begun. I +understand then, that there has been a beginning and that there will be +no end. + +"In this I do not possess the explanation of a mystery, but merely the +mysterious sense of this mystery--and this sensation is intimately +linked to the belief in an eternal life, promised by Jesus. + +"But then, if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into +the world, it is necessary to believe, with the Buddhists, that we have +always existed. + +"A change of skin. + +"All this is very strange. + +"The unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it +is, unfathomable. God does not belong to the scholar, the logician. He +belongs to the poets, to their dreams. He is the symbol of Beauty, +Beauty itself." + +From these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in +Gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures: _Le Christ Jaune_ and _Le +Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_; when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs: +_Soyez Amoureuses and Soyez Mystérieuses_; when he drew the lithographs: +_La Cigale et les Fourmis_, and _Léda_ which bears the defiant +inscription "Honi soit qui mal y pense." + +Gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious +illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in +nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a +false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the +wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the +thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live. + +Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he +recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a +protest that had failed. Humanity had not yet produced, save by +exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and +giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." A +terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in Europe for the next +generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind. + +Therefore, in contemplating Christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, +of the futility of this sacrifice. His attitude to Christianity became +purely Protestant. Across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of +the beneficent Virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of +maternity. + +In _Le Christ Jaune_ he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved +impotent to elevate mankind to its level. _Le Christ au Jardin +d'Oliviers_ echoes the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me?" The terrible little picture, _Les Misères Humaines_ sums +up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted +civilization. Even the later Tahitian _Birth of Christ_ renders nothing +but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. In the _Ia Orana +Maria_, or the Salutation to Mary, the Virgin is represented merely as a +happy human mother. + +Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at +Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, +the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was +better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against +the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. Thus in his art he +aimed at repose, the quietism of the Buddhists. His knowledge of +Buddhism was not deep--indeed in his eyes, Buddhism, too, was a vain +revolt against nature--but his respect for Buddhistic doctrine remained +greater than his respect for Christianity. At the bottom of his soul +there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "Eat, +drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die." + +As he put it later in the pages of his Tahitian recital:-- + +"To the eyes of Tagatha (the God) the most splendid glories of kings and +their ministers are but dust and spittle: + +"To his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six +serpents: + +"To his eyes, the search for the Way of Buddha is like the coming of +flowers." + +It is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man +who was never more than half an European, that we are able to understand +how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the +bas-relief, _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez Heureuses_ and the somber +despair of _Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_. That mind, as we have +seen, was neither wholly Christian or Pagan--though the untamed Pagan +element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined +Christian side. Therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether Gauguin +as an artist, displayed more of the Classic tradition than of the +Gothic. Gothic as well as Classical strains remained mingled in him up +to the last. Throughout his work there runs a longing--obscure, +tormented, and ultimately foiled--for a natural religion: a religion +that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, +like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis. + + +V + +By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain +renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still +without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker. + +At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced +naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris +was on the verge of her æsthetic nineties. A small group of writers, +chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a +sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in +consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled +Decadents. This title was soon abandoned for the better designation of +Symbolists. + +Gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of Symbolism as a sort of hero. Here +was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious. He had definitely +broken away from his own commercial surroundings. He had defiantly +ruptured his own family ties. He had abolished Impressionist science and +had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the +process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular +art. His appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, +sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. He +became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of +symbol. + +Some critics have stated that Gauguin's head was turned by this +adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he +remained what he had always been. No man was less fitted for living in +the midst of cultivated society than he. For a time, during that strange +epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, +largely an European; but this was merely on the surface and had +completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. An +invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in +him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. This +shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. But +to every one else Gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order +to keep them at a distance. And, generally, he succeeded. + +It is small wonder then that Schuffenecker shortly found his guest again +intolerable, and that Gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging. +Schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. He seems never to have realized +that Gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love +and understand. In losing Gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever +likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already +acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing Gauguin's +collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by Cezanne, Van Gogh, +and Odilon Redon. + +Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he +ever had--who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was +Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel +taken part in the Volpini exhibition. + +It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community +of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea. + +De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a +certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. Every +summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's +cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, +and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the +Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of +dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the +complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering +his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her +end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as +"the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on +the former's return from Martinique in 1887. + +To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it +was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to +their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both +were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made +of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and +nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were +due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was +of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the +creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few +attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last +stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of +all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de +Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti. + +[Illustration: Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).] + +The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a +Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of +what induced him to take this decision.[1] He chanced to attend, or to +read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der +Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to +suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a +terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without +winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to +lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life +means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such +phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held +out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he +might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was +fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live +in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships +of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans +gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him +there, all the better--his isolation would then be complete.[2] + +The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the +proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin +sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various +symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece +entitled _Loss Of Maidenhood_, which has fortunately vanished, and an +etching representing Mallarmé with Poe's Raven in the background. +Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only +concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday. + +At all events Gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were +auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine +thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make +his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that +this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A +banquet was held at the Café Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were +assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a +similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally +a benefit performance was given by the Théâtre d'Art for the departing +artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of +his last years.[3] + +The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in +the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play +_L'Intruse_ made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. +Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to +expect. And yet he did not draw back. + +On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his +voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on +Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the +mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's +self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. +And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, +touching words:-- + +"Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family +and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my +thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more +terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have +made, which is utterly irreparable." + +With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization. + + +[Footnote 1: _Les Marges_, Paris, May 15, 1918.] + +[Footnote 2: Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters +show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility +of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.] + +[Footnote 3: It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit +whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.] + + + + +PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 + + +I + +Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South +Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's +knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical +but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous +for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge +of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. +Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and +the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the +chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were +discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different +in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or +from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us +through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the +Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in +different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social +organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; +they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin +in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by +thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, +abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting +currents. How then had they reached Tahiti? + +The anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of +the Caucasian or Indo-European. Though their skin is dark, it is for the +most part less dark than that of the natives of India. Set a Maori +soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the +difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to +give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. In other +characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian. They are +a tall, well built, massive race, contrasting favorably with the Malay. +Their hair is black--or in some cases copper brown--and wavy, again +contrasting with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the +Papuan. Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases +very beautiful. Only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to +artificial flattening in infancy. + +We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after +the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which must have been settled +late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European +stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked ships, +capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a +voyage of some weeks. (We know the Polynesians were capable of building +such ships.) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, +where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, +whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, +eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island. In order to +accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and +astronomical knowledge must have been great. Later on, under the +influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, +careless, effeminate. And, as such, they were discovered by the +enterprising Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchman with his Parisian vices, by +the thorough and scientific German. The combined influences of +missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the +inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889. + +To these people came Paul Gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their +history. It is true that he was weary of Europe and had set out with the +aim he had cherished since the Martinique days--to be the first painter +of the tropics. But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, +because he believed that here was a country where one could live for +almost nothing. It must always be remembered that Gauguin had no private +means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, +did not sell. Cezanne, Degas, could afford not to sell their pictures +because they had other resources. But Gauguin was forced to find some +way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would +take the public some time to accept. In a letter to de Monfreid he +stated his system: "From the beginning, I knew that this would be a life +from day to day; so, logically, I habituated myself to it. Instead of +losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, I put all my +strength into the day--like the wrestler who does not employ his body +except in the moment of wrestling. When I lie down in the evening I say +to myself: One more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead. +In my work as a painter, ditto--I do not trouble about anything, but +each day for itself--at the end of a certain time, this covers a +considerable extent of surface. If men would not waste their time in +disconnected struggles and labors! Every day a link. That is the great +point." + +Such was the frame of mind in which Gauguin went to Tahiti. What he +found there was not the "Pays de Cocaigne" he probably expected. The +Gods do not give their gifts in this fashion. Gauguin asked much from +Tahiti and much was given. But he asked for material comfort and was +offered instead spiritual salvation. In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at +last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought +him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its +own terrible parable to all men. + + +II + +On the night of the eighth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of +voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. He +was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last +winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to +take to his bed. + +He was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. Although +possessed of a normally strong constitution, fortified by the open-air +existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as +boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, +when he reached Tahiti, became immediately worse. This was largely due +to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the +privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for +livelihood. + +His prospects were not brilliant. The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant +and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took +him for a spy sent out from Paris, and by every possible means attempted +to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited +native population. The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, +disgusted him. The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to +all whites. + +A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his +interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old +royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen +Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in +her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven +years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying +gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct. + +Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official +ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the +attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the +embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to +revive at any favorable opportunity. + +He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process +which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live +as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still +further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him +from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to +approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, +money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by +enigmatic and evasive smiles. + +Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given +by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream +than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the +natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the +natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of +the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as +"dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to +a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his +vanity, and smiled behind his back. + +Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for +his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he +had suddenly aged--a common experience enough for white men coming +suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble. +This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was +taking its little revenge. + +He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage +back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would +come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now +spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was +invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark. + +[Illustration: The Old Spirit.] + +On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures +to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas _L'Esprit Veille_. +The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the +next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily +declined and he was every day less talked about. + +Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to +make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him +and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his +unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, +Bernard, Sérusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting +that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cézanne and Van Gogh +were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his +departure from Paris was rapidly fading. + +He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent +pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he +believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as +elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary +material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, +could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a +longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make +himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps +it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old. + +On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Marseilles with four +francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the +height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat +in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, +during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite +failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them +such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And +yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might +well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to +its owner, as well as others, only misfortune. + + +III + +Paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the +world. Since her spoiled darling Napoleon fell, there has been no one to +whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. There are a +few exceptions to this rule. Hugo, because he lived in exile; Balzac, +because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; +and of recent years Verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafés, the +vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a +prison. Such men may be the idols of Paris. For the rest, Paris is +willing only to think of her children as sons for a day. + +Gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of Paris. But he had +already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his. + +Had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength +of the sensation his pictures had created in Denmark and subsequently in +Sweden, Norway, and Germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an +arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his +work. But Gauguin demanded all or nothing! And, as was the case before +with his mother and her Peruvian relatives, the result was nothing. + +He decided to give a general exhibition of his entire Tahitian work, +forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. Durand-Ruel gave him a +gallery and Charles Morice, chief of the young symbolists whom Gauguin +had met after the Volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which +probably only served to mystify the public still further. + +For the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce +frank bewilderment. Of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three +remained unsold. What misled visitors more than anything else were the +titles that Gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. These titles +were in the Tahitian language. Every one immediately supposed that in +order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the +history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of Tahiti. Naturally +therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archæological and ethnological +puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key. + +Gauguin, of course, had intended something else. Just as he had used +Brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of Christ, so he +had used Tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery +of life as it was lived in Eden and in the days of man's awakening--in +that Golden Age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. But +it was useless for him to try to explain that Tahiti had merely given +him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures. + +Morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and +listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of +the crowd. It was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the +Indian who smiles at the stake. Only Degas came and understood. To him +on the last day of the exhibit, Gauguin said: "Monsieur Degas, you have +forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured +handed it to the astonished painter. + +The bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his, had +not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save Gauguin +for better things, sent him means of salvation. A brother of his father +died in Orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. From his estate, Gauguin +inherited thirteen thousand francs. + +The exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly. +Instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and +determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle Paris. Morice +admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. If +this was the case Gauguin would have done well had he uttered the +well-known prayer, "Deliver me from my friends!" For Morice, even, +admitted later that it was, under the circumstances, a mistake. + +About Gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have +grown with the years. It is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were +colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with Tahitian subjects in +imitation of stained glass (these same windows were, by the way, on +exhibition at a dealer's in Paris a few years ago). It is true that his +rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. It +is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said +to have come from Java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than +anything else. It is true also that he wore a strange costume, +consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons, a blue +waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat +with a blue ribbon. But the importance of these and of similar details +is very slight. Gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time +that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the +attention of heedless Paris were dead also and forgotten. + +Despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, Gauguin found himself +ill-at-ease. The facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the +tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. He wandered off +to Bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before Memling and +astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of Rubens. He lost +interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, Seguin and O'Connor. +After a vain attempt to get a post from the Government as a resident in +Oceania, he again drifted back to Pont-Aven. + +There, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto +model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. In a moment, all +his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him. +He was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way. +He attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping +behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin. + +The mulatto fled, took a train to Paris, entered the empty studio, +seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. As for Gauguin, +he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and +smoking a cigarette. + + +IV + +Little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague +understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at Pont-Aven, +this understanding became a conviction. + +He saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to +accomplish and why he had failed. He knew now what his art had been; a +great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had +gone on in his soul. What he had fought against was the cunning +extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of +nineteenth century Europe. And nineteenth century Europe had risen +against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. He must either +submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul. + +Among the people of Tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very +folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, +among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral +dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else. +Among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived +vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the +scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a +door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists +nor theologians could ever pierce. Among these savages he had found a +dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be +destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own +soul. + +On September 20, 1894, he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid:-- + +"As you say, I have not given any news of myself recently and every one +is complaining. The reason is, you see, that I have lost all my strength +through suffering, above all at night, which I frequently pass without +any sleep. And into the bargain naturally I have done nothing this +infernal month except spend money. For the rest, I have made a fixed +resolve to go back and live always in Oceania and shall return to Paris +in December in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my +bazar at no matter what price. If I succeed I shall leave as soon as +possible in February. I can then finish my days without care for the +morrow and without the external struggle against fools--Farewell to +painting, except as a means of distraction. My house will be in +sculptured wood." + +The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned +to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An +auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his +return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in +Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a +time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a +preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's +response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint +against Gauguin: + +"You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I +wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, +behind the Institute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, +close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse! I would have willingly given you +this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you +wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a +breathing space, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the +outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, +more brutally, by an 'I will not.' + +... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it--I know that this +avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only +strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to +remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with +reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain +partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art +a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate +a super-annuated style of painting. + +... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the +southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your +studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw +trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and +men which only you can create. + +"A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no God can +live--Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, +but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny +for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an +Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or +two! + +"This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, +who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound +sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in +watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, +and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this +Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ +and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not +desire this pitiful God who accepts blows. My God is rather +Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men. + +"No, Gauguin is not formed from the work of Chavannes, nor from that of +Manet, nor from that of Bastien-Lepage. + +"Who is he then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome +civilization; something of a Titan who, jealous of his Creator, in +his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up +his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring +to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do. + +[Illustration: Calvary.] + +"Bon voyage, Master: but come back here to me. I shall by that time +perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me +to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since I am +beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating +a new world." + +To this letter, Gauguin replied-with the following profession of +faith:-- + +"I have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for +my catalog. I had the idea of asking you for a preface, when I saw you +the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue +northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. I had +then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization +and my barbarism. + +"You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of +youth. + +"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and +harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a +sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and +the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my +studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. +This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will +be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch +to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage +happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana? + +"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked +before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without +shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil +and a sorrow." + +In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand +francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his +feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he +left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back. + + +V + +It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, +that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in +Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled +"Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best +commentary on and the final analysis of his mind. + +We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the +book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on +his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; +perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his +refers in passing to events that took place as late as 1897. + +Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery--the +conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with +civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet +realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while +civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying. + +To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary +artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, +in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic +ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the +professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others +feel, in the incidents of a naïve story, the essence of Tahiti--the soul +of the native. + +It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to +savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether +it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain +undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the +royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that +event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a +native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, +that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations +with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, +owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial +triumph in France. + +These facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon +which the fascinating story of Gauguin's spiritual development is bit by +bit, built up. He made use of these facts in the same way as he made use +of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful +forms. All art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital +he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, +savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are +at liberty to believe or not as we choose. + +So we follow him from Papeete into the backwoods. We find him holding +aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple +hospitality. We see him making his first tentative attempts at +establishing a community of thought. He tries to persuade the natives to +sit for their portraits--with little success. He tries to find solace +in the companionship of the half-caste Titi, in vain. Then Jotefa comes +upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto +unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of +sex, and thereby rendered sex more dangerous, more artificial, more +unnatural. So he gets his first gleam of intelligence. The next comes, +when Jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is +not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others. +This further enlightens him. He contrasts this opinion on art as +something useful to man with art as the European sees it, a mere +freakish amusement. Finally, he hazards everything. He takes a young +native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. All goes +well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the +natives. They laugh at his luck. He asks them why. Because his line has +caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife +being unfaithful to him. He returns home, half-believing the +superstition. The native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. He cannot +beat her. He can only forgive and understand. So the story closes. + +From such a story, we should naturally receive the impression that +Gauguin's life in Tahiti was ideally happy. But his letters reveal that +he was even more unhappy there than in France. So whatever elements of +fact may be in his story, it is evident that they cannot be disentangled +from the fictional details. It is better to take "Noa Noa" altogether as +a series of fictitious adventures, designed to bring out the fact that +Gauguin became, despite himself, as nearly one with the natives as it is +possible for any European to be. Thus we see, bit by bit, the Tahitians +claiming him as one of their own, from the day that he is forced by +necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused, +to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even +their easy tolerance of marital infidelity. If we look at the story in +this light, it becomes an allegory easily readable, an allegory of +civilization going down before primitive nature, expressed in a series +of parables. + +Unfortunately, Gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and +devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked +Charles Morice to collaborate. Morice thereupon wrote a series of highly +florid descriptions and poems, inspired by Gauguin's pictures, in a +style strongly tinged with the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé. These +poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of Gauguin's +recital.[1] The result is that "Noa Noa" contains two books; the first +Gauguin's, the second, Morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused +unless he remembers that the sections by Gauguin are all headed "Le +Conteur Parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous +story. Morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded. + +It is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions +add anything to Gauguin's recital. Some people may even prefer the glow +of Morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of Gauguin's poetry. Gauguin +himself philosophically remarked that he wished Morice's work to stand +beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a +civilized decadent and a naïve and brutal savage. + + +[Footnote 1: They have been wisely omitted from the English +translation.] + + + + +PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 + + +I + +With Gauguin's last return to Tahiti there opened for him the final and +most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against +encroaching civilization. The letters that he sent to de Monfreid during +this period are painful reading. They breathe the weary cry of a man who +knows that Fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a +warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but +to fight on. For Gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had +carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. The wound +in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under +the climate of Tahiti, it reopened. Owing to the rash exposure of his +skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by +eczema. Night after night was spent in sleepless pain. To add to his +troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on +him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the +white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. It seemed +to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies. + +Before leaving France, a number of friends had agreed to buy his +pictures, and assure him a steady income. These now withdrew their +support. He had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of +sculptured wood which he dreamed of; the construction of the house +carried away his remaining capital. He was everywhere fleeced, not only +by the French colonists, but also by the natives, who were growing more +and more corrupt every day, thanks to the happy influence of +civilization. Even after his house was built, he was not allowed to +keep it in peace. The owner of the ground died, leaving his affairs in a +tangle; Gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the +house, or see it destroyed. This last he refused to do, so he was +forced, finally, to borrow money, a thing he had never done in his life +before. + +Towards the end of 1897, his situation grew even worse. His eyes, now +permanently inflamed, were so painful that he could not even touch a +brush. The tragic portrait of himself in profile, which he sent about +this time to de Monfreid, clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight. +De Monfreid had sent him colors, but these were useless--he could not +even exchange them for bread. And to add to all he was in debt, more and +more heavily, month after month. De Monfreid wrote him encouragingly, +tried to sell his pictures, spoke of articles, of a press campaign on +his behalf. The answer was--"I only desire silence, silence and again +silence. Let me die in peace, forgotten, or if I ought to live, let me +live in peace, forgotten.... What matter if I am the pupil of Bernard or +Sérusier? If I have painted daubs, why set out to gild them, to deceive +people as to their quality?" + +Early in 1898 his resolution was taken. Weary, exhausted, at the end of +his tether, he decided to meet death half-way. He finished a large +picture, a sort of strange allegory of despair, entitled _D'où venons +nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?_ and then took arsenic. The dose +was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea, which recurred +for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food. Meanwhile +his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had +taken him so much trouble to build. + +In order to obtain food, he shortly afterwards returned to Papeete and, +at the age of fifty, took up a position as a shipping clerk at the Board +of Public Works, with a salary of six francs a day. To such straits was +he reduced, and yet he continued the fight. Can one help admiring his +tenacity? + +Meanwhile, the devoted de Monfreid had been busy. He had enlisted the +interest of Degas, of Vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling +some of the artist's pictures. Gauguin might now have counted upon a +steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. But with him, +there was to be no compromise. Because Bernard, Sérusier, Maurice Denis +had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some +influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them +or to exhibit in their company. Of course he merely made himself more +unpopular in Paris by such conduct. But Gauguin's personality was of a +kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. He admired +genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as Degas, Poe, +Balzac, and Mallarmé. For ordinary society, he preferred either natives +or children. Nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de Monfreid's +efforts, he found himself out of debt in 1899 and able to return to his +house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. Things seemed to +improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease +of his legs. He set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower +seeds which de Monfreid had sent, at his request, from France. Ill, +ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his +goal. + +[Illustration: Matamua (Olden Days).] + + +II + +It is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in Gauguin's career, +unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical +ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from +the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the +time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. He had +been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown +power was now pursuing him with its hatred. In his next stage, we find +him turning even against the natives. + +On his return to Tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged +thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. She had served him +devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed +him in his illness. After his return to the house from Papeete, she had +resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. Now, for +some reason or no reason, Gauguin suddenly took it into his head that +she had robbed him, and drove her out. The poor soul, however, returned +and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to +call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a +violation of his domicile. Of course, the law did nothing. + +This only further enraged Gauguin. He decided to attack the entire +colonial administration. Since his return, he had been everywhere +treated by the Europeans at Tahiti as a madman or fool. Now he would get +his revenge. + +With the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several +numbers of a paper called, first _Les Guèpes_, and later _Le Sourire_. +The contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff +that Gauguin ever wrote. But these crude gibes at the governor and at +the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude +caricatures that Gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to +have produced a stir. People began to fear him at last; it was, for a +moment, a triumph. + +But Tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. A railway +had been built into the interior; the Protestant missionaries grew every +day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the +natives. Gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to +de Monfreid for medicines. But shortly he found his own need of medicine +as great as that of any of the wretched natives. An epidemic of +influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the +hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. To add to his griefs, +the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an +impossible figure. + +Hearing that life in the Marquesas Islands was cheaper, that the natives +there were physically more unspoilt, also that Europeans were few and +far between, he decided to quit Tahiti and install himself in the +island of Hiva-Hoa or Dominica. He hoped to find there elements of a +purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. This hope was destined +to be realized only in part. + +Gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, +Martinique, Brittany and Tahiti. He might have done better work at other +places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. In the +case of his removal to the Marquesas it was the strength that was +lacking. + +Traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his +eyes are to be found even in his latest Tahitian pictures. Owing to his +habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. +The first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, +superior to the productions of 1891-93. The _Te Arii Vahine_ or +Reclining Woman, of 1896 is finer in design even than the _L'Esprit +Veille_ of 1892-3. The _Youth Between Two Girls, La Case_ (1897), the +beautiful _Navé Navé Mahana_ (Delightful Days) of 1896, with its feeling +of a terrestrial paradise--these are masterpieces of their kind. But the +portrait of himself (1897) already shows signs of inability to finish +and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. And with many of the +succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater +carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. The more +savage Gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. +One is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the Irish dramatist, +Synge. + +The Gauguin who sought solitude of far-off Hiva-Hoa was not the Gauguin +of ten years before. He was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. And +he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. Nevertheless, +before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. +Pictures like the _Jeune Fille à l'Eventail_ (1902) or the magnificent +_Contes Barbares_ (also 1902) in which the Marquesas type appears, are +the last word of Gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new +heaven and earth. The flame burned clear in him just before the +close--then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness. + + +III + +The Marquesas Islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and +basaltic formation of Tahiti, of volcanic origin. They lie about a +thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more +humid and less supportable to white men. Owing to this fact, and to the +fact that they are out of the track of steamers between San Francisco +and Sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character. + +The natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any Polynesian +peoples. In distinction to the Tahitians, who are either red or olive +brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. In this they +resemble the Maories of New Zealand, as in the practice of +face-tattooing common among the males. They were formerly great +fighters and ferocious cannibals, as Herman Melville's "Omoo" tells us. +The first white settlers amongst them were French Roman Catholic +missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by +discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial +abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. The +Marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is +Tahiti. + +It was on the chief island of this group that Gauguin installed himself. +His capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start +constructing another house. This, like his house in Tahiti, was +ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. In +the garden, stood a rude clay statue--a sort of combination of a Buddha +and a Maori idol--under a canopy. Gauguin called this statue Te +Atua--the God, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. On +the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from Morice's +verses in "Noa Noa": + + "The Gods are dead and Tahiti dies of their death, + The sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps, + A sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings: + Now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of Eve, + Who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast, + Sterile gold, sealed by some divine design." + +Altogether in the Marquesas, Gauguin found a great charm and repose. He +seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives +and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king. But his health +was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one Chinese +boy, he lived alone. He even dreamed of abandoning the Marquesas (not +because he was weary of the place, but because he knew his strength was +small) and seeking a more favorable climate in Spain, where he thought +he might be able to paint. + +Except for the constant trouble with his health, his only difficulty was +with the missionaries. With the exception of a few settlers, they were +the only whites on the islands. Gauguin had advanced in savagery to +such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people. He +refused to see that the Catholic Missionaries had at least attempted to +save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the +Protestant Missionaries in Tahiti. The insistence of the Catholics upon +monogamy, upon European dress, upon mission schools and religious +observances infuriated him. He made a statue of a nude woman and set it +up in his garden. The Bishop protested. Gauguin promptly made a +caricature in clay of the bishop, with horns on his head like the Devil, +and set it up facing the statue. Something of the old Gothic love of the +grotesque, something, too, of the typically Parisian desire to "_épater +de bourgeois_" remained in him to the last. + +But this was not all. Gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in +peace. Although de Monfreid had worked devotedly, his position in France +was still insecure; Vollard might at any moment refuse to take more +pictures to sell. The wound he had received by his failure to impress +Paris in 1893 still smarted. He determined to write two articles +containing his opinions on art, technique, painting, life and morality, +in order to confound the Parisian critics. These articles, entitled +"Anecdotes of an Apprentice" and "Before and After," are little more +than a series of feverishly jotted notes. Later, with other notes of a +similar nature, they were embodied in a large album entitled "Avant et +Après," which remains the fullest body of information about Gauguin's +life and art we possess. The _Mercure de France_ judged, perhaps +rightly, that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print +them. + +The other old score that he had to wipe out was with the French colonial +administration. In Tahiti, he had fought the governor, the law courts, +and the gendarmes. Here it was the customs officials who roused his +wrath. Two American ships had recently visited the island and a certain +amount of goods had been sold to the natives, through the connivance of +the gendarmes, without paying tax. Gauguin immediately wrote a letter on +the subject to the Administration, stating the facts as he understood +them and protesting, on behalf of the natives, against the bribery and +corruption of the Customs in this instance. The only reply made was a +notice from the law courts that the Administration intended to take +steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement. Gauguin +appeared in court, where he was promptly condemned to prison for three +months and to a fine of a thousand francs. + +It was ruin, but Gauguin determined to appeal. The tribunal was +irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part, at +least, true. He was sure of winning his case, but an appeal necessitated +a return to Tahiti and the costs of an attorney, and his capital was +again running low. He wrote to de Montfreid, begging him to find a buyer +for three pictures, at the price of fifteen hundred francs; he sent off +ten more pictures to Vollard. Then he prepared to make his appeal. + +Death surprised him suddenly and Paul Gauguin's appeal will never be +heard in this world. + +A letter from the only white man, the Protestant minister Vernier, who +knew him, leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of Gauguin's +death. It was not the eczema of the legs, nor leprosy, as some have +hinted, nor another dose of arsenic, nor syphilis, that ended his life; +it was a simple syncope of the heart. His energy, with which he had kept +up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had +drawn so many beautiful pictures, was worn out. The machine slackened +and stopped. + +Paul Gauguin died on the 6th of May, 1903. + +A few days before his death he had written his last letter to Charles +Morice, the words of which stir one like a trumpet. + +"I am on the ground but I am not beaten. The Indian, who smiles while he +is being tortured, is not conquered. You are mistaken if you meant that +I am wrong in calling myself a savage. I _am_ a savage, and the +civilized feel this, for there is nothing in my work which could produce +bewilderment save this savage strain in me, for which I am not myself +responsible. It is therefore inimitable. Every human work is a +revelation of the individual. Hence there are two kinds of beauty; one +comes from instinct, the other from labor. The union of the two, with +the modifications resulting therefrom, produces great and very +complicated richness. Art-criticism has yet to discover the fact.... +Raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from +discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in +him. Raphael was born with beauty. All the rest in him is modification. + +"Physics, chemistry, and above all the study of Nature, have produced an +epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists robbed +of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of +the productive element they no longer possess. They now act only in +disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone. +Solitude is not to be recommended to every one, for a man must have +strength to bear it and to act alone. All I have learnt from others has +been an impediment to me. It is true I know little, but what I do know +is my own." + +Yet civilization, after all, had the last word. The very bishop, whom +Gauguin in life had hated and caricatured, intervened when he lay cold +and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full Catholic +rites in the cemetery of the Church at Atuana. And, by a concluding +stroke of irony, the grave was left unmarked. Thus one of the greatest +painters of the later nineteenth century, and one of the bravest men the +world has ever seen, mingled his dust with that of the humblest +natives, in the same way as Blake, one of the greatest painters of the +early nineteenth century, had been buried before him in an unmarked +grave among the paupers, at Bunhill Fields. + + +IV + +The immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth +century took place so rapidly and universally, that no one was able to +estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects. At +the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded Europe and +America was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man, born in +the fires of the French Revolution. After 1848 this idea gradually +vanished, and another took its place; the purely material idea of +progress. The perfected application of steam and the consequent +development of machinery; the immense tapping of the world's resources +of coal, metals, agricultural products; the equally immense, universal +exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to +their maximum; the creation of an international finance, resting upon +vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few, whose world-wide +interests were linked together by railways, steamship lines, telegraphs, +telephones; the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist +class, invisibly controlling the old, decayed aristocracy, the official +church, the machinery of the law; a larger middle class, dependent upon +and subservient to the capitalists; and an immense laboring class, +exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes: all these were +virtually the creation of a single century. + +Against this overwhelming flood of change, a few exceptionally gifted +men vaguely protested, affirming the greater value of human life over +mechanical invention; maintaining the antique dignity of man. Their +protest was incoherent, individualistic. These men were like broken and +scattered fragments of dykes, still unsubmerged and striving to hold +back the waters of a flood. Among them must be ranked the artist whose +life-story I have written. + +All that is vital and valuable in French painting of the nineteenth +century, since Ingres, springs directly from the enthusiasm and +spiritual energy of the French Revolution. The somber fury of Delacroix, +the colossal caricature of Daumier; the peasant art of Millet; the sane +realism of Courbet; the mordant irony of Degas and Forain; even the +feeling for nature and the open air which the Impressionists gave us, +all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for +personal freedom, for human liberty and development. When Gauguin +arrived on the scene, the reaction was already taking place. The +official, academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock +of outworn formulas. On the other hand, the Impressionists were striving +to render nature scientifically, unemotionally. Nature was becoming to +them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical +formulas for soil, air, sunlight. Only Puvis de Chavannes remained, +aloof and misunderstood, painting great decorations that seemed but the +remembrance of some golden age of the past, and easel pictures of a +profound, hopeless pessimism. + +Gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against +materialism, against unemotional vision began. At the outset he +attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the Impressionists. But, +by the purest instinct he discovered, as Cézanne had already discovered, +that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered +in color. And he also discovered (this time the discovery came from +Puvis de Chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted +either--that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by +nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that +even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to +suit the harmony of the composition. Thus unconsciously, almost without +volition on his part, he was led to understand that the Primitives +everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great +human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their +vision was or was not exact. And so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for +the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of +natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized +efficiency. + +Unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his +art or to his life. Gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only +a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished +world. And he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and +disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to +harmony with himself. At least the caricature of himself in _Contes +Barbares_ is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled +child that some imagine him to be. Having both the world and himself to +struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should +represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved +only to be, as he said in his last letter to de Montfreid, "a downfall +followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." And so in +his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by Van Gogh after +the disaster that parted them: "Gauguin made one feel that a good +picture should be the equivalent of a good action." + +And indeed it is so. Every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound +moral responsibility. This responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty +of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of Christian +ethics, by which we are ruled. It is not the duty of upholding a system +of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very +roots of life. It is a far nobler, far more difficult task. The duty of +the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, +despite the morbid prejudices of Puritanism, the timid conventionality +of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of +suffering, decay and death. This duty Gauguin in his art strove to +accomplish. He affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's +labor, the earth. Cézanne, perhaps a more accomplished painter, endowed +perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great +painters of the past, shrank from making Gauguin's affirmation. He +accepted in his own life a compromise; in his art he ruthlessly +eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination. And +then, towards the end of his life, Cézanne complained that Gauguin had +vulgarized him. + +"Gauguin has not understood me; never will I accept the lack of +gradation and of tone; it's nonsense." + +It would have been better for Cézanne to have said that he could not, +dared not understand Gauguin. + +Nor is this all that Gauguin accomplished. He restored painting to its +proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts. He showed us that its +place is between architecture and music, and that sculpture is its twin +sister. He was the first man to suspect that the progress of the +scientific spirit among the Greeks had produced the same effects in +disassociating and destroying the arts, as has the progress of the +scientific spirit in the present day. He believed, and constantly +affirmed, that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he +built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies, as well as +upon the chosen architectural proportions of form, which, whether given +by perspective or not, seemed to him necessary. Thus he reconciled the +Venetians and the Primitives, and showed that the goal of both form and +color is decoration. + +William Blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan, who painted +his dream of a golden age in his own way, who steadfastly strove to +grasp the essential truth in every tradition: Egyptian, Cambodian, +Persian, Chinese, Gothic, Greek and Renaissance. But Gauguin could +never, had he known of Blake, have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic +negation, the contemptuous denial of earthliness, of "the delusions of +the goddess Nature." In Gauguin, the spirit never conquered the flesh, +and he remained to the end, a man. Blake was possibly the greater +visionary: Gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build. + + +V + +After Gauguin's death, his art rapidly became almost forgotten in +France. He remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were +not fifty of his pictures in that country. Even the few there are, hang +in scattered private collections, each containing one or at most three +or four. The great bulk of his work is in Germany, Scandinavia and +Russia. It proved impossible even in 1911 to raise sufficient money to +buy _L'Esprit Veille_ for the Louvre. + +It is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able +to assemble a considerable quantity of his work. Gauguin was, above all +things, a decorator, and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater +effect than one. One does not judge Puvis de Chavannes, another +decorator, solely by his easel pictures, but by the great decorative +schemes in Paris, at Amiens and in Boston. This remark applies equally +to other decorators, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and +Veronese. A room hung with twenty Gauguins would produce an immense +effect of monumental power. That such a room exists in Moscow can be +small consolation to Western Europeans at present. + +His pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively, like +Sérusier, or drifted off into academicism, like Bernard, or watered down +their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume +decoration of Maurice Denis. None of them seized Gauguin's secret of +remaining simple, direct and savage. Aristide Maillol is an honorable +exception. A sculptor and tapestry designer, he was able to work upon +the indications that Gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches +and to show us, in part at least, how they might be realized. + +The main stream of French art simply ignored Gauguin. Instead of making +with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition, it went +forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting. The +Neo-Impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were +followed by disciples of Cézanne, who sought to reduce all forms to +certain geometrical primaries, basing their doctrine on certain words +which the master of Aix had let fall concerning the simplification of +form. Out of these emerged Matisse, whose art became, through a more and +more ruthless elimination of modeling, through a more and more arbitrary +placing of colors, an abstraction, an utterly unemotional series of +hieroglyphs. Then Picasso came upon the scene, eliminated color +altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form. The Cubists +followed Picasso. The Futurists in their turn started another kind of +abstract painting, the painting of mechanical energy, the dynamism +latent in form. + +The Expressionists, meanwhile, held to Van Gogh's and Gauguin's idea +that the picture must represent some emotion, but they denied Gauguin's +corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose +this emotion into its pictorial equivalent. Consequently they eliminated +form and strove to paint abstract emotion. Finally, the Vorticists +combined Futurism and Expressionism into a single whole and painted the +abstraction of an abstraction--the emotion of dynamic energy, thus +declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself, an art utterly +innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever. + +The motives of all these confused art movements, perplexing and +apparently in-congruous, were identical. They were all actuated by a +mania for scientific discovery, a desire to analyze phenomena until the +reality behind phenomena could be found. The physicists, chemists, +philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real +world--that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and +electrons, of radiant or non-radiant energy, or perhaps of elasticity +and inelasticity. These young art revolutionaries, who gave themselves +so many queer labels, were not, as many supposed, either insincere or +insane. They were merely smitten with the desire to make painting--and +not only painting, but even other arts as well--a branch of abstract +science. The world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion, +making some abstract concept. Therefore they strove to paint, not what +seemed to them unreal, but their absolute conceptions. This new +metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development +of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the +rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries +by the Byzantine monks of Mount Athos, was rapidly conquering the whole +field of aft when the past war broke out. Nor has the war altogether +suppressed its manifestations. + +The enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past +war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results +achieved by either side. However true it may be to hold the Germans as +primarily responsible for this destruction, in the first instance, yet +it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape +responsibility for the later developments of the struggle. Apart from +Germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war, civilization as a whole +must answer for the horror of its method. A piece of heavy artillery is +equally destructive, whether it be cast at Essen or at Le Creusot; a +Caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a Gotha; the submarine was +first employed in war by the Americans; the machine gun is an English +invention. For all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth +century, with our belief in purely material progress, stand guilty +to-day; and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over +four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come. + +The past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest +between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an +inhuman, scientific, organized machine. And the machine was victorious. +Just as the scientific spirit, conquering art before the war, led to the +extravagances of Cubism and Vorticism so, since the war, it has attacked +life itself; and made of national existence, no longer a problem of +human bravery, resource and intelligence, but merely a problem of +relative man-power and munitions. We have learned to speak of +"man-power" as our books on physics speak of "horse-power." The task we, +in the war, set ourselves was a grisly paradox; we proposed to save +civilization, to undo a great wrong, by destroying the very basis of +human life on which all civilization stands. + +It is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a +few artists who, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, foresaw +that material progress would end in annihilating humanity, that nature +and humanity, hand in hand, are more sacred than all the shells that +could ever be produced, the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws +that could ever be written. With a sense of spiritual release we revert +to those who dreamed of the great return to nature--to Rousseau, +Whitman, Gauguin, as well as to others who, although perhaps lesser men +than they, followed in their path--David Thoreau, Richard Jefferies. +They were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail--the +gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above +æsthetic negation. Their vision was of something not in themselves but +of something higher and nobler, as Gauguin knew when he deliberately +caricatured himself in _Contes Barbares_. As he knew also, the vision +was of something stated only fragmentarily, inscribed as a promise, a +foretaste, an indication of what might be. In Rousseau's prose, in +Whitman's poetry and in Gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope +for self-tortured humanity, and the promise of a land where nature and +man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED + + +WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY: + +1. Paul Gauguin par Jean de Rotonchamp, Imprimé à Weimar par les Soins +du Comte de Kessler et se Trouve à Paris, chez Edouard Druet, Rue de +Faubourg Saint Honoré, No. 114. 1906. Edition limited to 250 copies. + +2. Gauguin, by Charles Morice. Floury, Paris, 1919. This and the +preceding work are the standard sources of Gauguin's life. + +3. Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Charles Daniel de Monfreid. Paris, Cres, +1919. + +4. White Shadows in the South Seas, by Frederick O'Brien. New York, The +Century Co., 1920. A travel book, with a few new sidelights on Gauguin's +final period. + +5. Avant et Après. Paul Gauguin aux Marquises. 1903. 100 copies only +published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript. A +translation into German has also appeared. Kurt Wolf Verlag, Berlin, +1920. + + + +WORKS OF ART CRITICISM IN ENGLISH: + +1. Modern Painting, by Willard Huntingdon Wright. New York, The John +Lane Company. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by +John Gould Fletcher + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 38848 *** diff --git a/38848-h/38848-h.htm b/38848-h/38848-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..30ce2fc --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/38848-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3149 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Paul Gauguin, by John Gould Fletcher. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +a:link {color: #800000; text-decoration: none; } +v:link {color: #800000; text-decoration: none; } + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +.small {font-size: 0.8em;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 1em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: + 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 38848 ***</div> + +<h1>PAUL GAUGUIN</h1> + +<h3>His Life and Art</h3> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>JOHN GOULD FLETCHER</h2> + + +<h4><i>WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS</i></h4> + + +<h5>NICHOLAS L. BROWN</h5> + +<h5>NEW YORK</h5> + +<h5>MCMXXI</h5> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img01" id="img01"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_01.jpg" width="500" alt="Self-portrait of Gauguin." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Self-portrait of Gauguin.</span> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4>TO</h4> + +<h4>M.T.H.S.</h4> + +<h4>WHO HELPED ME WITH</h4> + +<h4>ADVICE AND CRITICISM</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"Improvement makes straight roads; +but the crooked roads without improvement +are the roads of genius."</p> + +<p>WILLIAM BLAKE.</p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + + +<p> +CONTENTS +</p> + +<p class="small"> +<a href="#PART_I_THE_FORMATION_1849-1885">PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_II_THE_STRUGGLE_WITH_IMPRESSIONISM_1885-1889">PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_III_THE_SCHOOL_OF_PONT-AVEN_1889-1891">PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_IV_THE_RETURN_TO_SAVAGERY_1891-1895">PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_V_THE_FIGHT_AGAINST_CIVILIZATION_1895-1903">PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#img01">SELF-PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN</a>, <i>Frontispiece</i><br /> +<a href="#img02">PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN'S MOTHER</a><br /> +<a href="#img03">THE PAINTER SCHUFFENECKER AND HIS FAMILY</a><br /> +<a href="#img04">STRUGGLE OF JACOB WITH THE ANGEL</a><br /> +<a href="#img05">THE IDOL</a><br /> +<a href="#img06">TAHITIAN WOMEN</a><br /> +<a href="#img07">HINA MARURU (FEAST TO HINA)</a><br /> +<a href="#img08">THE OLD SPIRIT</a><br /> +<a href="#img09">CALVARY</a><br /> +<a href="#img10">MATAMUA (OLDEN DAYS)</a><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>PAUL GAUGUIN</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_I_THE_FORMATION_1849-1885" id="PART_I_THE_FORMATION_1849-1885"></a>PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885</h3> + +<p class="center">I</p> +<p>About the middle of the last century, there occurred in Paris a series +of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future +history, secondary only to the days of the French Revolution. You will +seek Paris in vain for any public monument to these events, known as the +Revolution of 1848. Only the name of the hideously utilitarian Boulevard +Raspail may perhaps remind you, that in this year France achieved +another one of those political failures which have been so curiously +common in her history since 1789.</p> + +<p>In February of that year, King Louis Philippe and his ministers had fled +before the rising storm of popular feeling. It seemed at last that the +great popular revolution of the working classes, dreamed of by every +artist since 1789, proclaimed in the Rabelaisian caricatures of Daumier, +latent in the troubled Romanticism of the epoch, was at hand. A +provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the National +Assembly. But the provinces showed that it mattered little to them +whether the form of Government was changed or not. So long as the +peasant had his farm, his cow, his money safely stowed away in a +stocking, a hard-working wife, a pipe and a glass of wine, he was +content with things as they were. If the industrial classes of Paris +were starving, that was not his affair. He shared none of their fanatic +Socialism, none of their dreams of the millennium. He wanted to be left +alone.</p> + +<p>The National Assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate, and the +leaders of the Provisional Government discovered that they preferred to +stand with the majority rather than to fall with the Parisian +extremists. But the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle. On +the fifteenth of May, a mob attempted to take the Assembly by storm, and +failed. On the eighteenth, Lamartine, the former idol of the +Revolutionaries, was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech. The +Government found that it must either provide work and wages for the +Parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force. A scheme was +started, but it proved to be costly, and on the twenty-first of June the +Government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no +further with its project. Three days later the storm broke. Two hundred +and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets, crowned +with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men. For three days the mob +kept up a desperate resistance; then the last barricade fell, the blood +was washed off the pavements, the cause of "moderation" and "good sense" +was restored.</p> + +<p>There is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events. On the +seventh of June a son, Paul, was born to M. and Madame Gauguin, +residing in Paris. This infant, brought obscurely into the world to the +sound of cannon, was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of +Nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching +and as important in its effects as the great attempt of 1848. His life +was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, +the middle-class morality, of the late nineteenth century; his art was +to speak the promise of a renewed world, a world where man could again +walk naked, unashamed and free, as in Eden. He was destined to break +beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities, as the +revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the +government: but his ideas were to point the way to, new conceptions of +art and of life, which only the future can realize.</p> + +<p>Clovis Paul Gauguin, to give the father his full name, was a petty +journalist from Orleans. He had a post as collaborator on one of the +obscure newspapers of Liberal opinion, that so greatly flourished about +this time. His influence upon his son was slight, as is the case with +the fathers of most artists. It is to Madame Gauguin that we must turn +for an explanation of the character of her famous son.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img02" id="img02"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_02.jpg" width="500" alt="Portrait of Gauguin's mother." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Portrait of Gauguin's mother.</span> +</div> + +<p>Aline Marie Gauguin was the daughter of a certain Chazal, of whom we +know nothing, and of the then celebrated Socialist pamphleteer and +agitator, Flora Tristan.</p> + +<p>Flora Tristan was born in 1803 at Lima, Peru. Her father was a Spaniard +of noble descent, Mariano Tristan y Moscoso. He served as an officer in +the Peruvian Army, and probably took part in the wars of independence +which severed Peru from Spain, since we find him and his family later +occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the Republic. In 1818 +he sent his daughter to school in Paris. She eloped the next year with +Chazal and was disowned by her parents. After the birth of her child she +separated from her husband and returned to Peru, seeking a +reconciliation with her family. But the family had determined to do +nothing for the self-willed, impulsive daughter, and she drifted back to +Paris, where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of +strongly Socialistic tendencies. She became a pioneer of woman's +suffrage, of humanitarianism, of the trade-union movement. She toured +France making speeches. In 1836 she had the misfortune to meet Chazal +again in Paris, who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned +to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense. A few years later +she died in Bordeaux, and the trade-unions, remembering her zeal for +their cause and her personal beauty—which had moved them perhaps more +than the fervor of her speeches—subscribed the sum necessary to put up +a monument.</p> + +<p>Such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just +been born into the world. The tragic and violent union of Chazal and +Flora Tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became. +In Chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong +irritability; in Flora Tristan we see whence he drew his love of +personal and individual liberty, his hatred of moral restraint, his +scorn of the bourgeoisie, his Spanish hauteur and stoicism. Half-savage +Spanish blood flowed in his veins, a mixture of Arab, Celt and African. +Perhaps in his Peruvian descent there were even other currents—currents +of that Inca race which the Spaniards had subdued but not conquered. +Whatever else destiny held in store for him, it was certain from the +beginning that Paul Gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the +intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of Paris.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>The earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar +strands of tragedy, romance and savagery which were to recur so often in +his later life. In December, 1851, the makeshift Republic came to an end +and Louis Napoleon, by an easy <i>coup d'état</i>, restored the Empire. +Clovis Gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the Liberal +paper for which he wrote. There was only one hope remaining: that Flora +Tristan's relations in Lima might do something for Paul and his sister +Marie. So the family set out for Peru. On the way, during the terrible +passage through the Straits of Magellan, Clovis Gauguin was seized with +heart failure and died. His body was taken ashore and buried at Port +Famine, or Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in the world, in Chile.</p> + +<p>The mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by +the head of the family, Flora Tristan's uncle, Don Pio Tristan y +Moscoso. Concerning this personage Gauguin himself told many anecdotes +in later years. Probably most of these were inexact to the point of +being fable pure and simple. We must remember that Gauguin at this time +was scarcely four years of age. We know that the family were wealthy +nobles, of high social standing, who lived in the old Castillian manner +of luxury and indolence. From such surroundings Gauguin doubtless +derived much of the "hidalgo manner" that distinguished him throughout +life—a blend of haughtiness, reserve and egoism, masking often a real +shyness before people. And here he saw, also for the first time, works +of art produced by a non-European civilization: ceramics, jewelry, +fabrics of Inca origin. The remembrance of these specimens of savage, +primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's stay in Lima did not last long. Four years later his paternal +grandfather died in France, and his mother returned to that country in +order to obtain her share of his estate, which proved to be only a small +sum.</p> + +<p>In later years, the painter believed, or affected to believe, that if +his mother had remained in Peru and had neglected her relations in +France she would have been left heiress to Don Pio Tristan's property. +It is probable that Gauguin was here merely romancing, as he often did, +when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life. It is an +enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's +mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the +influence of Peruvian life. Peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the +tropics, for exotic, out-of-the-way, old-fashioned places, unspoiled by +the nineteenth century. Unconsciously many of the traits that made his +character so little comprehensible to the Frenchmen of his day were +planted in him during these years.</p> + +<p>France was now to give him something different. He was to be educated, +or rather to receive what passed for an education. He remained at a +seminary at Orleans till the age of seventeen, hating his studies, +becoming more and more intractable and unteachable. This seminary, as +all such institutions in France at the time, was conducted by Jesuit +priests.</p> + +<p>In later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he +had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy, false virtue and +spying. And with malicious irony he said: "And I also learnt there a +little of that spirit of Jesuit casuistry, which is a force not to be +despised in the struggle with other people."</p> + +<p>His sole ambition was to escape, to get to sea again, to make voyages to +the tropics. His mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy, +but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination. He was +therefore placed in the merchant marine. This decision of his mother he +regretted bitterly to the end of his life.</p> + +<p>In 1865 he embarked aboard the <i>Luzitano</i>, a cargo boat, on a voyage +from Havre to Rio de Janeiro. His grade aboard this ship was that of a +pilot's apprentice.</p> + +<p>Of this voyage, which enabled him to see again the tropics, Gauguin +retained in later years important memories.</p> + +<p>In the fragmentary note-books he kept in Tahiti he declared that it was +during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of +the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the Society +Islands in the Pacific. The remembrance of that story may have +influenced him later in his choice of Tahiti as an ideal residence. At +least the appearance of Rio de Janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind +fresh enthusiasm for the tropics. The stay at Rio was further signalized +by a liaison with an actress, of that eminently casual kind which +Gauguin was to experience so often later on. Finally the return voyage +brought about another liaison, this time with a Prussian woman, and in +defiance of ship's discipline. It was certain that his character—was +not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of +self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer. At all +events, the next thing we hear is that Gauguin quitted the merchant +service and enlisted in the French Navy as a common sailor, in February, +1868. Probably by this time his mother had refused to support him, and +he was forced into this position through necessity.</p> + +<p>The cruiser <i>Jerome Napoleon</i>, on which he found himself, was, to his +chagrin, ordered to cruise in northern waters. So instead of seeing the +tropics again, Gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound +Greenland coast and the barren North Cape. This was bad, but still worse +was to follow. The vessel was on its way to Spitzbergen when news was +brought to its captain that France had declared war upon Prussia.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?" said the second officer, seeing the Captain put +the helm about.</p> + +<p>"To Charenton," replied the indignant first officer; Charenton being the +great lunatic asylum near Paris!</p> + +<p>The vessel got no nearer to France than Copenhagen, when the melancholy +news of Sedan came. The name <i>Jerome Napoleon</i> was painted out, that of +<i>Desaix</i> substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain +in the waters off Copenhagen till the close of the war in 1871, +contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>In 1871, after the cessation of hostilities, Gauguin obtained leave, +renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. He was now +heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome +discipline that he had now endured aboard the <i>Desaix</i> for three years. +Besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he +felt that he must seize it.</p> + +<p>His mother had died in the interval since he had last seen France and, +in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do +Paris banker, Gustave Arosa. This man immediately found for Paul a place +at Bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. And now there +opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in +retrospect the most amazing of his career.</p> + +<p>Though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an +instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan +savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing +prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the Bourse, without +troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position +might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. He had not been +long at Bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. +Possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the Paris stock +market had been utterly disorganized by the events of 1870-71, and, now +that peace was signed, France was making one of those rapid recoveries +that have been so common in her history. Stocks were going up and trade +was booming. Gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances +to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as +forty thousand francs.</p> + +<p>In 1873 he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was +never wholly to shake off. His wife, Mette Sophia Gad, was the daughter +of a Protestant clergyman of Copenhagen. The family was a good one and +enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the Danish capital. The +daughters had been educated at Paris, and one of them had married a +member of the Norwegian Parliament, while another had become the first +wife of the painter, Fritz Thaulow.</p> + +<p>When or where Gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it +was probably during the stay of the <i>Desaix</i> at Copenhagen. At any rate +it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil +one, owing to his wife being a Protestant) was delayed owing to the loss +of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of St. Cloud.</p> + +<p>At this time, through his wife's friends and connections, through +Gustave Arosa, through Emile Schuffenecker—a fellow employee at +Bertin's—and through others, a new interest came into his life. He +began to paint, although pressure of work did not permit him to regard +this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first. Arosa was, in +his way, an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by +French artists of the day—among them Delacroix and Courbet. These works +he engraved in photogravure—an art then in its infancy—and sent copies +of the engravings to his personal friends. Through Schuffenecker Gauguin +was brought closely into touch with the Impressionists, who were then +making a sensation in Paris. Gauguin bought brushes and colors and began +by painting on Sundays and holidays. It was only slowly that he began to +look upon painting as anything but a distraction.</p> + +<p>His first essays in art were purely academic. He painted in the +prevailing style of the Salons and even sent one picture to the Salon of +1876. At the same time he began to attempt sculpture. He worked at first +in marble, a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more +coarsely-grained surface of wood, clay or paste. He liked a rough +surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order +to emphasize this roughness.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature. His early years at +sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity. He had a tremendous +interest in the technical processes of art. During his life he was able +to do almost equally well at painting, lithography and sculpture. He +also attempted etching, stained glass and pottery. His writings, +particularly his share in "Noa Noa," show a considerable grasp of +direct, poetic narrative—a gift that might very possibly have made of +him a good poet. Throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely +as a painter of pictures; his influence in opening new channels for +art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work. Even in +literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration. The +problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that +occupied his English contemporary, William Morris, almost as varied as +those that occupied Leonardo da Vinci.</p> + +<p>He acquired knowledge easily; his problem was always how to weigh, sift +and make use of it. But his growth to artistic maturity was slower than +in the case of artists who limit their field of effort, because he +attacked many subjects at the same time.</p> + +<p>It may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof, +not of a complex, but of a primitive nature. Yet it is undoubtedly true +that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost +everything. The interchangeability, the essential unity of all the arts, +is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages. As +civilization and consequently technique become more advanced, it grows +more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch +of art. Perhaps that is why, in our modern industrialized states, the +arts tend to disappear, to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly +diminishing minority.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;"> +<a name="img03" id="img03"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_03.jpg" width="650" alt="The painter Schuffenecker and his family." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The painter Schuffenecker and his family.</span> +</div> + +<p>All this was not suspected by Gauguin at the time, nor for years +afterwards. For the time he was content to paint and to follow the +prevailing fashions in his painting. And he soon found that the +prevailing fashion of the day in Paris was Impressionism.</p> +<p> </p> +<p>To define Impressionism it is not necessary, as many professional +art-critics have done, to enter into long dissertations as to the +supremacy of pure colors, nor to see in Constable or Turner the ancestry +of the movement.</p> + +<p>Impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of Realism—or to +speak better, Naturalism—carried out in painting. This cult had already +possessed in painting one important precursor, Gustave Courbet. But it +is to literature, always the advance guard of the arts, that we must +turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed.</p> + +<p>A little before 1870, which year marks a turning point not only in +France's political but also in her intellectual life, there came a +change over her literature. Romanticism, which had startled the world in +1830 with Lamartine, de Musset, de Vigny, Hugo and Balzac, was now dead. +The heroic, the Napoleonic, the Byronic attitude had somehow gone out of +life. Under the Second Empire, the bourgeois triumphed over the +Tuileries.</p> + +<p>A few years before the crash of 1870, Charles Baudelaire gave to the +world his <i>Fleurs du Mal</i>—the exasperated cry against life of a soul +tortured with too great a sensibility. Almost at the same time Gustave +Flaubert, in <i>Madame Bovary</i>, erected his monument of infamy to the +memory of the bourgeois. These two books opened the path to Naturalism, +to the "human document," to the de Goncourts, to de Maupassant, and to +Zola.</p> + +<p>Impressionism was the logical outgrowth, in another sphere, of the work +of these Naturalist writers.</p> + +<p>It abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural +sunlight.</p> + +<p>It abolished the classical "subject" and left the painter free to paint, +as Manet said, "<i>N'importe quoi</i>."</p> + +<p>Thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric +vibration, foreshadowed by Constable and Turner, but not by them +elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with +equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon Nature, +and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. It was, as Manet said +again, "Nature seen through a temperament."</p> + +<p>Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared +to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending +from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres. +This was the Norman, Puvis de Chavannes.</p> + +<p>But Puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of +walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in +the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while Impressionism was the +<i>succès de scandale</i> of the day.</p> + +<p>Gauguin heard of Impressionism and became a devout follower of its +theories. He painted pictures in the manner of Camille Pissarro, who was +a compatriot of Madame Gauguin, having been born in the Island of St. +Thomas in the Antilles, then Danish territory. Gauguin took part in the +exhibitions of the Impressionist group in 1880 and 1881.</p> + +<p>Huysmans, then as later the disciple of Naturalism pushed to its extreme +limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. Gauguin began to be +talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. +But his work at the Bourse was exhausting his strength and his time.</p> + +<p>Although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, Gauguin +in January, 1883, took the rash step of quitting the financial world and +devoting himself solely to art.</p> + +<p>This decision was, as Dr. Segalen says in his valuable Preface to the +letters Gauguin wrote from Tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. +When Paul Gauguin said to himself, "Henceforward I will paint every +day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition +and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great +impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not +only of his own nature but of modern art.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>It is important to note that Gauguin was thirty-five years of age when +he came to this decision. This proves that the decision was no hasty +one, of which he was liable to repent later. At such an age a man has +arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a Paul +Gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of +living from a mere desire for change. Gauguin had something to express +and knew it. He had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and +shares. And to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all +opposition.</p> + +<p>But had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage, with the desire +for freedom, for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes +only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts, this decision +might never have been taken. As a husband and father he now had others +dependent upon him. That he set aside their claims to follow the deeper +call proves that, as he later said, he believed himself to have the +right to dare everything. And he was probably at first confident of +success, thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as +that of a speculator.</p> + +<p>Madame Gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision. She was +naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful +man, and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his +success. In any case, she was soon destined to sad disillusionment.</p> + +<p>Gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the +sums he had saved. As for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well +known to sell. It was necessary, above all things, to gain time. So he +decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought +with the proceeds of his career on the Bourse, in order to support +himself. The list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly +the direction of his tastes at this period. It included a Manet, several +Renoirs, some Claude Monets, two Cézannes (still life and landscape), an +early Pissarro, together with examples of Guillamin, Sisley, Jongkind, +Lewis Brown and, most significant of all, two designs by Daumier.</p> + +<p>Whether it was that Gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a +style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not +know. Nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an +appreciable sum or not. Probably the amount was small, for the +Impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely +commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. In any +case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. He had +ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in Paris. He +found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the +place of Bertin's. So it was Madame Gauguin's turn to act. She decided +on a removal to Copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their +influence in obtaining a position for her husband.</p> + +<p>Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband +and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid +Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the +passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he +hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and +provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian +Bohemianism—everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he +took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in +maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking +on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. +Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin +for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately +and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment +when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. +Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the +nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her +mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. +But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable +scandal.</p> + +<p>Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield +nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family +change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A +separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came +about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the +painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We +shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that +Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into +which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate +with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with +his wife.</p> + +<p>It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with +her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than +accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame +Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now +disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian +art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to +try his fortune.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had +been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more +consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore +necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the +man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual +equipment.</p> + +<p>Gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of +strong physical development. His hair, which later grew thinner and lost +much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in +large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. The +eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which +were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color—the eyes of one who +has spent many years at sea. The nose was large, thick and aquiline. A +thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the +mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. The chin was +pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted +beard similar in color to the mustache.</p> + +<p>After Gauguin's return from the Antilles in 1887 it is the testimony of +all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an Indian's, and +that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. Even his excessive +devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his +health, had something sailor-like in it. Gauguin rolled his own +cigarettes in the Spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. +His hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman—coarse, +square and red. Altogether he was in appearance curiously Creole; he did +not resemble a Frenchman of France. The dark tint of his skin and the +formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and +hair.</p> + +<p>His personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those +with whom he came in contact. It must be remembered, however, that he +was by nature reserved and even suspicious, as are many people of +fundamental genius. He differed from those about him in that he worked +by instinct, while they worked according to some conscious method. He +therefore obtained out of himself, by means of slow thinking and +laborious effort, the knowledge which many have at the beginning. +Further, the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of +physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little +reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world. Finally, +Gauguin was shy, actually and by nature shy. People took this shyness +for rudeness and this reserve for disdain. And Gauguin was not always +unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding. He carefully cultivated +his rudeness, both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance.</p> + +<p>As regards his work, he was on the way to find his path, although he +never entirely found it, even to the end of his career. His versatility +prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead, like that of many +popular and highly successful painters.</p> + +<p>Mention has already been made of his appearance in 1880 among the +Impressionists and of the praise bestowed by Huysmans on one of his +pictures for its frank realism. This very nude, however, shows Gauguin +massing his shadows, making them heavy and dark, which was the direct +contrary to Impressionist practice. A year later we find Huysmans +complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures; another proof +that the painter was already trying to mass tones, to escape from the +division of tones employed by the Impressionist group.</p> + +<p>We are safe in assuming also that Gauguin felt already an inward desire +to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics. His early years had +shown him the tropics; and the art of the greatest masters, as well as +of the worst daubers, is based on the instinctive knowledge they have +obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later +years. Pissarro, too, had seen the tropics; but they had not in any way +influenced his color sense, which, indeed, grew colder and grayer as his +years advanced. But he may have had something to do with Gauguin's +inclination towards tropical subjects, though the feeling of kinship +with Nature which Gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own.</p> + +<p>If Gauguin had but known it, there waited for him not the future of fame +and fortune of which he dreamed, but seventeen years of life-and-death +struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means +of living nor the slightest encouragement, but only hampered him in +every way, so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures +on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls. He was to +quit his own country, and to go to the ends of the earth, only to find +that the system of civilization possessed by his country, whatever its +other advantages, did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the +fruits of his labor. He was finally to sink into an unmarked grave, to +be almost forgotten, and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when +no longer able to profit by it. Even if Gauguin could have realized +this, it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind. Ready to dare +everything, he strode forward into the future.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_II_THE_STRUGGLE_WITH_IMPRESSIONISM_1885-1889" id="PART_II_THE_STRUGGLE_WITH_IMPRESSIONISM_1885-1889"></a>PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>With the return of Gauguin to Paris there opened for him the second +stage of his career, the struggle to maintain himself on the productions +of his brush and chisel. During the first stage his character had been +formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative +leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor, during which he found +time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the +latest French tradition. He had not only met and talked with men like +Manet, Pissarro, and Cézanne, he also visited the museums of Paris, and +did not confine himself to the Louvre, but made a special study of the +Musée Guimet with its collection of art works from the far East, and +later of the Trocadero, with its casts of Cambodian sculpture. His stay +at Bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment, +the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic +independence.</p> + +<p>Yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these +important years of development than in the case of most of his +contemporaries. "He was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in +art that was going on," says one who knew him in this period, "but not +to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody." What he absorbed +was by instinct; and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge +with people who might fail to make good use of it.</p> + +<p>Amid the noisy chatter of Parisian art-circles he passed silent and +unnoted. He rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of +experimental projects, particularly with sculpture. But very shortly +his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience +of hunger.</p> + +<p>For a time he suffered extreme privation. He was forced at last to +accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting +advertisements on the walls of the Gare du Nord in order to save himself +from starvation.</p> + +<p>"I have known," he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter +Aline, "extreme misery, that is to say hunger and everything that +follows upon hunger. It is nothing, or almost nothing. One grows +accustomed to it and, with will-power, one can end by laughing at it. +But what is terrible is to be prevented from working, from developing +one's intellectual faculties. It is true that suffering sharpens one's +ability. But it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will +kill you.</p> + +<p>"With a great deal of pride I have ended by having a great deal of +energy, and I have forced myself to be full of will-power.</p> + +<p>"Is pride a fault, or must one develop one's pride? I believe pride must +be developed. It is the best weapon we have against the human animal +that is in us."</p> + +<p>This quotation gives us the man entirely. He was one of those who are +not to be beaten, one of those who do not turn back. He was to go +forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path.</p> + +<p>In 1886 he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition +of the Impressionist group, together with a relief in wood, which seems +to foreshadow the later creator of <i>La Guerre et la Paix</i>.</p> + +<p>Most of these early works of Gauguin seem to have disappeared. Very few +can recall seeing one. It is therefore interesting to read the following +appreciation by Felix Fenéon, which shows that Gauguin was already +traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other +impressionists:—</p> + +<p>"The tones of M. Paul Gauguin's pictures are very little separated from +each other; because of this, there is in his work a dull harmony. Dense +trees rise from the fertile soil, abundant and humid, invade the frame, +pursue the sky. The air is heavy. Bricks seen between the trunks +indicate a nearby house; things are lying about, muzzles are scattered +in the thicket—cows. These reds of roofs and of cattle the artist +constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters, +encumbered with long grasses, which run between the tree-trunks."</p> + +<p>This shows clearly that Gauguin was treating landscape at this period +already as a synthesis, a decorative whole and not, like Manet, Pissarro +or the Divisionists, as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric +vibration. As for the relief on wood, Fenéon writes:</p> + +<p>"On the pear-tree wood, which we regret to see left in monochrome, a +naked woman stands out in half relief, her hand to her hair, seated +rectangularly in a landscape. This is the only number of sculpture. +Nothing in painted wood, in glass-paste, in wax."</p> + +<p>Paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach Gauguin. He must +find his own way, create his own tradition. Aloof alike from the +theories of the Impressionists and from those of their successors, the +Pointillists—theories of the disassociation of tones and of the +analytic disintegration of light, based on the scientific treatises of +Chevreuil and Helmholtz—he was painfully tending back to the old +decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit, the harmonious +expression of a single emotion. Hunger proved again the best friend of +the independent artist. He fled from Paris and sought refuge in the +country.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>The place of refuge which Gauguin found was the village of Pont-Aven in +the district of Finistère in Brittany.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon +his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by Tahiti. +Indeed the charm of Tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence.</p> + +<p>The Celtic fringe of Europe—Cornwall, the Highlands of Scotland, +Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia—presents everywhere a great +similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants. +The Celt is an outcast. Driven backward by successive waves of +civilization and conquest, he has finally occupied those lands which +were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in +them undisturbed. Long residence in these desolate places has made of +him a natural mystic, a conservative. Perhaps he might never have been +anything else had not the nineteenth century—with its railroads and the +life-weariness of its cultivated classes—made of him a curiosity. The +hordes of tourists, of bad artists, of dealers in journalese, who rave +about Brittany, Cornwall, or Ireland as picturesque summer-resorts, show +that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to +remain a savage.</p> + +<p>Paul Gauguin did not assuredly go to Brittany to discover the +picturesque. Had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher +than the painting of Charles Cottet or of Lucien Simon. His real home as +an artist, as he was later to discover, lay elsewhere—under less +troubled skies, in the midst of more tropical vegetation. But the gloom, +the melancholy inertia, the mystic faith, the simplicity of this land of +wind-mills, small trees, granite coasts and menhirs, worked strongly on +the yet untamed primitive in him. Stronger still perhaps was the appeal +of the sea, the most restless and yet the most changeless element in +nature. Gauguin was in appearance, as in manners, a sailor—the eye, the +direct curt speech, the reserved disdain, the freedom of manners, all +these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences. In Brittany +he found the sea; he found an unspoiled people; he found, above all, +repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that, like the +bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne, frothed eternally in +the cafés of Paris. Brittany gave him greater faith in himself; Brittany +began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly +stifling him.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;"> +<a name="img04" id="img04"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_04.jpg" width="650" alt="Struggle of Jacob with the Angel." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Struggle of Jacob with the Angel.</span> +</div> + +<p>His first stay in Pont-Aven was destined to be short. It is chiefly +remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by Emile Bernard, then +only about seventeen years of age, whose relations with Gauguin and +other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be +examined in detail.</p> + +<p>Bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up, +mushroom-like, in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary +controversy. At the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic +and extremely bad poetry. He next went in for painting, raced off to +Brittany to see Gauguin, was received with coolness, ran back to Paris. +Here he found Van Gogh fresh from Holland and, when Van Gogh in turn +went to Arles, became his most industrious correspondent. Later he heard +that the crazy old hermit, Paul Cézanne, was living at Aix—so off to +Aix went Bernard. More letters were the outcome of the visit.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and +neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of Gauguin's Breton +style, then to a combination of Cézanne and Gauguin, to conclude with +painting of Oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from +that of Gerome. He imitated everyone in turn, only to end by becoming +that drab eclectic thing—what the French call a "pompier" or we an +"Academician." Thus he justified Gauguin's sardonic prophecy that +"Bernard would end up something like Benjamin Constant!"</p> + +<p>We owe Bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful +letters which Van Gogh wrote to him, and—more precious debt—that he +has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic +Cézanne revealed a glimpse of his agony. But we owe Bernard nothing in +that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose +style he was the first to copy—Paul Gauguin. But of this more later.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The winter of 1886 found Gauguin again in Paris. Here he met another +artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite +different from that of Emile Bernard.</p> + +<p>This was Vincent Van Gogh, newly arrived from Holland. Gauguin has left +on record in a piece of prose called <i>Les Crevettes Roses</i> his first +impression of Van Gogh, which proves beyond dispute that Gauguin loved +Van Gogh and admired him, despite his habitual reserve and the haughty +disdain with which he was already looking upon all things European.</p> + +<p>At this time Gauguin was still painfully seeking, still patiently and +laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization. Van Gogh, +although five years younger, had fully realized himself in essence—was, +in fact, realized from the beginning. The difference between them was +that Van Gogh was an humble Dutch peasant, with the mystic blend of +religion and animality which is common to Flemish and Dutch artists (for +example, Breughel, Rubens or Verhaeren), while Gauguin was a Spaniard, +hard and aristocratic, but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the +strain of French blood.</p> + +<p>For Van Gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of +the sun, which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric +ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it. For Gauguin the +future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left +him half-an-European to the end, his work only a broken fragment of what +he had dreamed.</p> + +<p>It is a pity, in a way, that these men ever met. But their meeting and +the drama which was played out later between them, had in it the +inevitable quality of Greek tragedy. For the moment their meeting was +without result, except that perhaps it woke Gauguin to a realization +that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art. In +short, one must be religious. But where was Gauguin to find his +religion?</p> + +<p>Certainly not in Paris, the capital of intellectual skepticism. Nor, for +the moment, in sleepy and mournful Brittany. The memories of his early +initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he +undertook, in 1887, a voyage to the Martinique in company with a young +painter, Charles Laval.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to Gauguin his +own primitivism, although it left him for the time an invalid, +threatened with dysentery, suffering from constant intestinal pains, and +although it brought Laval to the brink of the grave.</p> + +<p>If the reader wishes to know something of what Martinique was at this +time, he should turn to Lafcadio Hearn's "Two Years in the French West +Indies." Hearn, like Gauguin, was a disillusionized cosmopolite, +disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the +pedantic and Puritanic hypocrisy of our Occidental civilization. Like +Gauguin, Hearn found in the West Indies a revelation of a world which +had not lost touch with Nature—a world of men who were content to +remain, in Nature's eyes, something as ephemeral and as harmonious as +the trees, the flowers, the beasts among which they lived. Like Gauguin +again, Hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision, but yet kept faith +with it to the last.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img05" id="img05"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_05.jpg" width="500" alt="The Idol." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The Idol.</span> +</div> + +<p>In the pictures which Gauguin produced during his stay in Martinique, we +find the first rude indications of his later manner—the manner of a +mystic poet who sees all life, the life of man, of vegetation, of the +earth and the sea, as being parallel, harmonious manifestations of the +same Divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other.</p> + +<p>If Gauguin did not realize himself in Martinique, he at least found +himself on the road to realization. But the unchecked power of the sun, +steadily sapping not only the white race, but also the race of mixed +blood, with which he, like Hearn, felt so much sympathy, banished him +from this Eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future.</p> + +<p>His health demanded a return to France. He came back, bringing with him +pictures—experimental, tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and +gloom of the tropics with Pissarro's analysis of paler northern +sunlight. He brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures +which he, as yet, could not paint. He brought back with him an idea.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>After seeing the Antilles and returning to Paris, Gauguin was again +brought face to face with the problem against which he had already +struggled—the problem of his poverty.</p> + +<p>He had obtained at Martinique the vision of a new world of art, which he +knew he was some day destined to realize. But for the present he had +neither lodging and studio, nor resources of any kind. He was forced to +live on charity.</p> + +<p>Charity came to him in the shape of Emile Schuffenecker, who had also +given up finance for a career as artist.</p> + +<p>Schuffenecker was not a genius, but he knew ability when he saw it, and +opened his doors freely to this needy colleague. It is a pity that +Gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting +Schuffenecker as an artist.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful +episodes of his life. One is almost inclined to think with Emile Bernard +that "the basis of Gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism," or, +with Meier-Graefe, that Gauguin was nothing but a great child. Neither +of these views is, however, wholly correct.</p> + +<p>Gauguin was the son, be it remembered, of a radical journalist and the +grandson of a Socialist pamphleteer. Journalism in France is not the +same thing as in England. There is scarcely any polite journalism in +France. Gauguin himself was always talking, according to Bernard, of art +and life needing "the blow of the fist." Paul Déroulède, Edmond Drumont, +Henri Rochefort, Octave Mirbeau, Zola, Clemenceau, and other celebrated +journalists of the Dreyfus period (the heyday of French journalism) knew +quite well what this "blow of the fist" meant, and practiced it upon +every opportunity.</p> + +<p>Moreover, Gauguin was nearly forty, had knocked about the world a great +deal, banging himself against many sharp corners in the process, and +was face to face with want. It is also possible that he felt bound, for +the sake of his wife and children, to make as much money as possible. +Finally, he believed in himself as an artist, if no one else did. The +world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either +hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt. As he +put it himself, "Is it necessary to be modest, or, in other words, an +imbecile?"</p> + +<p>So he accepted the use of Schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his +own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at Schuffenecker's attempt +to paint. Later on we find him accepting similarly Van Gogh's +hospitality, irritating Van Gogh to the pitch of madness, and—after Van +Gogh's death—sending to Bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed +exhibition of Van Gogh's pictures on the ground that Van Gogh was only a +madman. And later still, when Van Gogh's reputation began to rise in +public esteem, Gauguin declared that Van Gogh had learned from him and +had called him master.</p> + +<p>Such traits are deplorable, if we consider Gauguin as an ordinary man. +But if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it +conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite +certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. Gauguin +sinned in good company, with Michaelangelo who thought Raphael had +plotted against him, and with Berlioz who has left on record his opinion +of Wagner's music. To understand Gauguin one must share to some extent +the opinion of Flaubert—which, incidentally, Browning almost +endorses—that the man is nothing, the work is all.</p> + +<p>It is not easy to read between the lines of Gauguin's self-imposed +reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. If we +attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was +almost without friends. Van Gogh he loved without understanding. Daniel +de Monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. The shadowy figure of +Tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly +moved him.</p> + +<p>Puvis de Chavannes, an artist to whom Gauguin owed much, similarly held +himself aloof from all. So did Degas and Ingres, two other artists of +Gauguin's stamp. So in ancient Greece did Sophocles.</p> + +<p>The truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on +the surface of things. One can only sympathize with them, share their +imaginings through long and patient study. Gauguin was not altogether +strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. But his work +increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. +Schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in Paris just long +enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy Manet's +<i>Olympia</i>, a picture he greatly admired. Then once more he took the road +to Brittany.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>Despite the fact that Gauguin had, before leaving Paris, held his first +one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation +was not improved. He was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined +at Martinique, remained bad.</p> + +<p>He was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock +of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. In Gauguin's +case the chances were very small. He was crushed by his own impotence to +realize the art he had dreamed.</p> + +<p>It was at this juncture that Vincent Van Gogh, now at Aries, came +forward and offered him a lodging, despite the fact that he himself +could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the +self-sacrificing efforts of his brother Theodore.</p> + +<p>For a time Gauguin did not respond to Van Gogh's generous offer to +share their fortunes in common. But he sent his own portrait to Vincent, +a gloomy, powerful piece of painting which, in the opinion of some, so +startlingly resembles Robert Louis Stevenson—like Gauguin a wanderer, +but with what a difference! To Vincent this portrait suggested a +prisoner, with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows. He was more than +ever determined to draw Gauguin out of the slough of despond into which +he was falling, and to work together with him for the better +establishment of both their reputations.</p> + +<p>One can only admire Van Gogh for this decision. An artist of a childlike +simplicity of soul, a combination of Don Quixote, the Good Samaritan and +that Jesus of Nazareth whom he loved, Van Gogh was even greater as a man +than as an artist. But Gauguin was, as he knew himself later, greater as +an artist than as a man. It was natural for him to accept the invitation +of a man whom he knew, after all, very slightly, because he saw in this +acceptance possible advantages to himself.</p> + +<p>Van Gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed, as was Gauguin's, by +a strong reserve of nervous strength. His was one of those souls whose +longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced +by William Blake:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And I be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen +by Whitman:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O, to struggle against odds, to meet enemies undaunted!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium face to face,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">nonchalance,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To be indeed a God!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Van Gogh was a lyric painter. His desire was to lose himself in the +ecstacy of the divine. Gauguin was a narrative, an epic painter. His aim +was to grow to divine stature through self-realization.</p> + +<p>What could there be in common between the fervent admirer of Rembrandt, +Delacroix, Monticelli, Ziem, and the brooding, patient workman who was +building up his art on the classic tradition of Ingres, Cézanne and +Degas? Surely even less than between Michaelangelo and Tintoretto.</p> + +<p>A drama between these men was inevitable. It was not slow in declaring +itself.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Of what actually occurred we have only Gauguin's account, of +how Van Gogh first attacked him, and then strove to take his own life.</p> + +<p>Van Gogh, upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent +itself, went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at Arles, where, as his +grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that +devoured him, he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun. Gauguin +returned to Brittany, as he said, "armed against all suffering." But he +had seen something. In striving to paint Van Gogh's portrait he had seen +a vision, once again to quote his own words, of "Jesus preaching +goodness and humility." And perhaps, in Vincent's hour of agony, while +he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he +had loved and had painted so lovingly, Gauguin had another vision—of +the sombre Garden of Gethsemane.</p> + +<p>Thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that +desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul, between nature and +God, between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth, which he +was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize, despite the +baseness of that other part in him, the civilized, unprimitive part, +which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of +baseness.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Gauguin and Van Gogh were actually together from the 20th +October to the 23d December, 1888.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_III_THE_SCHOOL_OF_PONT-AVEN_1889-1891" id="PART_III_THE_SCHOOL_OF_PONT-AVEN_1889-1891"></a>PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>In 1889 there opened in Paris on the Champ-de-Mars the Universal +Exposition, to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the Bastile. Of +this exhibition and of the palace built to house it, nothing now remains +except the melancholy Eiffel Tower.</p> + +<p>The pictures admitted to the exhibition were, rather naturally, of a +kind sanctioned by academic officialdom. Wherefore visitors who happened +to patronize the Café Volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled +to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock +all their susceptibilities in art matters. Their perplexity cannot have +been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title: +"Catalogue of the Exposition of Pictures of the Impressionist and +Syntheticist Group, held on the Premises of M. Volpini, at the +Champ-de-Mars, 1889."</p> + +<p>The exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the Café +Volpini had for the most part never heard. Their names were:—E. +Schuffenecker, Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, Louis Roy, +Léon Fauché, Georges Daniel, Ludovic Nemo (a pseudonym of Bernard's) and +lastly, Paul Gauguin. Lithographs, printed in black upon yellow paper +and not less extraordinary than the pictures, were also visible upon +request. These were by Bernard and Gauguin.</p> + +<p>The result of this exhibition was that the public laughed, the papers +protested, the young students of art in the various ateliers of Paris +were stimulated to furious discussion. But a few spirits, more +venturesome or more prophetic, took the trouble to test the new ideas. A +few, chief among them Sérusier of the Académie Julian, even set out to +visit the birthplace of the new movement, a lonely inn kept by a family +of the name of Gloanec at Le Poldu, a short distance from Pont-Aven.</p> + +<p>A brief survey of the history of Syntheticism is necessary to an +understanding of the theories of the new school. Here we enter upon +debatable ground. It has already been said that the chief opponents of +the academicism of Cabanel and Bougereau were the Impressionists. Their +movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its +third. The earliest of the Impressionists, led by Manet, insisted that a +picture was only nature seen through a temperament; in other words, that +a picture must be naturalistic. This doctrine found parallel literary +expression in the writings of the de Goncourts, de Maupassant and Zola. +The first phase in Impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained +a belief in form.</p> + +<p>It was succeeded by an analytical phase, based upon the application to +color of the scientific theories of light, of Rood, Chevreuil and +Helmholtz. To Claude Monet, the founder of this new school of +Impressionism, nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere. Form +was abandoned.</p> + +<p>After Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Guillamin, a new group, of whom +the chief were Seurat and Signac, attempted to combine the tenets of +their two sets of predecessors. They retained formal composition but +broke up color into minute points or dots. This third generation of +Impressionists were originally termed Neo-Impressionists but now, more +frequently, Pointillists.</p> + +<p>Three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory. +Puvis de Chavannes had, within the very precincts of the official salon, +created an art based on something wholly distinct, alike from the +photographic and frigid eclecticism of Cabanel and Bougereau and from +the work of both Manet and Monet. Puvis was a decorator who could think +and paint only in terms of walls. He had achieved, after a long +struggle, a decorative synthesis of his own, based upon the ruthless +simplification of masses, contours and coloring. Reserved, cold, +solitary, he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his +old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of Giotto, that +father of all European painting.</p> + +<p>Paul Cézanne, the hermit of Aix, had faced the problem of painting with +the Impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his +true spiritual ancestors—the Venetians and El Greco. As a result he was +thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth, for he lived +far from Paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited. +Finally, Degas, associating himself with the Impressionists at the +outset, had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of +Ingres, who might be called the last of Florentines. Degas was +considered an artist of small importance because, unlike Manet, he +scorned to give himself airs. He lived a retired life in Paris, and did +not exhibit.</p> + +<p>These three men—Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas—had, through +their own inner necessity, become syntheticists. But no one of them +preached Syntheticism, because their adherence to the creed was +unconscious. The doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with +Paul Gauguin at the Café Volpini in 1889, who lived and worked with him +at the Gloanec inn, near Pont-Aven. It was from these men that the +reaction against Impressionism started, a reaction which, in its turn, +was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of +mathematical and analytical abstraction of line, color and form, which +we know as Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. It was these men surrounding +Gauguin, who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition +which goes back through Giotto and Cimabue to the Byzantine mosaics, +and, through these, to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages. +With Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning +of a new tradition. With Gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance +of an old one.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>As early as 1886, in an article in the <i>Revue Indépendante</i>, the +well-known critic Eduard Dujardin had spoken of a group calling +themselves the Cloissonists, who painted in flat patches of tone, +divided from each other by black lines.</p> + +<p>Cloissonism, as the name indicates, was borrowed from the Japanese. But +as a method of painting, it had been derived less from cloisonné enamel +than from the technique of the Japanese color-print artists.</p> + +<p>The artistic gods of the Cloissonists were Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. +It may be remembered that since 1865 men like Zola, Manet, Monet, +Whistler, the de Goncourts—in short the entire generation of the +naturalists—had collected these color prints, written about them, +talked about them.</p> + +<p>Gauguin himself, when he returned to Paris at the close of this year +1889, pinned a frieze of Hokusai and Utamaro prints round the walls of +his studio.</p> + +<p>But the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of +Cloissonism, of which the leader was Anquetin (later ranked with the +Syntheticists), does not fully explain the use of Syntheticism with its +greater insistence upon decorative unity, and its clearer affinities to +the work of the Italian primitives.</p> + +<p>As to the origin of Syntheticism we have divergent statements from +contemporary witnesses.</p> + +<p>The English artist, A.S. Hartrick, who was studying in Paris from 1886 +to 1889 and who knew personally both Gauguin and Van Gogh, ascribes the +Synthetic theory to Gauguin in these terms:—</p> + +<p>"From a study of thirteenth century glass he (Gauguin) got an idea of +design and color which exactly suited his state of development, and he +then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own, using oil paint +as a vehicle."<a name="FNanchor_1_2" id="FNanchor_1_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_2" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Of similar opinion is the well known French artist and writer, Maurice +Denis, whose work has done so much to popularise Gauguin. He declares in +his book "Theories,"<a name="FNanchor_2_3" id="FNanchor_2_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_3" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> that Gauguin was the "incontestable originator" +and master of the new movement, to which he gives two names: +Neo-Traditionism and Symbolism. In the first account which he wrote of +the movement in 1890, an account obtained from the lips of Paul +Sérusier, one of the earliest of Gauguin's disciples after 1889, Denis +includes the following interesting paragraph:</p> + +<p>"Did not Paul Gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history +of modeling?</p> + +<p>"At the beginning there was the pure arabesque, as little deceptive of +the eye as possible; a wall is empty; cover it with symmetrical spots +of form, harmonious in color:—stained glass, Egyptian pictures, +Byzantine mosaics.</p> + +<p>"From this comes the painted bas-relief:—metopes of the Greek temple, +the church of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>"Then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye +practised in Antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the +Italian primitives, who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings +modeled to imitate bas-relief, but in other respects preserve the first +idea of decorative unity. Recall also under what conditions +Michaelangelo, a sculptor, decorated the Sistine ceiling.</p> + +<p>"Perfection of this modeling; modeling in high-relief. This leads from +the first academy of the Caracchi to our decadence."</p> + +<p>Emile Bernard holds a contrary opinion. His view was originally +published in the <i>Mercure de France</i> and reasserted in his preface to +the letters written to him by Van Gogh.<a name="FNanchor_3_4" id="FNanchor_3_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_4" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Bernard, who revolted from +the Atelier Cormon with Anquetin, had, as we have seen, been repulsed +by Gauguin in in 1886. After a brief return to Paris he went off to +Saint-Briac, where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and +painted the windows, in imitation of stained-glass, employing essence of +turpentine as a medium. In 1888, before Gauguin came to Arles, Bernard +was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of +Theodore Van Gogh and, although young enough to be Gauguin's son (being +about twenty at this time), shared with him the honors of the Volpini +exhibition.</p> + +<p>Bernard claims that he, and he alone, invented Syntheticism, and bases +his claim on the evidence of the pictures (all dated) which Gauguin +painted previous to 1888, and in which Gauguin was still definitely +Impressionist in technique. He maintains that Gauguin abruptly changed +his style after the second meeting in 1888, when he first saw what his +younger rival had been doing. Furthermore, Bernard contends that this +style was solely based upon the application of Cézanne's discoveries in +technique.</p> + +<p>Against these contentions there are three objections to be made.</p> + +<p>In the first place it is known that Gauguin, during his stay in +Martinique in 1887, painted pictures that are undeniably essays in +syntheticism. Martinique showed Gauguin the impossibility of painting +tropic sunlight by means of the Impressionistic division of tones. +Always purely intuitive as an artist, Gauguin began to realize at +Martinique, however vaguely, that one cannot reproduce the natural +decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color +attempted by Pissarro and the other Impressionists. He therefore sought +to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the +contrast of colors.</p> + +<p>In the second place, Bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was +not he, but Gauguin, who after 1888 painted those magnificent pictures +<i>Le Christ Jaune, Le Christ Vert</i> and <i>La Vision après le Sermon</i><a name="FNanchor_4_5" id="FNanchor_4_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_5" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and +carved the two superb bas-reliefs <i>Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez +Heureuses</i> and <i>Soyez Mystérieuses</i>. Moreover, the careful reader of Van +Gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout '88 and '89 +Bernard stood in relation to Gauguin as a pupil to a master. Finally, +even if Bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did +induce Gauguin to reject the last vestiges of Impressionism, his story +fails to account for the masterly grasp of Synthetic Symbolism shown by +Gauguin immediately after their second meeting.</p> + +<p>It is quite impossible to trace to Cézanne's essays in Synthetic +Impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either +Bernard or Gauguin. Cézanne, later on, even went so far as to assert +that Gauguin had misunderstood him. Therefore it is clear that the +opinions of A.S. Hartrick and of Maurice Denis better fit the facts. +Gauguin was the sole originator of the Synthetic style. That style was +derived, perhaps mainly, from the careful study of thirteenth century +glass, which does perfectly what Gauguin wished to do: translate the +effect of sunlight into luminous color. But it was also derived from +Egyptian painting, Byzantine mosaics and the Kakemonos of the Japanese. +In short, it was as complete a rejection of Impressionism as possible +and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced +color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved, +in the nineteenth century, in the works of artists whom Gauguin admired: +Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_2" id="Footnote_1_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_2"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> "Post-Impressionism," by A.S. Hartrick. <i>Imprint,</i> May, +1913.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_3" id="Footnote_2_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_3"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Paris, l'Occident, 1912.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_4" id="Footnote_3_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_4"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Paris, Vollard, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_5" id="Footnote_4_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_5"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Now known as <i>La Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange</i>.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The exhibition at the Café Volpini brought notoriety to Gauguin. Various +young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art"—the phrase is +Gauguin's—which they were being taught in the ateliers of Paris, took +the road for Pont-Aven. Among these were Paul Sérusier, Chamaillard, and +the Dutchman, De Haahn.</p> + +<p>Acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of +Sérusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with Neo-Platonic +mysticism, Gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite +doctrine. Hitherto he had been an artist of the type of Ingres, working +purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. +But his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula +this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create.</p> + +<p>Artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves. +Whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been +greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy. The public always +takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods. +All art is a synthesis, and no artist can be at the same time synthetic +and analytical.</p> + +<p>Gauguin was no exception to this rule. Take for example, his +often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors:—</p> + +<p>"Always use colors of the same origin. Indigo is the best basis. It +becomes yellow in saltpeter, red in vinegar. You can obtain it at any +chemist's. Keep to these three colors."</p> + +<p>Gauguin himself did not follow this precept. An examination of his +palette shows that it was arranged thus, from left to right:—ultramarine, +silver white, emerald green, veronese green, yellow +ochre, burnt sienna, yellow chrome, vermilion, and crimson lake. No +artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously +fugitive, whether used pure or in mixture.</p> + +<p>So with another celebrated saying: "Seek harmony and not contrast, the +agreement and not—the clash of color." This saying not only goes +contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors, +but is opposed to those equally famous dicta: "Does that trunk of a tree +seem to you blue? Paint it as blue as possible," and, "A mile of green, +is more green than half a mile."</p> + +<p>It is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of Gauguin's +teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark. Gauguin was not +a man holding a high-school debate on theory, but a creator. He refused +even to be called a decorator, he preferred the title of artisan. He +declared outright that he had no technique. "Or perhaps I have one, but +very vagabond, very elastic, according to the way I feel when I awaken +in the morning, a technique which I apply to my own liking in order to +express my thought, without taking account of the truth of Nature, +externally apparent. People think nowadays that all the technical means +of painting are exhausted. I do not believe it, if I am to judge by the +numerous observations which I have made and put into practice.... +Painters have still much to discover."</p> + +<p>Gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them +this remark: "Do what you please, so long as it is intelligent." This +did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition. He +knew that tradition is not a "recipe for making art," but the sum-total +of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same +problems that face the artists of to-day. He realized that the essential +substance of art is always the same. Art is an eternal renewal of this +substance. "The artist is not born of a single unity. If he adds a new +link to the chain already begun, it is much. The artist is known by the +quality of his transposition."</p> + +<p>The "transposition" that he himself strove for may be clearly read in +his pictures. He strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art +of the great Venetians, by blending the Venetian glow of color with the +calm line of Primitive and especially of Egyptian Primitive design. His +problem was essentially the same as that of Puvis de Chavannes, the +problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to +leave it still essentially a wall and not, as Veronese and Tiepolo left +it, an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery. Puvis had solved the +problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by +simplifying his drawing. Gauguin solved his by the elimination of +modeling, and of graduations of tone, and by reducing his drawing to the +strongest possible arabesque of outline. In everything he sought for the +essential form, the form that contains all the other inessential forms. +As Sérusier puts it: "The synthetic theory of art consists in reducing +all form to the smallest possible number of component +forms:—straight lines, arcs of a circle, a few angles, arcs of an +ellipse." And to express this form he sought for the most harmonious +balance of color. Maurice Denis says:—"Recall that a picture, before +being a war-horse, a nude or some anecdote, is essentially a flat +surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;"> +<a name="img06" id="img06"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_06.jpg" width="650" alt="Tahitian Women." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Tahitian Women.</span> +</div> + +<p>Therefore and above all, Gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the +model, but from memory. He admitted that it was useful for young +painters to have a model, as all knowledge of facts could only be +obtained from the study of models. But he added that it was better to +draw a curtain before the model while painting it. One of his pupils +declared: "We went into the country to paint seascapes and to the +seashore to do landscapes."</p> + +<p>Gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods +practiced for centuries by the great Chinese and Japanese painters. He +would have enjoyed that story of a Chinese painter, who was sent out by +the Emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the Empire, +and who returned without having painted anything. When the Emperor asked +him: "But where are your pictures?" he replied: "I have them here"—and +pointed to his forehead. Gauguin, with his hatred of copying either from +nature or from the masters of the past, would also have appreciated the +Chinese idea of a "copy"—a free rearrangement of old material according +to one's temperament.</p> + +<p>Lastly, he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose. "Let +everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul. Avoid all animated +attitudes. Each of your figures should be perfectly static. Give +everything a clear outline." This counsel sounds strange to ears +deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of +Cubists, Futurists and Vorticists. But to Gauguin it was the basis of +his own mystical religion. He gave it to the world, however, not for +this reason, but because he realized that painting to be decorative +must be architectural. He himself was a builder, an artisan. In Brittany +he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived; he made +furniture, carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself, +worked at bas-reliefs, decorated pottery. Movement, restlessness, would +have but troubled the lines of that ideal building, which, even then, he +was erecting in his dreams.</p> + +<p>Such was the doctrine of Paul Gauguin. It may seem strange that such +ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary. In the Far East at +all events, they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries. +Revolutionary or not, Gauguin went on his way undisturbed. From an +examination of his letters, and of the statements of those who knew him, +the fact emerged that this "anarchist" preserved throughout his life a +great respect for artists of the past. Rembrandt especially, in his +mystical and visionary phase, appealed to him and Rembrandt's influence +may be traced in more than one of Gauguin's Tahitian pictures. +Velazquez, Rubens, Proudhon, Corot, Whistler—Gauguin was able to learn +something from all these men as well as from Memling and Holbein. As for +his pupils, the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following +his precepts may be judged by the fact that Gauguin remarked about one +of them: "His faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be +considered a master," and by the fact that the first synthetic picture +of another was, according to Maurice Denis, painted on the lid of a +cigar box!</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>It is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of +Gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that +went on in his soul: a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of +civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at Tahiti.</p> + +<p>Gauguin, as has been seen, was not naturally but only deliberately a +teacher of others. Especially in his intimate and personal concerns, he +commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve. In the matter of views on +art, he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and +paradoxical opinions which, if disputed, were merely affirmed with +greater violence.</p> + +<p>It is related of him that, if any one persisted in holding an opinion +contrary to his own, Gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from +those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an +embarrassed silence.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, we owe to the fortunate preservation of various +fragmentary notes, made in the solitude of his last desperate years, +indications of what Gauguin's religious and political opinions were. +Here are some of them:—</p> + +<p>"If I gaze before me into space, I have a vague sense of the Infinite; +nevertheless I am the conclusion of something that has been begun. I +understand then, that there has been a beginning and that there will be +no end.</p> + +<p>"In this I do not possess the explanation of a mystery, but merely the +mysterious sense of this mystery—and this sensation is intimately +linked to the belief in an eternal life, promised by Jesus.</p> + +<p>"But then, if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into +the world, it is necessary to believe, with the Buddhists, that we have +always existed.</p> + +<p>"A change of skin.</p> + +<p>"All this is very strange.</p> + +<p>"The unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it +is, unfathomable. God does not belong to the scholar, the logician. He +belongs to the poets, to their dreams. He is the symbol of Beauty, +Beauty itself."</p> + +<p>From these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in +Gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures: <i>Le Christ Jaune</i> and <i>Le +Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers</i>; when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs: +<i>Soyez Amoureuses and Soyez Mystérieuses</i>; when he drew the lithographs: +<i>La Cigale et les Fourmis</i>, and <i>Léda</i> which bears the defiant +inscription "Honi soit qui mal y pense."</p> + +<p>Gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious +illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in +nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a +false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the +wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the +thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live.</p> + +<p>Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he +recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a +protest that had failed. Humanity had not yet produced, save by +exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and +giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." A +terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in Europe for the next +generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind.</p> + +<p>Therefore, in contemplating Christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, +of the futility of this sacrifice. His attitude to Christianity became +purely Protestant. Across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of +the beneficent Virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of +maternity.</p> + +<p>In <i>Le Christ Jaune</i> he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved +impotent to elevate mankind to its level. <i>Le Christ au Jardin +d'Oliviers</i> echoes the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me?" The terrible little picture, <i>Les Misères Humaines</i> sums +up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted +civilization. Even the later Tahitian <i>Birth of Christ</i> renders nothing +but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. In the <i>Ia Orana +Maria</i>, or the Salutation to Mary, the Virgin is represented merely as a +happy human mother.</p> + +<p>Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at +Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, +the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was +better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against +the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. Thus in his art he +aimed at repose, the quietism of the Buddhists. His knowledge of +Buddhism was not deep—indeed in his eyes, Buddhism, too, was a vain +revolt against nature—but his respect for Buddhistic doctrine remained +greater than his respect for Christianity. At the bottom of his soul +there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "Eat, +drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die."</p> + +<p>As he put it later in the pages of his Tahitian recital:—</p> + +<p>"To the eyes of Tagatha (the God) the most splendid glories of kings and +their ministers are but dust and spittle:</p> + +<p>"To his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six +serpents:</p> + +<p>"To his eyes, the search for the Way of Buddha is like the coming of +flowers."</p> + +<p>It is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man +who was never more than half an European, that we are able to understand +how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the +bas-relief, <i>Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez Heureuses</i> and the somber +despair of <i>Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers</i>. That mind, as we have +seen, was neither wholly Christian or Pagan—though the untamed Pagan +element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined +Christian side. Therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether Gauguin +as an artist, displayed more of the Classic tradition than of the +Gothic. Gothic as well as Classical strains remained mingled in him up +to the last. Throughout his work there runs a longing—obscure, +tormented, and ultimately foiled—for a natural religion: a religion +that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, +like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain +renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still +without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker.</p> + +<p>At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced +naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris +was on the verge of her æsthetic nineties. A small group of writers, +chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a +sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in +consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled +Decadents. This title was soon abandoned for the better designation of +Symbolists.</p> + +<p>Gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of Symbolism as a sort of hero. Here +was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious. He had definitely +broken away from his own commercial surroundings. He had defiantly +ruptured his own family ties. He had abolished Impressionist science and +had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the +process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular +art. His appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, +sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. He +became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of +symbol.</p> + +<p>Some critics have stated that Gauguin's head was turned by this +adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he +remained what he had always been. No man was less fitted for living in +the midst of cultivated society than he. For a time, during that strange +epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, +largely an European; but this was merely on the surface and had +completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. An +invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in +him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. This +shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. But +to every one else Gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order +to keep them at a distance. And, generally, he succeeded.</p> + +<p>It is small wonder then that Schuffenecker shortly found his guest again +intolerable, and that Gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging. +Schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. He seems never to have realized +that Gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love +and understand. In losing Gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever +likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already +acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing Gauguin's +collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by Cezanne, Van Gogh, +and Odilon Redon.</p> + +<p>Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he +ever had—who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was +Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel +taken part in the Volpini exhibition.</p> + +<p>It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community +of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea.</p> + +<p>De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a +certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. Every +summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's +cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, +and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the +Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of +dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the +complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering +his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her +end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as +"the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on +the former's return from Martinique in 1887.</p> + +<p>To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it +was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to +their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both +were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made +of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and +nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were +due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was +of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the +creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few +attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last +stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of +all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de +Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img07" id="img07"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_07.jpg" width="500" alt="Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina)." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).</span> +</div> + +<p>The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a +Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of +what induced him to take this decision.<a name="FNanchor_1_6" id="FNanchor_1_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_6" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He chanced to attend, or to +read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der +Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to +suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a +terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without +winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to +lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life +means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such +phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held +out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he +might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was +fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live +in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships +of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans +gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him +there, all the better—his isolation would then be complete.<a name="FNanchor_2_7" id="FNanchor_2_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_7" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the +proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin +sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various +symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece +entitled <i>Loss Of Maidenhood</i>, which has fortunately vanished, and an +etching representing Mallarmé with Poe's Raven in the background. +Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only +concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday.</p> + +<p>At all events Gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were +auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine +thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make +his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that +this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A +banquet was held at the Café Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were +assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a +similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally +a benefit performance was given by the Théâtre d'Art for the departing +artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of +his last years.<a name="FNanchor_3_8" id="FNanchor_3_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_8" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in +the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play +<i>L'Intruse</i> made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. +Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to +expect. And yet he did not draw back.</p> + +<p>On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his +voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on +Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the +mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's +self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. +And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, +touching words:—</p> + +<p>"Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family +and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my +thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more +terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have +made, which is utterly irreparable."</p> + +<p>With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_6" id="Footnote_1_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_6"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Les Marges</i>, Paris, May 15, 1918.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_7" id="Footnote_2_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_7"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters +show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility +of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_8" id="Footnote_3_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_8"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit +whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_IV_THE_RETURN_TO_SAVAGERY_1891-1895" id="PART_IV_THE_RETURN_TO_SAVAGERY_1891-1895"></a>PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South +Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's +knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical +but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous +for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge +of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. +Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and +the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the +chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were +discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different +in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or +from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us +through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the +Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in +different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social +organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; +they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin +in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by +thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, +abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting +currents. How then had they reached Tahiti?</p> + +<p>The anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of +the Caucasian or Indo-European. Though their skin is dark, it is for the +most part less dark than that of the natives of India. Set a Maori +soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the +difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to +give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. In other +characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian. They are +a tall, well built, massive race, contrasting favorably with the Malay. +Their hair is black—or in some cases copper brown—and wavy, again +contrasting with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the +Papuan. Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases +very beautiful. Only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to +artificial flattening in infancy.</p> + +<p>We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after +the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which must have been settled +late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European +stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked ships, +capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a +voyage of some weeks. (We know the Polynesians were capable of building +such ships.) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, +where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, +whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, +eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island. In order to +accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and +astronomical knowledge must have been great. Later on, under the +influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, +careless, effeminate. And, as such, they were discovered by the +enterprising Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchman with his Parisian vices, by +the thorough and scientific German. The combined influences of +missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the +inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889.</p> + +<p>To these people came Paul Gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their +history. It is true that he was weary of Europe and had set out with the +aim he had cherished since the Martinique days—to be the first painter +of the tropics. But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, +because he believed that here was a country where one could live for +almost nothing. It must always be remembered that Gauguin had no private +means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, +did not sell. Cezanne, Degas, could afford not to sell their pictures +because they had other resources. But Gauguin was forced to find some +way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would +take the public some time to accept. In a letter to de Monfreid he +stated his system: "From the beginning, I knew that this would be a life +from day to day; so, logically, I habituated myself to it. Instead of +losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, I put all my +strength into the day—like the wrestler who does not employ his body +except in the moment of wrestling. When I lie down in the evening I say +to myself: One more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead. +In my work as a painter, ditto—I do not trouble about anything, but +each day for itself—at the end of a certain time, this covers a +considerable extent of surface. If men would not waste their time in +disconnected struggles and labors! Every day a link. That is the great +point."</p> + +<p>Such was the frame of mind in which Gauguin went to Tahiti. What he +found there was not the "Pays de Cocaigne" he probably expected. The +Gods do not give their gifts in this fashion. Gauguin asked much from +Tahiti and much was given. But he asked for material comfort and was +offered instead spiritual salvation. In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at +last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought +him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its +own terrible parable to all men.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>On the night of the eighth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of +voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. He +was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last +winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to +take to his bed.</p> + +<p>He was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. Although +possessed of a normally strong constitution, fortified by the open-air +existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as +boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, +when he reached Tahiti, became immediately worse. This was largely due +to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the +privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for +livelihood.</p> + +<p>His prospects were not brilliant. The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant +and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took +him for a spy sent out from Paris, and by every possible means attempted +to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited +native population. The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, +disgusted him. The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to +all whites.</p> + +<p>A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his +interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old +royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen +Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in +her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven +years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying +gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct.</p> + +<p>Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official +ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the +attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the +embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to +revive at any favorable opportunity.</p> + +<p>He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut—a process +which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live +as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still +further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him +from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to +approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, +money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by +enigmatic and evasive smiles.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given +by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream +than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the +natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the +natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of +the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as +"dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to +a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his +vanity, and smiled behind his back.</p> + +<p>Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for +his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he +had suddenly aged—a common experience enough for white men coming +suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble. +This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was +taking its little revenge.</p> + +<p>He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage +back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would +come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now +spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was +invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img08" id="img08"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_08.jpg" width="500" alt="The Old Spirit." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The Old Spirit.</span> +</div> + +<p>On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures +to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas <i>L'Esprit Veille</i>. +The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the +next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily +declined and he was every day less talked about.</p> + +<p>Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to +make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him +and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his +unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, +Bernard, Sérusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting +that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cézanne and Van Gogh +were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his +departure from Paris was rapidly fading.</p> + +<p>He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent +pictures—pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he +believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as +elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary +material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, +could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a +longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make +himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps +it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old.</p> + +<p>On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Marseilles with four +francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the +height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat +in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, +during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite +failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them +such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And +yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might +well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to +its owner, as well as others, only misfortune.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>Paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the +world. Since her spoiled darling Napoleon fell, there has been no one to +whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. There are a +few exceptions to this rule. Hugo, because he lived in exile; Balzac, +because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; +and of recent years Verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafés, the +vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a +prison. Such men may be the idols of Paris. For the rest, Paris is +willing only to think of her children as sons for a day.</p> + +<p>Gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of Paris. But he had +already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his.</p> + +<p>Had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength +of the sensation his pictures had created in Denmark and subsequently in +Sweden, Norway, and Germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an +arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his +work. But Gauguin demanded all or nothing! And, as was the case before +with his mother and her Peruvian relatives, the result was nothing.</p> + +<p>He decided to give a general exhibition of his entire Tahitian work, +forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. Durand-Ruel gave him a +gallery and Charles Morice, chief of the young symbolists whom Gauguin +had met after the Volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which +probably only served to mystify the public still further.</p> + +<p>For the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce +frank bewilderment. Of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three +remained unsold. What misled visitors more than anything else were the +titles that Gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. These titles +were in the Tahitian language. Every one immediately supposed that in +order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the +history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of Tahiti. Naturally +therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archæological and ethnological +puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key.</p> + +<p>Gauguin, of course, had intended something else. Just as he had used +Brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of Christ, so he +had used Tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery +of life as it was lived in Eden and in the days of man's awakening—in +that Golden Age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. But +it was useless for him to try to explain that Tahiti had merely given +him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures.</p> + +<p>Morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and +listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of +the crowd. It was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the +Indian who smiles at the stake. Only Degas came and understood. To him +on the last day of the exhibit, Gauguin said: "Monsieur Degas, you have +forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured +handed it to the astonished painter.</p> + +<p>The bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his, had +not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save Gauguin +for better things, sent him means of salvation. A brother of his father +died in Orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. From his estate, Gauguin +inherited thirteen thousand francs.</p> + +<p>The exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly. +Instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and +determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle Paris. Morice +admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. If +this was the case Gauguin would have done well had he uttered the +well-known prayer, "Deliver me from my friends!" For Morice, even, +admitted later that it was, under the circumstances, a mistake.</p> + +<p>About Gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have +grown with the years. It is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were +colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with Tahitian subjects in +imitation of stained glass (these same windows were, by the way, on +exhibition at a dealer's in Paris a few years ago). It is true that his +rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. It +is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said +to have come from Java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than +anything else. It is true also that he wore a strange costume, +consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons, a blue +waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat +with a blue ribbon. But the importance of these and of similar details +is very slight. Gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time +that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the +attention of heedless Paris were dead also and forgotten.</p> + +<p>Despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, Gauguin found himself +ill-at-ease. The facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the +tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. He wandered off +to Bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before Memling and +astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of Rubens. He lost +interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, Seguin and O'Connor. +After a vain attempt to get a post from the Government as a resident in +Oceania, he again drifted back to Pont-Aven.</p> + +<p>There, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto +model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. In a moment, all +his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him. +He was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way. +He attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping +behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin.</p> + +<p>The mulatto fled, took a train to Paris, entered the empty studio, +seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. As for Gauguin, +he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and +smoking a cigarette.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>Little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague +understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at Pont-Aven, +this understanding became a conviction.</p> + +<p>He saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to +accomplish and why he had failed. He knew now what his art had been; a +great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had +gone on in his soul. What he had fought against was the cunning +extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of +nineteenth century Europe. And nineteenth century Europe had risen +against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. He must either +submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul.</p> + +<p>Among the people of Tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very +folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, +among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral +dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else. +Among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived +vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the +scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a +door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists +nor theologians could ever pierce. Among these savages he had found a +dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be +destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own +soul.</p> + +<p>On September 20, 1894, he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid:—</p> + +<p>"As you say, I have not given any news of myself recently and every one +is complaining. The reason is, you see, that I have lost all my strength +through suffering, above all at night, which I frequently pass without +any sleep. And into the bargain naturally I have done nothing this +infernal month except spend money. For the rest, I have made a fixed +resolve to go back and live always in Oceania and shall return to Paris +in December in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my +bazar at no matter what price. If I succeed I shall leave as soon as +possible in February. I can then finish my days without care for the +morrow and without the external struggle against fools—Farewell to +painting, except as a means of distraction. My house will be in +sculptured wood."</p> + +<p>The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned +to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An +auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his +return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in +Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a +time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a +preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's +response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint +against Gauguin:</p> + +<p>"You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I +wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, +behind the Institute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, +close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse! I would have willingly given you +this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you +wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a +breathing space, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the +outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, +more brutally, by an 'I will not.'</p> + +<p>... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it—I know that this +avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only +strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to +remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with +reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain +partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art +a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate +a super-annuated style of painting.</p> + +<p>... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the +southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your +studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw +trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and +men which only you can create.</p> + +<p>"A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no God can +live—Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, +but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny +for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an +Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or +two!</p> + +<p>"This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, +who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound +sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in +watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, +and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this +Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ +and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not +desire this pitiful God who accepts blows. My God is rather +Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men.</p> + +<p>"No, Gauguin is not formed from the work of Chavannes, nor from that of +Manet, nor from that of Bastien-Lepage.</p> + +<p>"Who is he then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome +civilization; something of a Titan who, jealous of his Creator, in +his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up +his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring +to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img09" id="img09"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_09.jpg" width="500" alt="Calvary." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Calvary.</span> +</div> + +<p>"Bon voyage, Master: but come back here to me. I shall by that time +perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me +to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since I am +beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating +a new world."</p> + +<p>To this letter, Gauguin replied-with the following profession of +faith:—</p> + +<p>"I have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for +my catalog. I had the idea of asking you for a preface, when I saw you +the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue +northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. I had +then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization +and my barbarism.</p> + +<p>"You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of +youth.</p> + +<p>"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and +harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a +sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and +the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my +studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. +This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will +be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch +to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage +happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana?</p> + +<p>"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked +before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without +shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil +and a sorrow."</p> + +<p>In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand +francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his +feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he +left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, +that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in +Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled +"Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best +commentary on and the final analysis of his mind.</p> + +<p>We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the +book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on +his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; +perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his +refers in passing to events that took place as late as 1897.</p> + +<p>Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery—the +conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with +civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet +realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while +civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying.</p> + +<p>To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary +artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, +in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic +ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the +professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others +feel, in the incidents of a naïve story, the essence of Tahiti—the soul +of the native.</p> + +<p>It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to +savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether +it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain +undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the +royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that +event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a +native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, +that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations +with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, +owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial +triumph in France.</p> + +<p>These facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon +which the fascinating story of Gauguin's spiritual development is bit by +bit, built up. He made use of these facts in the same way as he made use +of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful +forms. All art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital +he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, +savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are +at liberty to believe or not as we choose.</p> + +<p>So we follow him from Papeete into the backwoods. We find him holding +aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple +hospitality. We see him making his first tentative attempts at +establishing a community of thought. He tries to persuade the natives to +sit for their portraits—with little success. He tries to find solace +in the companionship of the half-caste Titi, in vain. Then Jotefa comes +upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto +unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of +sex, and thereby rendered sex more dangerous, more artificial, more +unnatural. So he gets his first gleam of intelligence. The next comes, +when Jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is +not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others. +This further enlightens him. He contrasts this opinion on art as +something useful to man with art as the European sees it, a mere +freakish amusement. Finally, he hazards everything. He takes a young +native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. All goes +well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the +natives. They laugh at his luck. He asks them why. Because his line has +caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife +being unfaithful to him. He returns home, half-believing the +superstition. The native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. He cannot +beat her. He can only forgive and understand. So the story closes.</p> + +<p>From such a story, we should naturally receive the impression that +Gauguin's life in Tahiti was ideally happy. But his letters reveal that +he was even more unhappy there than in France. So whatever elements of +fact may be in his story, it is evident that they cannot be disentangled +from the fictional details. It is better to take "Noa Noa" altogether as +a series of fictitious adventures, designed to bring out the fact that +Gauguin became, despite himself, as nearly one with the natives as it is +possible for any European to be. Thus we see, bit by bit, the Tahitians +claiming him as one of their own, from the day that he is forced by +necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused, +to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even +their easy tolerance of marital infidelity. If we look at the story in +this light, it becomes an allegory easily readable, an allegory of +civilization going down before primitive nature, expressed in a series +of parables.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, Gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and +devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked +Charles Morice to collaborate. Morice thereupon wrote a series of highly +florid descriptions and poems, inspired by Gauguin's pictures, in a +style strongly tinged with the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé. These +poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of Gauguin's +recital.<a name="FNanchor_1_9" id="FNanchor_1_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_9" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The result is that "Noa Noa" contains two books; the first +Gauguin's, the second, Morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused +unless he remembers that the sections by Gauguin are all headed "Le +Conteur Parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous +story. Morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions +add anything to Gauguin's recital. Some people may even prefer the glow +of Morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of Gauguin's poetry. Gauguin +himself philosophically remarked that he wished Morice's work to stand +beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a +civilized decadent and a naïve and brutal savage.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_9" id="Footnote_1_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_9"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> They have been wisely omitted from the English +translation.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_V_THE_FIGHT_AGAINST_CIVILIZATION_1895-1903" id="PART_V_THE_FIGHT_AGAINST_CIVILIZATION_1895-1903"></a>PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>With Gauguin's last return to Tahiti there opened for him the final and +most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against +encroaching civilization. The letters that he sent to de Monfreid during +this period are painful reading. They breathe the weary cry of a man who +knows that Fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a +warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but +to fight on. For Gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had +carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. The wound +in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under +the climate of Tahiti, it reopened. Owing to the rash exposure of his +skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by +eczema. Night after night was spent in sleepless pain. To add to his +troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on +him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the +white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. It seemed +to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies.</p> + +<p>Before leaving France, a number of friends had agreed to buy his +pictures, and assure him a steady income. These now withdrew their +support. He had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of +sculptured wood which he dreamed of; the construction of the house +carried away his remaining capital. He was everywhere fleeced, not only +by the French colonists, but also by the natives, who were growing more +and more corrupt every day, thanks to the happy influence of +civilization. Even after his house was built, he was not allowed to +keep it in peace. The owner of the ground died, leaving his affairs in a +tangle; Gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the +house, or see it destroyed. This last he refused to do, so he was +forced, finally, to borrow money, a thing he had never done in his life +before.</p> + +<p>Towards the end of 1897, his situation grew even worse. His eyes, now +permanently inflamed, were so painful that he could not even touch a +brush. The tragic portrait of himself in profile, which he sent about +this time to de Monfreid, clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight. +De Monfreid had sent him colors, but these were useless—he could not +even exchange them for bread. And to add to all he was in debt, more and +more heavily, month after month. De Monfreid wrote him encouragingly, +tried to sell his pictures, spoke of articles, of a press campaign on +his behalf. The answer was—"I only desire silence, silence and again +silence. Let me die in peace, forgotten, or if I ought to live, let me +live in peace, forgotten.... What matter if I am the pupil of Bernard or +Sérusier? If I have painted daubs, why set out to gild them, to deceive +people as to their quality?"</p> + +<p>Early in 1898 his resolution was taken. Weary, exhausted, at the end of +his tether, he decided to meet death half-way. He finished a large +picture, a sort of strange allegory of despair, entitled <i>D'où venons +nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?</i> and then took arsenic. The dose +was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea, which recurred +for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food. Meanwhile +his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had +taken him so much trouble to build.</p> + +<p>In order to obtain food, he shortly afterwards returned to Papeete and, +at the age of fifty, took up a position as a shipping clerk at the Board +of Public Works, with a salary of six francs a day. To such straits was +he reduced, and yet he continued the fight. Can one help admiring his +tenacity?</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the devoted de Monfreid had been busy. He had enlisted the +interest of Degas, of Vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling +some of the artist's pictures. Gauguin might now have counted upon a +steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. But with him, +there was to be no compromise. Because Bernard, Sérusier, Maurice Denis +had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some +influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them +or to exhibit in their company. Of course he merely made himself more +unpopular in Paris by such conduct. But Gauguin's personality was of a +kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. He admired +genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as Degas, Poe, +Balzac, and Mallarmé. For ordinary society, he preferred either natives +or children. Nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de Monfreid's +efforts, he found himself out of debt in 1899 and able to return to his +house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. Things seemed to +improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease +of his legs. He set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower +seeds which de Monfreid had sent, at his request, from France. Ill, +ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his +goal.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img10" id="img10"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_10.jpg" width="500" alt="Matamua (Olden Days)." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Matamua (Olden Days).</span> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>It is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in Gauguin's career, +unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical +ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from +the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the +time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. He had +been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown +power was now pursuing him with its hatred. In his next stage, we find +him turning even against the natives.</p> + +<p>On his return to Tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged +thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. She had served him +devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed +him in his illness. After his return to the house from Papeete, she had +resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. Now, for +some reason or no reason, Gauguin suddenly took it into his head that +she had robbed him, and drove her out. The poor soul, however, returned +and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to +call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a +violation of his domicile. Of course, the law did nothing.</p> + +<p>This only further enraged Gauguin. He decided to attack the entire +colonial administration. Since his return, he had been everywhere +treated by the Europeans at Tahiti as a madman or fool. Now he would get +his revenge.</p> + +<p>With the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several +numbers of a paper called, first <i>Les Guèpes</i>, and later <i>Le Sourire</i>. +The contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff +that Gauguin ever wrote. But these crude gibes at the governor and at +the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude +caricatures that Gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to +have produced a stir. People began to fear him at last; it was, for a +moment, a triumph.</p> + +<p>But Tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. A railway +had been built into the interior; the Protestant missionaries grew every +day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the +natives. Gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to +de Monfreid for medicines. But shortly he found his own need of medicine +as great as that of any of the wretched natives. An epidemic of +influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the +hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. To add to his griefs, +the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an +impossible figure.</p> + +<p>Hearing that life in the Marquesas Islands was cheaper, that the natives +there were physically more unspoilt, also that Europeans were few and +far between, he decided to quit Tahiti and install himself in the +island of Hiva-Hoa or Dominica. He hoped to find there elements of a +purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. This hope was destined +to be realized only in part.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, +Martinique, Brittany and Tahiti. He might have done better work at other +places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. In the +case of his removal to the Marquesas it was the strength that was +lacking.</p> + +<p>Traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his +eyes are to be found even in his latest Tahitian pictures. Owing to his +habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. +The first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, +superior to the productions of 1891-93. The <i>Te Arii Vahine</i> or +Reclining Woman, of 1896 is finer in design even than the <i>L'Esprit +Veille</i> of 1892-3. The <i>Youth Between Two Girls, La Case</i> (1897), the +beautiful <i>Navé Navé Mahana</i> (Delightful Days) of 1896, with its feeling +of a terrestrial paradise—these are masterpieces of their kind. But the +portrait of himself (1897) already shows signs of inability to finish +and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. And with many of the +succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater +carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. The more +savage Gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. +One is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the Irish dramatist, +Synge.</p> + +<p>The Gauguin who sought solitude of far-off Hiva-Hoa was not the Gauguin +of ten years before. He was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. And +he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. Nevertheless, +before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. +Pictures like the <i>Jeune Fille à l'Eventail</i> (1902) or the magnificent +<i>Contes Barbares</i> (also 1902) in which the Marquesas type appears, are +the last word of Gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new +heaven and earth. The flame burned clear in him just before the +close—then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The Marquesas Islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and +basaltic formation of Tahiti, of volcanic origin. They lie about a +thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more +humid and less supportable to white men. Owing to this fact, and to the +fact that they are out of the track of steamers between San Francisco +and Sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character.</p> + +<p>The natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any Polynesian +peoples. In distinction to the Tahitians, who are either red or olive +brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. In this they +resemble the Maories of New Zealand, as in the practice of +face-tattooing common among the males. They were formerly great +fighters and ferocious cannibals, as Herman Melville's "Omoo" tells us. +The first white settlers amongst them were French Roman Catholic +missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by +discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial +abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. The +Marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is +Tahiti.</p> + +<p>It was on the chief island of this group that Gauguin installed himself. +His capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start +constructing another house. This, like his house in Tahiti, was +ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. In +the garden, stood a rude clay statue—a sort of combination of a Buddha +and a Maori idol—under a canopy. Gauguin called this statue Te +Atua—the God, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. On +the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from Morice's +verses in "Noa Noa":</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The Gods are dead and Tahiti dies of their death,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of Eve,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sterile gold, sealed by some divine design."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Altogether in the Marquesas, Gauguin found a great charm and repose. He +seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives +and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king. But his health +was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one Chinese +boy, he lived alone. He even dreamed of abandoning the Marquesas (not +because he was weary of the place, but because he knew his strength was +small) and seeking a more favorable climate in Spain, where he thought +he might be able to paint.</p> + +<p>Except for the constant trouble with his health, his only difficulty was +with the missionaries. With the exception of a few settlers, they were +the only whites on the islands. Gauguin had advanced in savagery to +such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people. He +refused to see that the Catholic Missionaries had at least attempted to +save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the +Protestant Missionaries in Tahiti. The insistence of the Catholics upon +monogamy, upon European dress, upon mission schools and religious +observances infuriated him. He made a statue of a nude woman and set it +up in his garden. The Bishop protested. Gauguin promptly made a +caricature in clay of the bishop, with horns on his head like the Devil, +and set it up facing the statue. Something of the old Gothic love of the +grotesque, something, too, of the typically Parisian desire to "<i>épater +de bourgeois</i>" remained in him to the last.</p> + +<p>But this was not all. Gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in +peace. Although de Monfreid had worked devotedly, his position in France +was still insecure; Vollard might at any moment refuse to take more +pictures to sell. The wound he had received by his failure to impress +Paris in 1893 still smarted. He determined to write two articles +containing his opinions on art, technique, painting, life and morality, +in order to confound the Parisian critics. These articles, entitled +"Anecdotes of an Apprentice" and "Before and After," are little more +than a series of feverishly jotted notes. Later, with other notes of a +similar nature, they were embodied in a large album entitled "Avant et +Après," which remains the fullest body of information about Gauguin's +life and art we possess. The <i>Mercure de France</i> judged, perhaps +rightly, that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print +them.</p> + +<p>The other old score that he had to wipe out was with the French colonial +administration. In Tahiti, he had fought the governor, the law courts, +and the gendarmes. Here it was the customs officials who roused his +wrath. Two American ships had recently visited the island and a certain +amount of goods had been sold to the natives, through the connivance of +the gendarmes, without paying tax. Gauguin immediately wrote a letter on +the subject to the Administration, stating the facts as he understood +them and protesting, on behalf of the natives, against the bribery and +corruption of the Customs in this instance. The only reply made was a +notice from the law courts that the Administration intended to take +steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement. Gauguin +appeared in court, where he was promptly condemned to prison for three +months and to a fine of a thousand francs.</p> + +<p>It was ruin, but Gauguin determined to appeal. The tribunal was +irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part, at +least, true. He was sure of winning his case, but an appeal necessitated +a return to Tahiti and the costs of an attorney, and his capital was +again running low. He wrote to de Montfreid, begging him to find a buyer +for three pictures, at the price of fifteen hundred francs; he sent off +ten more pictures to Vollard. Then he prepared to make his appeal.</p> + +<p>Death surprised him suddenly and Paul Gauguin's appeal will never be +heard in this world.</p> + +<p>A letter from the only white man, the Protestant minister Vernier, who +knew him, leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of Gauguin's +death. It was not the eczema of the legs, nor leprosy, as some have +hinted, nor another dose of arsenic, nor syphilis, that ended his life; +it was a simple syncope of the heart. His energy, with which he had kept +up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had +drawn so many beautiful pictures, was worn out. The machine slackened +and stopped.</p> + +<p>Paul Gauguin died on the 6th of May, 1903.</p> + +<p>A few days before his death he had written his last letter to Charles +Morice, the words of which stir one like a trumpet.</p> + +<p>"I am on the ground but I am not beaten. The Indian, who smiles while he +is being tortured, is not conquered. You are mistaken if you meant that +I am wrong in calling myself a savage. I <i>am</i> a savage, and the +civilized feel this, for there is nothing in my work which could produce +bewilderment save this savage strain in me, for which I am not myself +responsible. It is therefore inimitable. Every human work is a +revelation of the individual. Hence there are two kinds of beauty; one +comes from instinct, the other from labor. The union of the two, with +the modifications resulting therefrom, produces great and very +complicated richness. Art-criticism has yet to discover the fact.... +Raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from +discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in +him. Raphael was born with beauty. All the rest in him is modification.</p> + +<p>"Physics, chemistry, and above all the study of Nature, have produced an +epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists robbed +of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of +the productive element they no longer possess. They now act only in +disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone. +Solitude is not to be recommended to every one, for a man must have +strength to bear it and to act alone. All I have learnt from others has +been an impediment to me. It is true I know little, but what I do know +is my own."</p> + +<p>Yet civilization, after all, had the last word. The very bishop, whom +Gauguin in life had hated and caricatured, intervened when he lay cold +and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full Catholic +rites in the cemetery of the Church at Atuana. And, by a concluding +stroke of irony, the grave was left unmarked. Thus one of the greatest +painters of the later nineteenth century, and one of the bravest men the +world has ever seen, mingled his dust with that of the humblest +natives, in the same way as Blake, one of the greatest painters of the +early nineteenth century, had been buried before him in an unmarked +grave among the paupers, at Bunhill Fields.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>The immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth +century took place so rapidly and universally, that no one was able to +estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects. At +the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded Europe and +America was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man, born in +the fires of the French Revolution. After 1848 this idea gradually +vanished, and another took its place; the purely material idea of +progress. The perfected application of steam and the consequent +development of machinery; the immense tapping of the world's resources +of coal, metals, agricultural products; the equally immense, universal +exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to +their maximum; the creation of an international finance, resting upon +vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few, whose world-wide +interests were linked together by railways, steamship lines, telegraphs, +telephones; the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist +class, invisibly controlling the old, decayed aristocracy, the official +church, the machinery of the law; a larger middle class, dependent upon +and subservient to the capitalists; and an immense laboring class, +exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes: all these were +virtually the creation of a single century.</p> + +<p>Against this overwhelming flood of change, a few exceptionally gifted +men vaguely protested, affirming the greater value of human life over +mechanical invention; maintaining the antique dignity of man. Their +protest was incoherent, individualistic. These men were like broken and +scattered fragments of dykes, still unsubmerged and striving to hold +back the waters of a flood. Among them must be ranked the artist whose +life-story I have written.</p> + +<p>All that is vital and valuable in French painting of the nineteenth +century, since Ingres, springs directly from the enthusiasm and +spiritual energy of the French Revolution. The somber fury of Delacroix, +the colossal caricature of Daumier; the peasant art of Millet; the sane +realism of Courbet; the mordant irony of Degas and Forain; even the +feeling for nature and the open air which the Impressionists gave us, +all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for +personal freedom, for human liberty and development. When Gauguin +arrived on the scene, the reaction was already taking place. The +official, academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock +of outworn formulas. On the other hand, the Impressionists were striving +to render nature scientifically, unemotionally. Nature was becoming to +them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical +formulas for soil, air, sunlight. Only Puvis de Chavannes remained, +aloof and misunderstood, painting great decorations that seemed but the +remembrance of some golden age of the past, and easel pictures of a +profound, hopeless pessimism.</p> + +<p>Gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against +materialism, against unemotional vision began. At the outset he +attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the Impressionists. But, +by the purest instinct he discovered, as Cézanne had already discovered, +that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered +in color. And he also discovered (this time the discovery came from +Puvis de Chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted +either—that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by +nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that +even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to +suit the harmony of the composition. Thus unconsciously, almost without +volition on his part, he was led to understand that the Primitives +everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great +human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their +vision was or was not exact. And so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for +the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of +natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized +efficiency.</p> + +<p>Unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his +art or to his life. Gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only +a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished +world. And he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and +disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to +harmony with himself. At least the caricature of himself in <i>Contes +Barbares</i> is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled +child that some imagine him to be. Having both the world and himself to +struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should +represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved +only to be, as he said in his last letter to de Montfreid, "a downfall +followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." And so in +his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by Van Gogh after +the disaster that parted them: "Gauguin made one feel that a good +picture should be the equivalent of a good action."</p> + +<p>And indeed it is so. Every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound +moral responsibility. This responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty +of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of Christian +ethics, by which we are ruled. It is not the duty of upholding a system +of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very +roots of life. It is a far nobler, far more difficult task. The duty of +the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, +despite the morbid prejudices of Puritanism, the timid conventionality +of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of +suffering, decay and death. This duty Gauguin in his art strove to +accomplish. He affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's +labor, the earth. Cézanne, perhaps a more accomplished painter, endowed +perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great +painters of the past, shrank from making Gauguin's affirmation. He +accepted in his own life a compromise; in his art he ruthlessly +eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination. And +then, towards the end of his life, Cézanne complained that Gauguin had +vulgarized him.</p> + +<p>"Gauguin has not understood me; never will I accept the lack of +gradation and of tone; it's nonsense."</p> + +<p>It would have been better for Cézanne to have said that he could not, +dared not understand Gauguin.</p> + +<p>Nor is this all that Gauguin accomplished. He restored painting to its +proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts. He showed us that its +place is between architecture and music, and that sculpture is its twin +sister. He was the first man to suspect that the progress of the +scientific spirit among the Greeks had produced the same effects in +disassociating and destroying the arts, as has the progress of the +scientific spirit in the present day. He believed, and constantly +affirmed, that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he +built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies, as well as +upon the chosen architectural proportions of form, which, whether given +by perspective or not, seemed to him necessary. Thus he reconciled the +Venetians and the Primitives, and showed that the goal of both form and +color is decoration.</p> + +<p>William Blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan, who painted +his dream of a golden age in his own way, who steadfastly strove to +grasp the essential truth in every tradition: Egyptian, Cambodian, +Persian, Chinese, Gothic, Greek and Renaissance. But Gauguin could +never, had he known of Blake, have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic +negation, the contemptuous denial of earthliness, of "the delusions of +the goddess Nature." In Gauguin, the spirit never conquered the flesh, +and he remained to the end, a man. Blake was possibly the greater +visionary: Gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>After Gauguin's death, his art rapidly became almost forgotten in +France. He remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were +not fifty of his pictures in that country. Even the few there are, hang +in scattered private collections, each containing one or at most three +or four. The great bulk of his work is in Germany, Scandinavia and +Russia. It proved impossible even in 1911 to raise sufficient money to +buy <i>L'Esprit Veille</i> for the Louvre.</p> + +<p>It is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able +to assemble a considerable quantity of his work. Gauguin was, above all +things, a decorator, and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater +effect than one. One does not judge Puvis de Chavannes, another +decorator, solely by his easel pictures, but by the great decorative +schemes in Paris, at Amiens and in Boston. This remark applies equally +to other decorators, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and +Veronese. A room hung with twenty Gauguins would produce an immense +effect of monumental power. That such a room exists in Moscow can be +small consolation to Western Europeans at present.</p> + +<p>His pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively, like +Sérusier, or drifted off into academicism, like Bernard, or watered down +their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume +decoration of Maurice Denis. None of them seized Gauguin's secret of +remaining simple, direct and savage. Aristide Maillol is an honorable +exception. A sculptor and tapestry designer, he was able to work upon +the indications that Gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches +and to show us, in part at least, how they might be realized.</p> + +<p>The main stream of French art simply ignored Gauguin. Instead of making +with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition, it went +forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting. The +Neo-Impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were +followed by disciples of Cézanne, who sought to reduce all forms to +certain geometrical primaries, basing their doctrine on certain words +which the master of Aix had let fall concerning the simplification of +form. Out of these emerged Matisse, whose art became, through a more and +more ruthless elimination of modeling, through a more and more arbitrary +placing of colors, an abstraction, an utterly unemotional series of +hieroglyphs. Then Picasso came upon the scene, eliminated color +altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form. The Cubists +followed Picasso. The Futurists in their turn started another kind of +abstract painting, the painting of mechanical energy, the dynamism +latent in form.</p> + +<p>The Expressionists, meanwhile, held to Van Gogh's and Gauguin's idea +that the picture must represent some emotion, but they denied Gauguin's +corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose +this emotion into its pictorial equivalent. Consequently they eliminated +form and strove to paint abstract emotion. Finally, the Vorticists +combined Futurism and Expressionism into a single whole and painted the +abstraction of an abstraction—the emotion of dynamic energy, thus +declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself, an art utterly +innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever.</p> + +<p>The motives of all these confused art movements, perplexing and +apparently in-congruous, were identical. They were all actuated by a +mania for scientific discovery, a desire to analyze phenomena until the +reality behind phenomena could be found. The physicists, chemists, +philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real +world—that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and +electrons, of radiant or non-radiant energy, or perhaps of elasticity +and inelasticity. These young art revolutionaries, who gave themselves +so many queer labels, were not, as many supposed, either insincere or +insane. They were merely smitten with the desire to make painting—and +not only painting, but even other arts as well—a branch of abstract +science. The world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion, +making some abstract concept. Therefore they strove to paint, not what +seemed to them unreal, but their absolute conceptions. This new +metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development +of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the +rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries +by the Byzantine monks of Mount Athos, was rapidly conquering the whole +field of aft when the past war broke out. Nor has the war altogether +suppressed its manifestations.</p> + +<p>The enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past +war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results +achieved by either side. However true it may be to hold the Germans as +primarily responsible for this destruction, in the first instance, yet +it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape +responsibility for the later developments of the struggle. Apart from +Germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war, civilization as a whole +must answer for the horror of its method. A piece of heavy artillery is +equally destructive, whether it be cast at Essen or at Le Creusot; a +Caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a Gotha; the submarine was +first employed in war by the Americans; the machine gun is an English +invention. For all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth +century, with our belief in purely material progress, stand guilty +to-day; and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over +four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come.</p> + +<p>The past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest +between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an +inhuman, scientific, organized machine. And the machine was victorious. +Just as the scientific spirit, conquering art before the war, led to the +extravagances of Cubism and Vorticism so, since the war, it has attacked +life itself; and made of national existence, no longer a problem of +human bravery, resource and intelligence, but merely a problem of +relative man-power and munitions. We have learned to speak of +"man-power" as our books on physics speak of "horse-power." The task we, +in the war, set ourselves was a grisly paradox; we proposed to save +civilization, to undo a great wrong, by destroying the very basis of +human life on which all civilization stands.</p> + +<p>It is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a +few artists who, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, foresaw +that material progress would end in annihilating humanity, that nature +and humanity, hand in hand, are more sacred than all the shells that +could ever be produced, the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws +that could ever be written. With a sense of spiritual release we revert +to those who dreamed of the great return to nature—to Rousseau, +Whitman, Gauguin, as well as to others who, although perhaps lesser men +than they, followed in their path—David Thoreau, Richard Jefferies. +They were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail—the +gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above +æsthetic negation. Their vision was of something not in themselves but +of something higher and nobler, as Gauguin knew when he deliberately +caricatured himself in <i>Contes Barbares</i>. As he knew also, the vision +was of something stated only fragmentarily, inscribed as a promise, a +foretaste, an indication of what might be. In Rousseau's prose, in +Whitman's poetry and in Gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope +for self-tortured humanity, and the promise of a land where nature and +man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED</h3> + + +<p>WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY:</p> + +<p>1. Paul Gauguin par Jean de Rotonchamp, Imprimé à Weimar par les Soins +du Comte de Kessler et se Trouve à Paris, chez Edouard Druet, Rue de +Faubourg Saint Honoré, No. 114. 1906. Edition limited to 250 copies.</p> + +<p>2. Gauguin, by Charles Morice. Floury, Paris, 1919. This and the +preceding work are the standard sources of Gauguin's life.</p> + +<p>3. Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Charles Daniel de Monfreid. Paris, Cres, +1919.</p> + +<p>4. White Shadows in the South Seas, by Frederick O'Brien. New York, The +Century Co., 1920. A travel book, with a few new sidelights on Gauguin's +final period.</p> + +<p>5. Avant et Après. Paul Gauguin aux Marquises. 1903. 100 copies only +published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript. A +translation into German has also appeared. Kurt Wolf Verlag, Berlin, +1920.</p> + + + +<p>WORKS OF ART CRITICISM IN ENGLISH:</p> + +<p>1. Modern Painting, by Willard Huntingdon Wright. New York, The John +Lane Company.</p> + + + + + + + + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 38848 ***</div> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..57348e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1db1e90 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..adec07b --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..182dcb0 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3079edf --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..07bef96 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..74f2254 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..76074a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ffb7f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg diff --git a/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg b/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..62b905f --- /dev/null +++ b/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9d4c50 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #38848 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38848) diff --git a/old/38848-8.txt b/old/38848-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9644e63 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3369 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by John Gould Fletcher + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art + +Author: John Gould Fletcher + +Release Date: February 12, 2012 [EBook #38848] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL GAUGUIN, HIS LIFE AND ART *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org +(From images generously made available by the Intenet +Archive.) + + + + + +PAUL GAUGUIN + +His Life and Art + +BY + +JOHN GOULD FLETCHER + + +_WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + +NICHOLAS L. BROWN + +NEW YORK + +MCMXXI + + + +[Illustration: Self-portrait of Gauguin.] + + + +TO + +M.T.H.S. + +WHO HELPED ME WITH + +ADVICE AND CRITICISM + + + +"Improvement makes straight roads; +but the crooked roads without improvement +are the roads of genius." + +WILLIAM BLAKE. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885 + PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889 + PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891 + PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 + PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + SELF-PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN, _Frontispiece_ + PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN'S MOTHER + THE PAINTER SCHUFFENECKER AND HIS FAMILY + STRUGGLE OF JACOB WITH THE ANGEL + THE IDOL + TAHITIAN WOMEN + HINA MARURU (FEAST TO HINA) + THE OLD SPIRIT + CALVARY + MATAMUA (OLDEN DAYS) + + + + +PAUL GAUGUIN + + + + +PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885 + + +About the middle of the last century, there occurred in Paris a series +of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future +history, secondary only to the days of the French Revolution. You will +seek Paris in vain for any public monument to these events, known as the +Revolution of 1848. Only the name of the hideously utilitarian Boulevard +Raspail may perhaps remind you, that in this year France achieved +another one of those political failures which have been so curiously +common in her history since 1789. + +In February of that year, King Louis Philippe and his ministers had fled +before the rising storm of popular feeling. It seemed at last that the +great popular revolution of the working classes, dreamed of by every +artist since 1789, proclaimed in the Rabelaisian caricatures of Daumier, +latent in the troubled Romanticism of the epoch, was at hand. A +provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the National +Assembly. But the provinces showed that it mattered little to them +whether the form of Government was changed or not. So long as the +peasant had his farm, his cow, his money safely stowed away in a +stocking, a hard-working wife, a pipe and a glass of wine, he was +content with things as they were. If the industrial classes of Paris +were starving, that was not his affair. He shared none of their fanatic +Socialism, none of their dreams of the millennium. He wanted to be left +alone. + +The National Assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate, and the +leaders of the Provisional Government discovered that they preferred to +stand with the majority rather than to fall with the Parisian +extremists. But the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle. On +the fifteenth of May, a mob attempted to take the Assembly by storm, and +failed. On the eighteenth, Lamartine, the former idol of the +Revolutionaries, was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech. The +Government found that it must either provide work and wages for the +Parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force. A scheme was +started, but it proved to be costly, and on the twenty-first of June the +Government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no +further with its project. Three days later the storm broke. Two hundred +and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets, crowned +with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men. For three days the mob +kept up a desperate resistance; then the last barricade fell, the blood +was washed off the pavements, the cause of "moderation" and "good sense" +was restored. + +There is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events. On the +seventh of June a son, Paul, was born to M. and Madame Gauguin, +residing in Paris. This infant, brought obscurely into the world to the +sound of cannon, was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of +Nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching +and as important in its effects as the great attempt of 1848. His life +was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, +the middle-class morality, of the late nineteenth century; his art was +to speak the promise of a renewed world, a world where man could again +walk naked, unashamed and free, as in Eden. He was destined to break +beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities, as the +revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the +government: but his ideas were to point the way to, new conceptions of +art and of life, which only the future can realize. + +Clovis Paul Gauguin, to give the father his full name, was a petty +journalist from Orleans. He had a post as collaborator on one of the +obscure newspapers of Liberal opinion, that so greatly flourished about +this time. His influence upon his son was slight, as is the case with +the fathers of most artists. It is to Madame Gauguin that we must turn +for an explanation of the character of her famous son. + +[Illustration: Portrait of Gauguin's mother.] + +Aline Marie Gauguin was the daughter of a certain Chazal, of whom we +know nothing, and of the then celebrated Socialist pamphleteer and +agitator, Flora Tristan. + +Flora Tristan was born in 1803 at Lima, Peru. Her father was a Spaniard +of noble descent, Mariano Tristan y Moscoso. He served as an officer in +the Peruvian Army, and probably took part in the wars of independence +which severed Peru from Spain, since we find him and his family later +occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the Republic. In 1818 +he sent his daughter to school in Paris. She eloped the next year with +Chazal and was disowned by her parents. After the birth of her child she +separated from her husband and returned to Peru, seeking a +reconciliation with her family. But the family had determined to do +nothing for the self-willed, impulsive daughter, and she drifted back to +Paris, where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of +strongly Socialistic tendencies. She became a pioneer of woman's +suffrage, of humanitarianism, of the trade-union movement. She toured +France making speeches. In 1836 she had the misfortune to meet Chazal +again in Paris, who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned +to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense. A few years later +she died in Bordeaux, and the trade-unions, remembering her zeal for +their cause and her personal beauty--which had moved them perhaps more +than the fervor of her speeches--subscribed the sum necessary to put up +a monument. + +Such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just +been born into the world. The tragic and violent union of Chazal and +Flora Tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became. +In Chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong +irritability; in Flora Tristan we see whence he drew his love of +personal and individual liberty, his hatred of moral restraint, his +scorn of the bourgeoisie, his Spanish hauteur and stoicism. Half-savage +Spanish blood flowed in his veins, a mixture of Arab, Celt and African. +Perhaps in his Peruvian descent there were even other currents--currents +of that Inca race which the Spaniards had subdued but not conquered. +Whatever else destiny held in store for him, it was certain from the +beginning that Paul Gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the +intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of Paris. + + +II + +The earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar +strands of tragedy, romance and savagery which were to recur so often in +his later life. In December, 1851, the makeshift Republic came to an end +and Louis Napoleon, by an easy _coup d'état_, restored the Empire. +Clovis Gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the Liberal +paper for which he wrote. There was only one hope remaining: that Flora +Tristan's relations in Lima might do something for Paul and his sister +Marie. So the family set out for Peru. On the way, during the terrible +passage through the Straits of Magellan, Clovis Gauguin was seized with +heart failure and died. His body was taken ashore and buried at Port +Famine, or Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in the world, in Chile. + +The mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by +the head of the family, Flora Tristan's uncle, Don Pio Tristan y +Moscoso. Concerning this personage Gauguin himself told many anecdotes +in later years. Probably most of these were inexact to the point of +being fable pure and simple. We must remember that Gauguin at this time +was scarcely four years of age. We know that the family were wealthy +nobles, of high social standing, who lived in the old Castillian manner +of luxury and indolence. From such surroundings Gauguin doubtless +derived much of the "hidalgo manner" that distinguished him throughout +life--a blend of haughtiness, reserve and egoism, masking often a real +shyness before people. And here he saw, also for the first time, works +of art produced by a non-European civilization: ceramics, jewelry, +fabrics of Inca origin. The remembrance of these specimens of savage, +primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years. + +Gauguin's stay in Lima did not last long. Four years later his paternal +grandfather died in France, and his mother returned to that country in +order to obtain her share of his estate, which proved to be only a small +sum. + +In later years, the painter believed, or affected to believe, that if +his mother had remained in Peru and had neglected her relations in +France she would have been left heiress to Don Pio Tristan's property. +It is probable that Gauguin was here merely romancing, as he often did, +when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life. It is an +enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's +mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the +influence of Peruvian life. Peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the +tropics, for exotic, out-of-the-way, old-fashioned places, unspoiled by +the nineteenth century. Unconsciously many of the traits that made his +character so little comprehensible to the Frenchmen of his day were +planted in him during these years. + +France was now to give him something different. He was to be educated, +or rather to receive what passed for an education. He remained at a +seminary at Orleans till the age of seventeen, hating his studies, +becoming more and more intractable and unteachable. This seminary, as +all such institutions in France at the time, was conducted by Jesuit +priests. + +In later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he +had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy, false virtue and +spying. And with malicious irony he said: "And I also learnt there a +little of that spirit of Jesuit casuistry, which is a force not to be +despised in the struggle with other people." + +His sole ambition was to escape, to get to sea again, to make voyages to +the tropics. His mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy, +but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination. He was +therefore placed in the merchant marine. This decision of his mother he +regretted bitterly to the end of his life. + +In 1865 he embarked aboard the _Luzitano_, a cargo boat, on a voyage +from Havre to Rio de Janeiro. His grade aboard this ship was that of a +pilot's apprentice. + +Of this voyage, which enabled him to see again the tropics, Gauguin +retained in later years important memories. + +In the fragmentary note-books he kept in Tahiti he declared that it was +during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of +the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the Society +Islands in the Pacific. The remembrance of that story may have +influenced him later in his choice of Tahiti as an ideal residence. At +least the appearance of Rio de Janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind +fresh enthusiasm for the tropics. The stay at Rio was further signalized +by a liaison with an actress, of that eminently casual kind which +Gauguin was to experience so often later on. Finally the return voyage +brought about another liaison, this time with a Prussian woman, and in +defiance of ship's discipline. It was certain that his character--was +not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of +self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer. At all +events, the next thing we hear is that Gauguin quitted the merchant +service and enlisted in the French Navy as a common sailor, in February, +1868. Probably by this time his mother had refused to support him, and +he was forced into this position through necessity. + +The cruiser _Jerome Napoleon_, on which he found himself, was, to his +chagrin, ordered to cruise in northern waters. So instead of seeing the +tropics again, Gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound +Greenland coast and the barren North Cape. This was bad, but still worse +was to follow. The vessel was on its way to Spitzbergen when news was +brought to its captain that France had declared war upon Prussia. + +"Where are you going?" said the second officer, seeing the Captain put +the helm about. + +"To Charenton," replied the indignant first officer; Charenton being the +great lunatic asylum near Paris! + +The vessel got no nearer to France than Copenhagen, when the melancholy +news of Sedan came. The name _Jerome Napoleon_ was painted out, that of +_Desaix_ substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain +in the waters off Copenhagen till the close of the war in 1871, +contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize. + + +III + +In 1871, after the cessation of hostilities, Gauguin obtained leave, +renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. He was now +heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome +discipline that he had now endured aboard the _Desaix_ for three years. +Besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he +felt that he must seize it. + +His mother had died in the interval since he had last seen France and, +in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do +Paris banker, Gustave Arosa. This man immediately found for Paul a place +at Bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. And now there +opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in +retrospect the most amazing of his career. + +Though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an +instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan +savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing +prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the Bourse, without +troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position +might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. He had not been +long at Bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. +Possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the Paris stock +market had been utterly disorganized by the events of 1870-71, and, now +that peace was signed, France was making one of those rapid recoveries +that have been so common in her history. Stocks were going up and trade +was booming. Gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances +to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as +forty thousand francs. + +In 1873 he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was +never wholly to shake off. His wife, Mette Sophia Gad, was the daughter +of a Protestant clergyman of Copenhagen. The family was a good one and +enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the Danish capital. The +daughters had been educated at Paris, and one of them had married a +member of the Norwegian Parliament, while another had become the first +wife of the painter, Fritz Thaulow. + +When or where Gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it +was probably during the stay of the _Desaix_ at Copenhagen. At any rate +it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil +one, owing to his wife being a Protestant) was delayed owing to the loss +of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of St. Cloud. + +At this time, through his wife's friends and connections, through +Gustave Arosa, through Emile Schuffenecker--a fellow employee at +Bertin's--and through others, a new interest came into his life. He +began to paint, although pressure of work did not permit him to regard +this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first. Arosa was, in +his way, an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by +French artists of the day--among them Delacroix and Courbet. These works +he engraved in photogravure--an art then in its infancy--and sent copies +of the engravings to his personal friends. Through Schuffenecker Gauguin +was brought closely into touch with the Impressionists, who were then +making a sensation in Paris. Gauguin bought brushes and colors and began +by painting on Sundays and holidays. It was only slowly that he began to +look upon painting as anything but a distraction. + +His first essays in art were purely academic. He painted in the +prevailing style of the Salons and even sent one picture to the Salon of +1876. At the same time he began to attempt sculpture. He worked at first +in marble, a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more +coarsely-grained surface of wood, clay or paste. He liked a rough +surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order +to emphasize this roughness. + +Gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature. His early years at +sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity. He had a tremendous +interest in the technical processes of art. During his life he was able +to do almost equally well at painting, lithography and sculpture. He +also attempted etching, stained glass and pottery. His writings, +particularly his share in "Noa Noa," show a considerable grasp of +direct, poetic narrative--a gift that might very possibly have made of +him a good poet. Throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely +as a painter of pictures; his influence in opening new channels for +art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work. Even in +literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration. The +problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that +occupied his English contemporary, William Morris, almost as varied as +those that occupied Leonardo da Vinci. + +He acquired knowledge easily; his problem was always how to weigh, sift +and make use of it. But his growth to artistic maturity was slower than +in the case of artists who limit their field of effort, because he +attacked many subjects at the same time. + +It may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof, +not of a complex, but of a primitive nature. Yet it is undoubtedly true +that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost +everything. The interchangeability, the essential unity of all the arts, +is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages. As +civilization and consequently technique become more advanced, it grows +more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch +of art. Perhaps that is why, in our modern industrialized states, the +arts tend to disappear, to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly +diminishing minority. + +[Illustration: The painter Schuffenecker and his family.] + +All this was not suspected by Gauguin at the time, nor for years +afterwards. For the time he was content to paint and to follow the +prevailing fashions in his painting. And he soon found that the +prevailing fashion of the day in Paris was Impressionism. + + * * * * * + +To define Impressionism it is not necessary, as many professional +art-critics have done, to enter into long dissertations as to the +supremacy of pure colors, nor to see in Constable or Turner the ancestry +of the movement. + +Impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of Realism--or to +speak better, Naturalism--carried out in painting. This cult had already +possessed in painting one important precursor, Gustave Courbet. But it +is to literature, always the advance guard of the arts, that we must +turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed. + +A little before 1870, which year marks a turning point not only in +France's political but also in her intellectual life, there came a +change over her literature. Romanticism, which had startled the world in +1830 with Lamartine, de Musset, de Vigny, Hugo and Balzac, was now dead. +The heroic, the Napoleonic, the Byronic attitude had somehow gone out of +life. Under the Second Empire, the bourgeois triumphed over the +Tuileries. + +A few years before the crash of 1870, Charles Baudelaire gave to the +world his _Fleurs du Mal_--the exasperated cry against life of a soul +tortured with too great a sensibility. Almost at the same time Gustave +Flaubert, in _Madame Bovary_, erected his monument of infamy to the +memory of the bourgeois. These two books opened the path to Naturalism, +to the "human document," to the de Goncourts, to de Maupassant, and to +Zola. + +Impressionism was the logical outgrowth, in another sphere, of the work +of these Naturalist writers. + +It abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural +sunlight. + +It abolished the classical "subject" and left the painter free to paint, +as Manet said, "_N'importe quoi_." + +Thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric +vibration, foreshadowed by Constable and Turner, but not by them +elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with +equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon Nature, +and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. It was, as Manet said +again, "Nature seen through a temperament." + +Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared +to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending +from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres. +This was the Norman, Puvis de Chavannes. + +But Puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of +walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in +the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while Impressionism was the +_succès de scandale_ of the day. + +Gauguin heard of Impressionism and became a devout follower of its +theories. He painted pictures in the manner of Camille Pissarro, who was +a compatriot of Madame Gauguin, having been born in the Island of St. +Thomas in the Antilles, then Danish territory. Gauguin took part in the +exhibitions of the Impressionist group in 1880 and 1881. + +Huysmans, then as later the disciple of Naturalism pushed to its extreme +limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. Gauguin began to be +talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. +But his work at the Bourse was exhausting his strength and his time. + +Although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, Gauguin +in January, 1883, took the rash step of quitting the financial world and +devoting himself solely to art. + +This decision was, as Dr. Segalen says in his valuable Preface to the +letters Gauguin wrote from Tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. +When Paul Gauguin said to himself, "Henceforward I will paint every +day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition +and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great +impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not +only of his own nature but of modern art. + + +IV + +It is important to note that Gauguin was thirty-five years of age when +he came to this decision. This proves that the decision was no hasty +one, of which he was liable to repent later. At such an age a man has +arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a Paul +Gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of +living from a mere desire for change. Gauguin had something to express +and knew it. He had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and +shares. And to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all +opposition. + +But had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage, with the desire +for freedom, for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes +only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts, this decision +might never have been taken. As a husband and father he now had others +dependent upon him. That he set aside their claims to follow the deeper +call proves that, as he later said, he believed himself to have the +right to dare everything. And he was probably at first confident of +success, thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as +that of a speculator. + +Madame Gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision. She was +naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful +man, and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his +success. In any case, she was soon destined to sad disillusionment. + +Gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the +sums he had saved. As for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well +known to sell. It was necessary, above all things, to gain time. So he +decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought +with the proceeds of his career on the Bourse, in order to support +himself. The list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly +the direction of his tastes at this period. It included a Manet, several +Renoirs, some Claude Monets, two Cézannes (still life and landscape), an +early Pissarro, together with examples of Guillamin, Sisley, Jongkind, +Lewis Brown and, most significant of all, two designs by Daumier. + +Whether it was that Gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a +style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not +know. Nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an +appreciable sum or not. Probably the amount was small, for the +Impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely +commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. In any +case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. He had +ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in Paris. He +found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the +place of Bertin's. So it was Madame Gauguin's turn to act. She decided +on a removal to Copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their +influence in obtaining a position for her husband. + +Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband +and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid +Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the +passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he +hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and +provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian +Bohemianism--everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he +took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in +maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking +on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. +Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin +for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately +and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment +when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. +Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the +nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her +mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. +But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable +scandal. + +Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield +nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family +change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A +separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came +about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the +painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We +shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that +Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into +which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate +with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with +his wife. + +It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with +her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than +accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame +Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now +disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian +art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to +try his fortune. + + +V + +He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had +been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more +consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore +necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the +man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual +equipment. + +Gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of +strong physical development. His hair, which later grew thinner and lost +much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in +large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. The +eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which +were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color--the eyes of one who +has spent many years at sea. The nose was large, thick and aquiline. A +thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the +mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. The chin was +pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted +beard similar in color to the mustache. + +After Gauguin's return from the Antilles in 1887 it is the testimony of +all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an Indian's, and +that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. Even his excessive +devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his +health, had something sailor-like in it. Gauguin rolled his own +cigarettes in the Spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. +His hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman--coarse, +square and red. Altogether he was in appearance curiously Creole; he did +not resemble a Frenchman of France. The dark tint of his skin and the +formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and +hair. + +His personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those +with whom he came in contact. It must be remembered, however, that he +was by nature reserved and even suspicious, as are many people of +fundamental genius. He differed from those about him in that he worked +by instinct, while they worked according to some conscious method. He +therefore obtained out of himself, by means of slow thinking and +laborious effort, the knowledge which many have at the beginning. +Further, the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of +physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little +reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world. Finally, +Gauguin was shy, actually and by nature shy. People took this shyness +for rudeness and this reserve for disdain. And Gauguin was not always +unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding. He carefully cultivated +his rudeness, both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance. + +As regards his work, he was on the way to find his path, although he +never entirely found it, even to the end of his career. His versatility +prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead, like that of many +popular and highly successful painters. + +Mention has already been made of his appearance in 1880 among the +Impressionists and of the praise bestowed by Huysmans on one of his +pictures for its frank realism. This very nude, however, shows Gauguin +massing his shadows, making them heavy and dark, which was the direct +contrary to Impressionist practice. A year later we find Huysmans +complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures; another proof +that the painter was already trying to mass tones, to escape from the +division of tones employed by the Impressionist group. + +We are safe in assuming also that Gauguin felt already an inward desire +to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics. His early years had +shown him the tropics; and the art of the greatest masters, as well as +of the worst daubers, is based on the instinctive knowledge they have +obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later +years. Pissarro, too, had seen the tropics; but they had not in any way +influenced his color sense, which, indeed, grew colder and grayer as his +years advanced. But he may have had something to do with Gauguin's +inclination towards tropical subjects, though the feeling of kinship +with Nature which Gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own. + +If Gauguin had but known it, there waited for him not the future of fame +and fortune of which he dreamed, but seventeen years of life-and-death +struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means +of living nor the slightest encouragement, but only hampered him in +every way, so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures +on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls. He was to +quit his own country, and to go to the ends of the earth, only to find +that the system of civilization possessed by his country, whatever its +other advantages, did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the +fruits of his labor. He was finally to sink into an unmarked grave, to +be almost forgotten, and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when +no longer able to profit by it. Even if Gauguin could have realized +this, it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind. Ready to dare +everything, he strode forward into the future. + + + + +PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889 + + +I + +With the return of Gauguin to Paris there opened for him the second +stage of his career, the struggle to maintain himself on the productions +of his brush and chisel. During the first stage his character had been +formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative +leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor, during which he found +time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the +latest French tradition. He had not only met and talked with men like +Manet, Pissarro, and Cézanne, he also visited the museums of Paris, and +did not confine himself to the Louvre, but made a special study of the +Musée Guimet with its collection of art works from the far East, and +later of the Trocadero, with its casts of Cambodian sculpture. His stay +at Bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment, +the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic +independence. + +Yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these +important years of development than in the case of most of his +contemporaries. "He was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in +art that was going on," says one who knew him in this period, "but not +to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody." What he absorbed +was by instinct; and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge +with people who might fail to make good use of it. + +Amid the noisy chatter of Parisian art-circles he passed silent and +unnoted. He rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of +experimental projects, particularly with sculpture. But very shortly +his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience +of hunger. + +For a time he suffered extreme privation. He was forced at last to +accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting +advertisements on the walls of the Gare du Nord in order to save himself +from starvation. + +"I have known," he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter +Aline, "extreme misery, that is to say hunger and everything that +follows upon hunger. It is nothing, or almost nothing. One grows +accustomed to it and, with will-power, one can end by laughing at it. +But what is terrible is to be prevented from working, from developing +one's intellectual faculties. It is true that suffering sharpens one's +ability. But it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will +kill you. + +"With a great deal of pride I have ended by having a great deal of +energy, and I have forced myself to be full of will-power. + +"Is pride a fault, or must one develop one's pride? I believe pride must +be developed. It is the best weapon we have against the human animal +that is in us." + +This quotation gives us the man entirely. He was one of those who are +not to be beaten, one of those who do not turn back. He was to go +forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path. + +In 1886 he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition +of the Impressionist group, together with a relief in wood, which seems +to foreshadow the later creator of _La Guerre et la Paix_. + +Most of these early works of Gauguin seem to have disappeared. Very few +can recall seeing one. It is therefore interesting to read the following +appreciation by Felix Fenéon, which shows that Gauguin was already +traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other +impressionists:-- + +"The tones of M. Paul Gauguin's pictures are very little separated from +each other; because of this, there is in his work a dull harmony. Dense +trees rise from the fertile soil, abundant and humid, invade the frame, +pursue the sky. The air is heavy. Bricks seen between the trunks +indicate a nearby house; things are lying about, muzzles are scattered +in the thicket--cows. These reds of roofs and of cattle the artist +constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters, +encumbered with long grasses, which run between the tree-trunks." + +This shows clearly that Gauguin was treating landscape at this period +already as a synthesis, a decorative whole and not, like Manet, Pissarro +or the Divisionists, as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric +vibration. As for the relief on wood, Fenéon writes: + +"On the pear-tree wood, which we regret to see left in monochrome, a +naked woman stands out in half relief, her hand to her hair, seated +rectangularly in a landscape. This is the only number of sculpture. +Nothing in painted wood, in glass-paste, in wax." + +Paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach Gauguin. He must +find his own way, create his own tradition. Aloof alike from the +theories of the Impressionists and from those of their successors, the +Pointillists--theories of the disassociation of tones and of the +analytic disintegration of light, based on the scientific treatises of +Chevreuil and Helmholtz--he was painfully tending back to the old +decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit, the harmonious +expression of a single emotion. Hunger proved again the best friend of +the independent artist. He fled from Paris and sought refuge in the +country. + + +II + +The place of refuge which Gauguin found was the village of Pont-Aven in +the district of Finistère in Brittany. + +There is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon +his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by Tahiti. +Indeed the charm of Tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence. + +The Celtic fringe of Europe--Cornwall, the Highlands of Scotland, +Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia--presents everywhere a great +similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants. +The Celt is an outcast. Driven backward by successive waves of +civilization and conquest, he has finally occupied those lands which +were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in +them undisturbed. Long residence in these desolate places has made of +him a natural mystic, a conservative. Perhaps he might never have been +anything else had not the nineteenth century--with its railroads and the +life-weariness of its cultivated classes--made of him a curiosity. The +hordes of tourists, of bad artists, of dealers in journalese, who rave +about Brittany, Cornwall, or Ireland as picturesque summer-resorts, show +that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to +remain a savage. + +Paul Gauguin did not assuredly go to Brittany to discover the +picturesque. Had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher +than the painting of Charles Cottet or of Lucien Simon. His real home as +an artist, as he was later to discover, lay elsewhere--under less +troubled skies, in the midst of more tropical vegetation. But the gloom, +the melancholy inertia, the mystic faith, the simplicity of this land of +wind-mills, small trees, granite coasts and menhirs, worked strongly on +the yet untamed primitive in him. Stronger still perhaps was the appeal +of the sea, the most restless and yet the most changeless element in +nature. Gauguin was in appearance, as in manners, a sailor--the eye, the +direct curt speech, the reserved disdain, the freedom of manners, all +these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences. In Brittany +he found the sea; he found an unspoiled people; he found, above all, +repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that, like the +bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne, frothed eternally in +the cafés of Paris. Brittany gave him greater faith in himself; Brittany +began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly +stifling him. + +[Illustration: Struggle of Jacob with the Angel.] + +His first stay in Pont-Aven was destined to be short. It is chiefly +remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by Emile Bernard, then +only about seventeen years of age, whose relations with Gauguin and +other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be +examined in detail. + +Bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up, +mushroom-like, in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary +controversy. At the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic +and extremely bad poetry. He next went in for painting, raced off to +Brittany to see Gauguin, was received with coolness, ran back to Paris. +Here he found Van Gogh fresh from Holland and, when Van Gogh in turn +went to Arles, became his most industrious correspondent. Later he heard +that the crazy old hermit, Paul Cézanne, was living at Aix--so off to +Aix went Bernard. More letters were the outcome of the visit. + +Meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and +neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of Gauguin's Breton +style, then to a combination of Cézanne and Gauguin, to conclude with +painting of Oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from +that of Gerome. He imitated everyone in turn, only to end by becoming +that drab eclectic thing--what the French call a "pompier" or we an +"Academician." Thus he justified Gauguin's sardonic prophecy that +"Bernard would end up something like Benjamin Constant!" + +We owe Bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful +letters which Van Gogh wrote to him, and--more precious debt--that he +has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic +Cézanne revealed a glimpse of his agony. But we owe Bernard nothing in +that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose +style he was the first to copy--Paul Gauguin. But of this more later. + + +III + +The winter of 1886 found Gauguin again in Paris. Here he met another +artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite +different from that of Emile Bernard. + +This was Vincent Van Gogh, newly arrived from Holland. Gauguin has left +on record in a piece of prose called _Les Crevettes Roses_ his first +impression of Van Gogh, which proves beyond dispute that Gauguin loved +Van Gogh and admired him, despite his habitual reserve and the haughty +disdain with which he was already looking upon all things European. + +At this time Gauguin was still painfully seeking, still patiently and +laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization. Van Gogh, +although five years younger, had fully realized himself in essence--was, +in fact, realized from the beginning. The difference between them was +that Van Gogh was an humble Dutch peasant, with the mystic blend of +religion and animality which is common to Flemish and Dutch artists (for +example, Breughel, Rubens or Verhaeren), while Gauguin was a Spaniard, +hard and aristocratic, but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the +strain of French blood. + +For Van Gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of +the sun, which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric +ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it. For Gauguin the +future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left +him half-an-European to the end, his work only a broken fragment of what +he had dreamed. + +It is a pity, in a way, that these men ever met. But their meeting and +the drama which was played out later between them, had in it the +inevitable quality of Greek tragedy. For the moment their meeting was +without result, except that perhaps it woke Gauguin to a realization +that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art. In +short, one must be religious. But where was Gauguin to find his +religion? + +Certainly not in Paris, the capital of intellectual skepticism. Nor, for +the moment, in sleepy and mournful Brittany. The memories of his early +initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he +undertook, in 1887, a voyage to the Martinique in company with a young +painter, Charles Laval. + +There is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to Gauguin his +own primitivism, although it left him for the time an invalid, +threatened with dysentery, suffering from constant intestinal pains, and +although it brought Laval to the brink of the grave. + +If the reader wishes to know something of what Martinique was at this +time, he should turn to Lafcadio Hearn's "Two Years in the French West +Indies." Hearn, like Gauguin, was a disillusionized cosmopolite, +disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the +pedantic and Puritanic hypocrisy of our Occidental civilization. Like +Gauguin, Hearn found in the West Indies a revelation of a world which +had not lost touch with Nature--a world of men who were content to +remain, in Nature's eyes, something as ephemeral and as harmonious as +the trees, the flowers, the beasts among which they lived. Like Gauguin +again, Hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision, but yet kept faith +with it to the last. + +[Illustration: The Idol.] + +In the pictures which Gauguin produced during his stay in Martinique, we +find the first rude indications of his later manner--the manner of a +mystic poet who sees all life, the life of man, of vegetation, of the +earth and the sea, as being parallel, harmonious manifestations of the +same Divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other. + +If Gauguin did not realize himself in Martinique, he at least found +himself on the road to realization. But the unchecked power of the sun, +steadily sapping not only the white race, but also the race of mixed +blood, with which he, like Hearn, felt so much sympathy, banished him +from this Eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future. + +His health demanded a return to France. He came back, bringing with him +pictures--experimental, tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and +gloom of the tropics with Pissarro's analysis of paler northern +sunlight. He brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures +which he, as yet, could not paint. He brought back with him an idea. + + +IV + +After seeing the Antilles and returning to Paris, Gauguin was again +brought face to face with the problem against which he had already +struggled--the problem of his poverty. + +He had obtained at Martinique the vision of a new world of art, which he +knew he was some day destined to realize. But for the present he had +neither lodging and studio, nor resources of any kind. He was forced to +live on charity. + +Charity came to him in the shape of Emile Schuffenecker, who had also +given up finance for a career as artist. + +Schuffenecker was not a genius, but he knew ability when he saw it, and +opened his doors freely to this needy colleague. It is a pity that +Gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting +Schuffenecker as an artist. + +Gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful +episodes of his life. One is almost inclined to think with Emile Bernard +that "the basis of Gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism," or, +with Meier-Graefe, that Gauguin was nothing but a great child. Neither +of these views is, however, wholly correct. + +Gauguin was the son, be it remembered, of a radical journalist and the +grandson of a Socialist pamphleteer. Journalism in France is not the +same thing as in England. There is scarcely any polite journalism in +France. Gauguin himself was always talking, according to Bernard, of art +and life needing "the blow of the fist." Paul Déroulède, Edmond Drumont, +Henri Rochefort, Octave Mirbeau, Zola, Clemenceau, and other celebrated +journalists of the Dreyfus period (the heyday of French journalism) knew +quite well what this "blow of the fist" meant, and practiced it upon +every opportunity. + +Moreover, Gauguin was nearly forty, had knocked about the world a great +deal, banging himself against many sharp corners in the process, and +was face to face with want. It is also possible that he felt bound, for +the sake of his wife and children, to make as much money as possible. +Finally, he believed in himself as an artist, if no one else did. The +world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either +hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt. As he +put it himself, "Is it necessary to be modest, or, in other words, an +imbecile?" + +So he accepted the use of Schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his +own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at Schuffenecker's attempt +to paint. Later on we find him accepting similarly Van Gogh's +hospitality, irritating Van Gogh to the pitch of madness, and--after Van +Gogh's death--sending to Bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed +exhibition of Van Gogh's pictures on the ground that Van Gogh was only a +madman. And later still, when Van Gogh's reputation began to rise in +public esteem, Gauguin declared that Van Gogh had learned from him and +had called him master. + +Such traits are deplorable, if we consider Gauguin as an ordinary man. +But if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it +conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite +certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. Gauguin +sinned in good company, with Michaelangelo who thought Raphael had +plotted against him, and with Berlioz who has left on record his opinion +of Wagner's music. To understand Gauguin one must share to some extent +the opinion of Flaubert--which, incidentally, Browning almost +endorses--that the man is nothing, the work is all. + +It is not easy to read between the lines of Gauguin's self-imposed +reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. If we +attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was +almost without friends. Van Gogh he loved without understanding. Daniel +de Monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. The shadowy figure of +Tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly +moved him. + +Puvis de Chavannes, an artist to whom Gauguin owed much, similarly held +himself aloof from all. So did Degas and Ingres, two other artists of +Gauguin's stamp. So in ancient Greece did Sophocles. + +The truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on +the surface of things. One can only sympathize with them, share their +imaginings through long and patient study. Gauguin was not altogether +strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. But his work +increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. +Schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in Paris just long +enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy Manet's +_Olympia_, a picture he greatly admired. Then once more he took the road +to Brittany. + + +V + +Despite the fact that Gauguin had, before leaving Paris, held his first +one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation +was not improved. He was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined +at Martinique, remained bad. + +He was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock +of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. In Gauguin's +case the chances were very small. He was crushed by his own impotence to +realize the art he had dreamed. + +It was at this juncture that Vincent Van Gogh, now at Aries, came +forward and offered him a lodging, despite the fact that he himself +could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the +self-sacrificing efforts of his brother Theodore. + +For a time Gauguin did not respond to Van Gogh's generous offer to +share their fortunes in common. But he sent his own portrait to Vincent, +a gloomy, powerful piece of painting which, in the opinion of some, so +startlingly resembles Robert Louis Stevenson--like Gauguin a wanderer, +but with what a difference! To Vincent this portrait suggested a +prisoner, with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows. He was more than +ever determined to draw Gauguin out of the slough of despond into which +he was falling, and to work together with him for the better +establishment of both their reputations. + +One can only admire Van Gogh for this decision. An artist of a childlike +simplicity of soul, a combination of Don Quixote, the Good Samaritan and +that Jesus of Nazareth whom he loved, Van Gogh was even greater as a man +than as an artist. But Gauguin was, as he knew himself later, greater as +an artist than as a man. It was natural for him to accept the invitation +of a man whom he knew, after all, very slightly, because he saw in this +acceptance possible advantages to himself. + +Van Gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed, as was Gauguin's, by +a strong reserve of nervous strength. His was one of those souls whose +longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced +by William Blake:-- + + I will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death + Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate, + And I be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood. + +Gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen +by Whitman:-- + + O, to struggle against odds, to meet enemies undaunted! + To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand + To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium face to face, + To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect + nonchalance, + To be indeed a God! + +Van Gogh was a lyric painter. His desire was to lose himself in the +ecstacy of the divine. Gauguin was a narrative, an epic painter. His aim +was to grow to divine stature through self-realization. + +What could there be in common between the fervent admirer of Rembrandt, +Delacroix, Monticelli, Ziem, and the brooding, patient workman who was +building up his art on the classic tradition of Ingres, Cézanne and +Degas? Surely even less than between Michaelangelo and Tintoretto. + +A drama between these men was inevitable. It was not slow in declaring +itself.[1] Of what actually occurred we have only Gauguin's account, of +how Van Gogh first attacked him, and then strove to take his own life. + +Van Gogh, upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent +itself, went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at Arles, where, as his +grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that +devoured him, he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun. Gauguin +returned to Brittany, as he said, "armed against all suffering." But he +had seen something. In striving to paint Van Gogh's portrait he had seen +a vision, once again to quote his own words, of "Jesus preaching +goodness and humility." And perhaps, in Vincent's hour of agony, while +he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he +had loved and had painted so lovingly, Gauguin had another vision--of +the sombre Garden of Gethsemane. + +Thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that +desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul, between nature and +God, between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth, which he +was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize, despite the +baseness of that other part in him, the civilized, unprimitive part, +which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of +baseness. + + +[Footnote 1: Gauguin and Van Gogh were actually together from the 20th +October to the 23d December, 1888.] + + + + +PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891 + + +I + +In 1889 there opened in Paris on the Champ-de-Mars the Universal +Exposition, to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the Bastile. Of +this exhibition and of the palace built to house it, nothing now remains +except the melancholy Eiffel Tower. + +The pictures admitted to the exhibition were, rather naturally, of a +kind sanctioned by academic officialdom. Wherefore visitors who happened +to patronize the Café Volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled +to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock +all their susceptibilities in art matters. Their perplexity cannot have +been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title: +"Catalogue of the Exposition of Pictures of the Impressionist and +Syntheticist Group, held on the Premises of M. Volpini, at the +Champ-de-Mars, 1889." + +The exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the Café +Volpini had for the most part never heard. Their names were:--E. +Schuffenecker, Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, Louis Roy, +Léon Fauché, Georges Daniel, Ludovic Nemo (a pseudonym of Bernard's) and +lastly, Paul Gauguin. Lithographs, printed in black upon yellow paper +and not less extraordinary than the pictures, were also visible upon +request. These were by Bernard and Gauguin. + +The result of this exhibition was that the public laughed, the papers +protested, the young students of art in the various ateliers of Paris +were stimulated to furious discussion. But a few spirits, more +venturesome or more prophetic, took the trouble to test the new ideas. A +few, chief among them Sérusier of the Académie Julian, even set out to +visit the birthplace of the new movement, a lonely inn kept by a family +of the name of Gloanec at Le Poldu, a short distance from Pont-Aven. + +A brief survey of the history of Syntheticism is necessary to an +understanding of the theories of the new school. Here we enter upon +debatable ground. It has already been said that the chief opponents of +the academicism of Cabanel and Bougereau were the Impressionists. Their +movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its +third. The earliest of the Impressionists, led by Manet, insisted that a +picture was only nature seen through a temperament; in other words, that +a picture must be naturalistic. This doctrine found parallel literary +expression in the writings of the de Goncourts, de Maupassant and Zola. +The first phase in Impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained +a belief in form. + +It was succeeded by an analytical phase, based upon the application to +color of the scientific theories of light, of Rood, Chevreuil and +Helmholtz. To Claude Monet, the founder of this new school of +Impressionism, nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere. Form +was abandoned. + +After Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Guillamin, a new group, of whom +the chief were Seurat and Signac, attempted to combine the tenets of +their two sets of predecessors. They retained formal composition but +broke up color into minute points or dots. This third generation of +Impressionists were originally termed Neo-Impressionists but now, more +frequently, Pointillists. + +Three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory. +Puvis de Chavannes had, within the very precincts of the official salon, +created an art based on something wholly distinct, alike from the +photographic and frigid eclecticism of Cabanel and Bougereau and from +the work of both Manet and Monet. Puvis was a decorator who could think +and paint only in terms of walls. He had achieved, after a long +struggle, a decorative synthesis of his own, based upon the ruthless +simplification of masses, contours and coloring. Reserved, cold, +solitary, he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his +old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of Giotto, that +father of all European painting. + +Paul Cézanne, the hermit of Aix, had faced the problem of painting with +the Impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his +true spiritual ancestors--the Venetians and El Greco. As a result he was +thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth, for he lived +far from Paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited. +Finally, Degas, associating himself with the Impressionists at the +outset, had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of +Ingres, who might be called the last of Florentines. Degas was +considered an artist of small importance because, unlike Manet, he +scorned to give himself airs. He lived a retired life in Paris, and did +not exhibit. + +These three men--Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas--had, through +their own inner necessity, become syntheticists. But no one of them +preached Syntheticism, because their adherence to the creed was +unconscious. The doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with +Paul Gauguin at the Café Volpini in 1889, who lived and worked with him +at the Gloanec inn, near Pont-Aven. It was from these men that the +reaction against Impressionism started, a reaction which, in its turn, +was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of +mathematical and analytical abstraction of line, color and form, which +we know as Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. It was these men surrounding +Gauguin, who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition +which goes back through Giotto and Cimabue to the Byzantine mosaics, +and, through these, to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages. +With Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning +of a new tradition. With Gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance +of an old one. + + +II + +As early as 1886, in an article in the _Revue Indépendante_, the +well-known critic Eduard Dujardin had spoken of a group calling +themselves the Cloissonists, who painted in flat patches of tone, +divided from each other by black lines. + +Cloissonism, as the name indicates, was borrowed from the Japanese. But +as a method of painting, it had been derived less from cloisonné enamel +than from the technique of the Japanese color-print artists. + +The artistic gods of the Cloissonists were Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. +It may be remembered that since 1865 men like Zola, Manet, Monet, +Whistler, the de Goncourts--in short the entire generation of the +naturalists--had collected these color prints, written about them, +talked about them. + +Gauguin himself, when he returned to Paris at the close of this year +1889, pinned a frieze of Hokusai and Utamaro prints round the walls of +his studio. + +But the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of +Cloissonism, of which the leader was Anquetin (later ranked with the +Syntheticists), does not fully explain the use of Syntheticism with its +greater insistence upon decorative unity, and its clearer affinities to +the work of the Italian primitives. + +As to the origin of Syntheticism we have divergent statements from +contemporary witnesses. + +The English artist, A.S. Hartrick, who was studying in Paris from 1886 +to 1889 and who knew personally both Gauguin and Van Gogh, ascribes the +Synthetic theory to Gauguin in these terms:-- + +"From a study of thirteenth century glass he (Gauguin) got an idea of +design and color which exactly suited his state of development, and he +then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own, using oil paint +as a vehicle."[1] + +Of similar opinion is the well known French artist and writer, Maurice +Denis, whose work has done so much to popularise Gauguin. He declares in +his book "Theories,"[2] that Gauguin was the "incontestable originator" +and master of the new movement, to which he gives two names: +Neo-Traditionism and Symbolism. In the first account which he wrote of +the movement in 1890, an account obtained from the lips of Paul +Sérusier, one of the earliest of Gauguin's disciples after 1889, Denis +includes the following interesting paragraph: + +"Did not Paul Gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history +of modeling? + +"At the beginning there was the pure arabesque, as little deceptive of +the eye as possible; a wall is empty; cover it with symmetrical spots +of form, harmonious in color:--stained glass, Egyptian pictures, +Byzantine mosaics. + +"From this comes the painted bas-relief:--metopes of the Greek temple, +the church of the Middle Ages. + +"Then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye +practised in Antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the +Italian primitives, who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings +modeled to imitate bas-relief, but in other respects preserve the first +idea of decorative unity. Recall also under what conditions +Michaelangelo, a sculptor, decorated the Sistine ceiling. + +"Perfection of this modeling; modeling in high-relief. This leads from +the first academy of the Caracchi to our decadence." + +Emile Bernard holds a contrary opinion. His view was originally +published in the _Mercure de France_ and reasserted in his preface to +the letters written to him by Van Gogh.[3] Bernard, who revolted from +the Atelier Cormon with Anquetin, had, as we have seen, been repulsed +by Gauguin in in 1886. After a brief return to Paris he went off to +Saint-Briac, where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and +painted the windows, in imitation of stained-glass, employing essence of +turpentine as a medium. In 1888, before Gauguin came to Arles, Bernard +was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of +Theodore Van Gogh and, although young enough to be Gauguin's son (being +about twenty at this time), shared with him the honors of the Volpini +exhibition. + +Bernard claims that he, and he alone, invented Syntheticism, and bases +his claim on the evidence of the pictures (all dated) which Gauguin +painted previous to 1888, and in which Gauguin was still definitely +Impressionist in technique. He maintains that Gauguin abruptly changed +his style after the second meeting in 1888, when he first saw what his +younger rival had been doing. Furthermore, Bernard contends that this +style was solely based upon the application of Cézanne's discoveries in +technique. + +Against these contentions there are three objections to be made. + +In the first place it is known that Gauguin, during his stay in +Martinique in 1887, painted pictures that are undeniably essays in +syntheticism. Martinique showed Gauguin the impossibility of painting +tropic sunlight by means of the Impressionistic division of tones. +Always purely intuitive as an artist, Gauguin began to realize at +Martinique, however vaguely, that one cannot reproduce the natural +decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color +attempted by Pissarro and the other Impressionists. He therefore sought +to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the +contrast of colors. + +In the second place, Bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was +not he, but Gauguin, who after 1888 painted those magnificent pictures +_Le Christ Jaune, Le Christ Vert_ and _La Vision après le Sermon_[4] and +carved the two superb bas-reliefs _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez +Heureuses_ and _Soyez Mystérieuses_. Moreover, the careful reader of Van +Gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout '88 and '89 +Bernard stood in relation to Gauguin as a pupil to a master. Finally, +even if Bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did +induce Gauguin to reject the last vestiges of Impressionism, his story +fails to account for the masterly grasp of Synthetic Symbolism shown by +Gauguin immediately after their second meeting. + +It is quite impossible to trace to Cézanne's essays in Synthetic +Impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either +Bernard or Gauguin. Cézanne, later on, even went so far as to assert +that Gauguin had misunderstood him. Therefore it is clear that the +opinions of A.S. Hartrick and of Maurice Denis better fit the facts. +Gauguin was the sole originator of the Synthetic style. That style was +derived, perhaps mainly, from the careful study of thirteenth century +glass, which does perfectly what Gauguin wished to do: translate the +effect of sunlight into luminous color. But it was also derived from +Egyptian painting, Byzantine mosaics and the Kakemonos of the Japanese. +In short, it was as complete a rejection of Impressionism as possible +and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced +color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved, +in the nineteenth century, in the works of artists whom Gauguin admired: +Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas. + + +[Footnote 1: "Post-Impressionism," by A.S. Hartrick. _Imprint,_ May, +1913.] + +[Footnote 2: Paris, l'Occident, 1912.] + +[Footnote 3: Paris, Vollard, 1911.] + +[Footnote 4: Now known as _La Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange_.] + + +III + +The exhibition at the Café Volpini brought notoriety to Gauguin. Various +young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art"--the phrase is +Gauguin's--which they were being taught in the ateliers of Paris, took +the road for Pont-Aven. Among these were Paul Sérusier, Chamaillard, and +the Dutchman, De Haahn. + +Acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of +Sérusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with Neo-Platonic +mysticism, Gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite +doctrine. Hitherto he had been an artist of the type of Ingres, working +purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. +But his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula +this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create. + +Artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves. +Whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been +greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy. The public always +takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods. +All art is a synthesis, and no artist can be at the same time synthetic +and analytical. + +Gauguin was no exception to this rule. Take for example, his +often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors:-- + +"Always use colors of the same origin. Indigo is the best basis. It +becomes yellow in saltpeter, red in vinegar. You can obtain it at any +chemist's. Keep to these three colors." + +Gauguin himself did not follow this precept. An examination of his +palette shows that it was arranged thus, from left to right: +--ultramarine, silver white, emerald green, veronese green, yellow +ochre, burnt sienna, yellow chrome, vermilion, and crimson lake. No +artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously +fugitive, whether used pure or in mixture. + +So with another celebrated saying: "Seek harmony and not contrast, the +agreement and not--the clash of color." This saying not only goes +contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors, +but is opposed to those equally famous dicta: "Does that trunk of a tree +seem to you blue? Paint it as blue as possible," and, "A mile of green, +is more green than half a mile." + +It is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of Gauguin's +teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark. Gauguin was not +a man holding a high-school debate on theory, but a creator. He refused +even to be called a decorator, he preferred the title of artisan. He +declared outright that he had no technique. "Or perhaps I have one, but +very vagabond, very elastic, according to the way I feel when I awaken +in the morning, a technique which I apply to my own liking in order to +express my thought, without taking account of the truth of Nature, +externally apparent. People think nowadays that all the technical means +of painting are exhausted. I do not believe it, if I am to judge by the +numerous observations which I have made and put into practice.... +Painters have still much to discover." + +Gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them +this remark: "Do what you please, so long as it is intelligent." This +did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition. He +knew that tradition is not a "recipe for making art," but the sum-total +of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same +problems that face the artists of to-day. He realized that the essential +substance of art is always the same. Art is an eternal renewal of this +substance. "The artist is not born of a single unity. If he adds a new +link to the chain already begun, it is much. The artist is known by the +quality of his transposition." + +The "transposition" that he himself strove for may be clearly read in +his pictures. He strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art +of the great Venetians, by blending the Venetian glow of color with the +calm line of Primitive and especially of Egyptian Primitive design. His +problem was essentially the same as that of Puvis de Chavannes, the +problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to +leave it still essentially a wall and not, as Veronese and Tiepolo left +it, an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery. Puvis had solved the +problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by +simplifying his drawing. Gauguin solved his by the elimination of +modeling, and of graduations of tone, and by reducing his drawing to the +strongest possible arabesque of outline. In everything he sought for the +essential form, the form that contains all the other inessential forms. +As Sérusier puts it: "The synthetic theory of art consists in reducing +all form to the smallest possible number of component +forms:--straight lines, arcs of a circle, a few angles, arcs of an +ellipse." And to express this form he sought for the most harmonious +balance of color. Maurice Denis says:--"Recall that a picture, before +being a war-horse, a nude or some anecdote, is essentially a flat +surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order." + +[Illustration: Tahitian Women.] + +Therefore and above all, Gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the +model, but from memory. He admitted that it was useful for young +painters to have a model, as all knowledge of facts could only be +obtained from the study of models. But he added that it was better to +draw a curtain before the model while painting it. One of his pupils +declared: "We went into the country to paint seascapes and to the +seashore to do landscapes." + +Gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods +practiced for centuries by the great Chinese and Japanese painters. He +would have enjoyed that story of a Chinese painter, who was sent out by +the Emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the Empire, +and who returned without having painted anything. When the Emperor asked +him: "But where are your pictures?" he replied: "I have them here"--and +pointed to his forehead. Gauguin, with his hatred of copying either from +nature or from the masters of the past, would also have appreciated the +Chinese idea of a "copy"--a free rearrangement of old material according +to one's temperament. + +Lastly, he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose. "Let +everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul. Avoid all animated +attitudes. Each of your figures should be perfectly static. Give +everything a clear outline." This counsel sounds strange to ears +deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of +Cubists, Futurists and Vorticists. But to Gauguin it was the basis of +his own mystical religion. He gave it to the world, however, not for +this reason, but because he realized that painting to be decorative +must be architectural. He himself was a builder, an artisan. In Brittany +he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived; he made +furniture, carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself, +worked at bas-reliefs, decorated pottery. Movement, restlessness, would +have but troubled the lines of that ideal building, which, even then, he +was erecting in his dreams. + +Such was the doctrine of Paul Gauguin. It may seem strange that such +ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary. In the Far East at +all events, they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries. +Revolutionary or not, Gauguin went on his way undisturbed. From an +examination of his letters, and of the statements of those who knew him, +the fact emerged that this "anarchist" preserved throughout his life a +great respect for artists of the past. Rembrandt especially, in his +mystical and visionary phase, appealed to him and Rembrandt's influence +may be traced in more than one of Gauguin's Tahitian pictures. +Velazquez, Rubens, Proudhon, Corot, Whistler--Gauguin was able to learn +something from all these men as well as from Memling and Holbein. As for +his pupils, the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following +his precepts may be judged by the fact that Gauguin remarked about one +of them: "His faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be +considered a master," and by the fact that the first synthetic picture +of another was, according to Maurice Denis, painted on the lid of a +cigar box! + + +IV + +It is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of +Gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that +went on in his soul: a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of +civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at Tahiti. + +Gauguin, as has been seen, was not naturally but only deliberately a +teacher of others. Especially in his intimate and personal concerns, he +commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve. In the matter of views on +art, he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and +paradoxical opinions which, if disputed, were merely affirmed with +greater violence. + +It is related of him that, if any one persisted in holding an opinion +contrary to his own, Gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from +those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an +embarrassed silence. + +Nevertheless, we owe to the fortunate preservation of various +fragmentary notes, made in the solitude of his last desperate years, +indications of what Gauguin's religious and political opinions were. +Here are some of them:-- + +"If I gaze before me into space, I have a vague sense of the Infinite; +nevertheless I am the conclusion of something that has been begun. I +understand then, that there has been a beginning and that there will be +no end. + +"In this I do not possess the explanation of a mystery, but merely the +mysterious sense of this mystery--and this sensation is intimately +linked to the belief in an eternal life, promised by Jesus. + +"But then, if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into +the world, it is necessary to believe, with the Buddhists, that we have +always existed. + +"A change of skin. + +"All this is very strange. + +"The unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it +is, unfathomable. God does not belong to the scholar, the logician. He +belongs to the poets, to their dreams. He is the symbol of Beauty, +Beauty itself." + +From these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in +Gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures: _Le Christ Jaune_ and _Le +Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_; when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs: +_Soyez Amoureuses and Soyez Mystérieuses_; when he drew the lithographs: +_La Cigale et les Fourmis_, and _Léda_ which bears the defiant +inscription "Honi soit qui mal y pense." + +Gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious +illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in +nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a +false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the +wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the +thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live. + +Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he +recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a +protest that had failed. Humanity had not yet produced, save by +exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and +giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." A +terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in Europe for the next +generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind. + +Therefore, in contemplating Christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, +of the futility of this sacrifice. His attitude to Christianity became +purely Protestant. Across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of +the beneficent Virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of +maternity. + +In _Le Christ Jaune_ he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved +impotent to elevate mankind to its level. _Le Christ au Jardin +d'Oliviers_ echoes the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me?" The terrible little picture, _Les Misères Humaines_ sums +up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted +civilization. Even the later Tahitian _Birth of Christ_ renders nothing +but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. In the _Ia Orana +Maria_, or the Salutation to Mary, the Virgin is represented merely as a +happy human mother. + +Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at +Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, +the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was +better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against +the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. Thus in his art he +aimed at repose, the quietism of the Buddhists. His knowledge of +Buddhism was not deep--indeed in his eyes, Buddhism, too, was a vain +revolt against nature--but his respect for Buddhistic doctrine remained +greater than his respect for Christianity. At the bottom of his soul +there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "Eat, +drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die." + +As he put it later in the pages of his Tahitian recital:-- + +"To the eyes of Tagatha (the God) the most splendid glories of kings and +their ministers are but dust and spittle: + +"To his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six +serpents: + +"To his eyes, the search for the Way of Buddha is like the coming of +flowers." + +It is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man +who was never more than half an European, that we are able to understand +how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the +bas-relief, _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez Heureuses_ and the somber +despair of _Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_. That mind, as we have +seen, was neither wholly Christian or Pagan--though the untamed Pagan +element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined +Christian side. Therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether Gauguin +as an artist, displayed more of the Classic tradition than of the +Gothic. Gothic as well as Classical strains remained mingled in him up +to the last. Throughout his work there runs a longing--obscure, +tormented, and ultimately foiled--for a natural religion: a religion +that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, +like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis. + + +V + +By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain +renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still +without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker. + +At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced +naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris +was on the verge of her æsthetic nineties. A small group of writers, +chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a +sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in +consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled +Decadents. This title was soon abandoned for the better designation of +Symbolists. + +Gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of Symbolism as a sort of hero. Here +was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious. He had definitely +broken away from his own commercial surroundings. He had defiantly +ruptured his own family ties. He had abolished Impressionist science and +had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the +process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular +art. His appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, +sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. He +became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of +symbol. + +Some critics have stated that Gauguin's head was turned by this +adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he +remained what he had always been. No man was less fitted for living in +the midst of cultivated society than he. For a time, during that strange +epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, +largely an European; but this was merely on the surface and had +completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. An +invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in +him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. This +shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. But +to every one else Gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order +to keep them at a distance. And, generally, he succeeded. + +It is small wonder then that Schuffenecker shortly found his guest again +intolerable, and that Gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging. +Schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. He seems never to have realized +that Gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love +and understand. In losing Gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever +likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already +acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing Gauguin's +collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by Cezanne, Van Gogh, +and Odilon Redon. + +Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he +ever had--who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was +Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel +taken part in the Volpini exhibition. + +It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community +of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea. + +De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a +certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. Every +summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's +cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, +and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the +Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of +dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the +complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering +his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her +end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as +"the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on +the former's return from Martinique in 1887. + +To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it +was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to +their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both +were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made +of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and +nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were +due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was +of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the +creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few +attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last +stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of +all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de +Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti. + +[Illustration: Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).] + +The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a +Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of +what induced him to take this decision.[1] He chanced to attend, or to +read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der +Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to +suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a +terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without +winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to +lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life +means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such +phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held +out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he +might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was +fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live +in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships +of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans +gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him +there, all the better--his isolation would then be complete.[2] + +The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the +proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin +sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various +symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece +entitled _Loss Of Maidenhood_, which has fortunately vanished, and an +etching representing Mallarmé with Poe's Raven in the background. +Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only +concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday. + +At all events Gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were +auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine +thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make +his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that +this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A +banquet was held at the Café Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were +assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a +similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally +a benefit performance was given by the Théâtre d'Art for the departing +artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of +his last years.[3] + +The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in +the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play +_L'Intruse_ made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. +Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to +expect. And yet he did not draw back. + +On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his +voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on +Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the +mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's +self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. +And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, +touching words:-- + +"Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family +and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my +thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more +terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have +made, which is utterly irreparable." + +With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization. + + +[Footnote 1: _Les Marges_, Paris, May 15, 1918.] + +[Footnote 2: Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters +show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility +of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.] + +[Footnote 3: It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit +whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.] + + + + +PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 + + +I + +Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South +Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's +knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical +but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous +for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge +of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. +Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and +the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the +chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were +discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different +in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or +from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us +through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the +Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in +different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social +organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; +they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin +in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by +thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, +abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting +currents. How then had they reached Tahiti? + +The anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of +the Caucasian or Indo-European. Though their skin is dark, it is for the +most part less dark than that of the natives of India. Set a Maori +soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the +difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to +give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. In other +characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian. They are +a tall, well built, massive race, contrasting favorably with the Malay. +Their hair is black--or in some cases copper brown--and wavy, again +contrasting with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the +Papuan. Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases +very beautiful. Only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to +artificial flattening in infancy. + +We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after +the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which must have been settled +late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European +stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked ships, +capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a +voyage of some weeks. (We know the Polynesians were capable of building +such ships.) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, +where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, +whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, +eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island. In order to +accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and +astronomical knowledge must have been great. Later on, under the +influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, +careless, effeminate. And, as such, they were discovered by the +enterprising Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchman with his Parisian vices, by +the thorough and scientific German. The combined influences of +missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the +inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889. + +To these people came Paul Gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their +history. It is true that he was weary of Europe and had set out with the +aim he had cherished since the Martinique days--to be the first painter +of the tropics. But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, +because he believed that here was a country where one could live for +almost nothing. It must always be remembered that Gauguin had no private +means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, +did not sell. Cezanne, Degas, could afford not to sell their pictures +because they had other resources. But Gauguin was forced to find some +way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would +take the public some time to accept. In a letter to de Monfreid he +stated his system: "From the beginning, I knew that this would be a life +from day to day; so, logically, I habituated myself to it. Instead of +losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, I put all my +strength into the day--like the wrestler who does not employ his body +except in the moment of wrestling. When I lie down in the evening I say +to myself: One more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead. +In my work as a painter, ditto--I do not trouble about anything, but +each day for itself--at the end of a certain time, this covers a +considerable extent of surface. If men would not waste their time in +disconnected struggles and labors! Every day a link. That is the great +point." + +Such was the frame of mind in which Gauguin went to Tahiti. What he +found there was not the "Pays de Cocaigne" he probably expected. The +Gods do not give their gifts in this fashion. Gauguin asked much from +Tahiti and much was given. But he asked for material comfort and was +offered instead spiritual salvation. In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at +last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought +him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its +own terrible parable to all men. + + +II + +On the night of the eighth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of +voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. He +was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last +winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to +take to his bed. + +He was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. Although +possessed of a normally strong constitution, fortified by the open-air +existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as +boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, +when he reached Tahiti, became immediately worse. This was largely due +to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the +privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for +livelihood. + +His prospects were not brilliant. The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant +and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took +him for a spy sent out from Paris, and by every possible means attempted +to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited +native population. The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, +disgusted him. The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to +all whites. + +A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his +interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old +royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen +Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in +her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven +years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying +gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct. + +Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official +ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the +attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the +embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to +revive at any favorable opportunity. + +He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process +which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live +as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still +further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him +from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to +approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, +money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by +enigmatic and evasive smiles. + +Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given +by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream +than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the +natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the +natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of +the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as +"dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to +a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his +vanity, and smiled behind his back. + +Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for +his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he +had suddenly aged--a common experience enough for white men coming +suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble. +This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was +taking its little revenge. + +He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage +back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would +come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now +spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was +invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark. + +[Illustration: The Old Spirit.] + +On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures +to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas _L'Esprit Veille_. +The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the +next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily +declined and he was every day less talked about. + +Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to +make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him +and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his +unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, +Bernard, Sérusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting +that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cézanne and Van Gogh +were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his +departure from Paris was rapidly fading. + +He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent +pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he +believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as +elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary +material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, +could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a +longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make +himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps +it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old. + +On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Marseilles with four +francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the +height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat +in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, +during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite +failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them +such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And +yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might +well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to +its owner, as well as others, only misfortune. + + +III + +Paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the +world. Since her spoiled darling Napoleon fell, there has been no one to +whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. There are a +few exceptions to this rule. Hugo, because he lived in exile; Balzac, +because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; +and of recent years Verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafés, the +vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a +prison. Such men may be the idols of Paris. For the rest, Paris is +willing only to think of her children as sons for a day. + +Gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of Paris. But he had +already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his. + +Had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength +of the sensation his pictures had created in Denmark and subsequently in +Sweden, Norway, and Germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an +arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his +work. But Gauguin demanded all or nothing! And, as was the case before +with his mother and her Peruvian relatives, the result was nothing. + +He decided to give a general exhibition of his entire Tahitian work, +forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. Durand-Ruel gave him a +gallery and Charles Morice, chief of the young symbolists whom Gauguin +had met after the Volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which +probably only served to mystify the public still further. + +For the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce +frank bewilderment. Of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three +remained unsold. What misled visitors more than anything else were the +titles that Gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. These titles +were in the Tahitian language. Every one immediately supposed that in +order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the +history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of Tahiti. Naturally +therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archæological and ethnological +puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key. + +Gauguin, of course, had intended something else. Just as he had used +Brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of Christ, so he +had used Tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery +of life as it was lived in Eden and in the days of man's awakening--in +that Golden Age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. But +it was useless for him to try to explain that Tahiti had merely given +him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures. + +Morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and +listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of +the crowd. It was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the +Indian who smiles at the stake. Only Degas came and understood. To him +on the last day of the exhibit, Gauguin said: "Monsieur Degas, you have +forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured +handed it to the astonished painter. + +The bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his, had +not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save Gauguin +for better things, sent him means of salvation. A brother of his father +died in Orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. From his estate, Gauguin +inherited thirteen thousand francs. + +The exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly. +Instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and +determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle Paris. Morice +admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. If +this was the case Gauguin would have done well had he uttered the +well-known prayer, "Deliver me from my friends!" For Morice, even, +admitted later that it was, under the circumstances, a mistake. + +About Gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have +grown with the years. It is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were +colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with Tahitian subjects in +imitation of stained glass (these same windows were, by the way, on +exhibition at a dealer's in Paris a few years ago). It is true that his +rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. It +is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said +to have come from Java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than +anything else. It is true also that he wore a strange costume, +consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons, a blue +waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat +with a blue ribbon. But the importance of these and of similar details +is very slight. Gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time +that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the +attention of heedless Paris were dead also and forgotten. + +Despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, Gauguin found himself +ill-at-ease. The facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the +tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. He wandered off +to Bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before Memling and +astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of Rubens. He lost +interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, Seguin and O'Connor. +After a vain attempt to get a post from the Government as a resident in +Oceania, he again drifted back to Pont-Aven. + +There, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto +model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. In a moment, all +his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him. +He was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way. +He attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping +behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin. + +The mulatto fled, took a train to Paris, entered the empty studio, +seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. As for Gauguin, +he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and +smoking a cigarette. + + +IV + +Little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague +understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at Pont-Aven, +this understanding became a conviction. + +He saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to +accomplish and why he had failed. He knew now what his art had been; a +great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had +gone on in his soul. What he had fought against was the cunning +extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of +nineteenth century Europe. And nineteenth century Europe had risen +against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. He must either +submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul. + +Among the people of Tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very +folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, +among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral +dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else. +Among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived +vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the +scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a +door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists +nor theologians could ever pierce. Among these savages he had found a +dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be +destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own +soul. + +On September 20, 1894, he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid:-- + +"As you say, I have not given any news of myself recently and every one +is complaining. The reason is, you see, that I have lost all my strength +through suffering, above all at night, which I frequently pass without +any sleep. And into the bargain naturally I have done nothing this +infernal month except spend money. For the rest, I have made a fixed +resolve to go back and live always in Oceania and shall return to Paris +in December in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my +bazar at no matter what price. If I succeed I shall leave as soon as +possible in February. I can then finish my days without care for the +morrow and without the external struggle against fools--Farewell to +painting, except as a means of distraction. My house will be in +sculptured wood." + +The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned +to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An +auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his +return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in +Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a +time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a +preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's +response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint +against Gauguin: + +"You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I +wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, +behind the Institute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, +close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse! I would have willingly given you +this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you +wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a +breathing space, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the +outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, +more brutally, by an 'I will not.' + +... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it--I know that this +avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only +strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to +remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with +reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain +partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art +a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate +a super-annuated style of painting. + +... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the +southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your +studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw +trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and +men which only you can create. + +"A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no God can +live--Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, +but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny +for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an +Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or +two! + +"This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, +who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound +sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in +watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, +and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this +Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ +and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not +desire this pitiful God who accepts blows. My God is rather +Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men. + +"No, Gauguin is not formed from the work of Chavannes, nor from that of +Manet, nor from that of Bastien-Lepage. + +"Who is he then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome +civilization; something of a Titan who, jealous of his Creator, in +his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up +his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring +to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do. + +[Illustration: Calvary.] + +"Bon voyage, Master: but come back here to me. I shall by that time +perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me +to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since I am +beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating +a new world." + +To this letter, Gauguin replied-with the following profession of +faith:-- + +"I have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for +my catalog. I had the idea of asking you for a preface, when I saw you +the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue +northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. I had +then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization +and my barbarism. + +"You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of +youth. + +"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and +harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a +sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and +the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my +studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. +This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will +be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch +to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage +happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana? + +"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked +before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without +shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil +and a sorrow." + +In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand +francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his +feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he +left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back. + + +V + +It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, +that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in +Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled +"Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best +commentary on and the final analysis of his mind. + +We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the +book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on +his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; +perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his +refers in passing to events that took place as late as 1897. + +Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery--the +conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with +civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet +realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while +civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying. + +To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary +artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, +in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic +ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the +professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others +feel, in the incidents of a naïve story, the essence of Tahiti--the soul +of the native. + +It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to +savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether +it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain +undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the +royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that +event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a +native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, +that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations +with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, +owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial +triumph in France. + +These facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon +which the fascinating story of Gauguin's spiritual development is bit by +bit, built up. He made use of these facts in the same way as he made use +of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful +forms. All art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital +he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, +savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are +at liberty to believe or not as we choose. + +So we follow him from Papeete into the backwoods. We find him holding +aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple +hospitality. We see him making his first tentative attempts at +establishing a community of thought. He tries to persuade the natives to +sit for their portraits--with little success. He tries to find solace +in the companionship of the half-caste Titi, in vain. Then Jotefa comes +upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto +unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of +sex, and thereby rendered sex more dangerous, more artificial, more +unnatural. So he gets his first gleam of intelligence. The next comes, +when Jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is +not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others. +This further enlightens him. He contrasts this opinion on art as +something useful to man with art as the European sees it, a mere +freakish amusement. Finally, he hazards everything. He takes a young +native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. All goes +well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the +natives. They laugh at his luck. He asks them why. Because his line has +caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife +being unfaithful to him. He returns home, half-believing the +superstition. The native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. He cannot +beat her. He can only forgive and understand. So the story closes. + +From such a story, we should naturally receive the impression that +Gauguin's life in Tahiti was ideally happy. But his letters reveal that +he was even more unhappy there than in France. So whatever elements of +fact may be in his story, it is evident that they cannot be disentangled +from the fictional details. It is better to take "Noa Noa" altogether as +a series of fictitious adventures, designed to bring out the fact that +Gauguin became, despite himself, as nearly one with the natives as it is +possible for any European to be. Thus we see, bit by bit, the Tahitians +claiming him as one of their own, from the day that he is forced by +necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused, +to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even +their easy tolerance of marital infidelity. If we look at the story in +this light, it becomes an allegory easily readable, an allegory of +civilization going down before primitive nature, expressed in a series +of parables. + +Unfortunately, Gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and +devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked +Charles Morice to collaborate. Morice thereupon wrote a series of highly +florid descriptions and poems, inspired by Gauguin's pictures, in a +style strongly tinged with the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé. These +poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of Gauguin's +recital.[1] The result is that "Noa Noa" contains two books; the first +Gauguin's, the second, Morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused +unless he remembers that the sections by Gauguin are all headed "Le +Conteur Parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous +story. Morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded. + +It is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions +add anything to Gauguin's recital. Some people may even prefer the glow +of Morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of Gauguin's poetry. Gauguin +himself philosophically remarked that he wished Morice's work to stand +beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a +civilized decadent and a naïve and brutal savage. + + +[Footnote 1: They have been wisely omitted from the English +translation.] + + + + +PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 + + +I + +With Gauguin's last return to Tahiti there opened for him the final and +most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against +encroaching civilization. The letters that he sent to de Monfreid during +this period are painful reading. They breathe the weary cry of a man who +knows that Fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a +warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but +to fight on. For Gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had +carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. The wound +in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under +the climate of Tahiti, it reopened. Owing to the rash exposure of his +skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by +eczema. Night after night was spent in sleepless pain. To add to his +troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on +him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the +white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. It seemed +to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies. + +Before leaving France, a number of friends had agreed to buy his +pictures, and assure him a steady income. These now withdrew their +support. He had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of +sculptured wood which he dreamed of; the construction of the house +carried away his remaining capital. He was everywhere fleeced, not only +by the French colonists, but also by the natives, who were growing more +and more corrupt every day, thanks to the happy influence of +civilization. Even after his house was built, he was not allowed to +keep it in peace. The owner of the ground died, leaving his affairs in a +tangle; Gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the +house, or see it destroyed. This last he refused to do, so he was +forced, finally, to borrow money, a thing he had never done in his life +before. + +Towards the end of 1897, his situation grew even worse. His eyes, now +permanently inflamed, were so painful that he could not even touch a +brush. The tragic portrait of himself in profile, which he sent about +this time to de Monfreid, clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight. +De Monfreid had sent him colors, but these were useless--he could not +even exchange them for bread. And to add to all he was in debt, more and +more heavily, month after month. De Monfreid wrote him encouragingly, +tried to sell his pictures, spoke of articles, of a press campaign on +his behalf. The answer was--"I only desire silence, silence and again +silence. Let me die in peace, forgotten, or if I ought to live, let me +live in peace, forgotten.... What matter if I am the pupil of Bernard or +Sérusier? If I have painted daubs, why set out to gild them, to deceive +people as to their quality?" + +Early in 1898 his resolution was taken. Weary, exhausted, at the end of +his tether, he decided to meet death half-way. He finished a large +picture, a sort of strange allegory of despair, entitled _D'où venons +nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?_ and then took arsenic. The dose +was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea, which recurred +for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food. Meanwhile +his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had +taken him so much trouble to build. + +In order to obtain food, he shortly afterwards returned to Papeete and, +at the age of fifty, took up a position as a shipping clerk at the Board +of Public Works, with a salary of six francs a day. To such straits was +he reduced, and yet he continued the fight. Can one help admiring his +tenacity? + +Meanwhile, the devoted de Monfreid had been busy. He had enlisted the +interest of Degas, of Vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling +some of the artist's pictures. Gauguin might now have counted upon a +steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. But with him, +there was to be no compromise. Because Bernard, Sérusier, Maurice Denis +had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some +influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them +or to exhibit in their company. Of course he merely made himself more +unpopular in Paris by such conduct. But Gauguin's personality was of a +kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. He admired +genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as Degas, Poe, +Balzac, and Mallarmé. For ordinary society, he preferred either natives +or children. Nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de Monfreid's +efforts, he found himself out of debt in 1899 and able to return to his +house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. Things seemed to +improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease +of his legs. He set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower +seeds which de Monfreid had sent, at his request, from France. Ill, +ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his +goal. + +[Illustration: Matamua (Olden Days).] + + +II + +It is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in Gauguin's career, +unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical +ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from +the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the +time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. He had +been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown +power was now pursuing him with its hatred. In his next stage, we find +him turning even against the natives. + +On his return to Tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged +thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. She had served him +devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed +him in his illness. After his return to the house from Papeete, she had +resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. Now, for +some reason or no reason, Gauguin suddenly took it into his head that +she had robbed him, and drove her out. The poor soul, however, returned +and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to +call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a +violation of his domicile. Of course, the law did nothing. + +This only further enraged Gauguin. He decided to attack the entire +colonial administration. Since his return, he had been everywhere +treated by the Europeans at Tahiti as a madman or fool. Now he would get +his revenge. + +With the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several +numbers of a paper called, first _Les Guèpes_, and later _Le Sourire_. +The contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff +that Gauguin ever wrote. But these crude gibes at the governor and at +the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude +caricatures that Gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to +have produced a stir. People began to fear him at last; it was, for a +moment, a triumph. + +But Tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. A railway +had been built into the interior; the Protestant missionaries grew every +day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the +natives. Gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to +de Monfreid for medicines. But shortly he found his own need of medicine +as great as that of any of the wretched natives. An epidemic of +influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the +hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. To add to his griefs, +the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an +impossible figure. + +Hearing that life in the Marquesas Islands was cheaper, that the natives +there were physically more unspoilt, also that Europeans were few and +far between, he decided to quit Tahiti and install himself in the +island of Hiva-Hoa or Dominica. He hoped to find there elements of a +purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. This hope was destined +to be realized only in part. + +Gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, +Martinique, Brittany and Tahiti. He might have done better work at other +places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. In the +case of his removal to the Marquesas it was the strength that was +lacking. + +Traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his +eyes are to be found even in his latest Tahitian pictures. Owing to his +habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. +The first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, +superior to the productions of 1891-93. The _Te Arii Vahine_ or +Reclining Woman, of 1896 is finer in design even than the _L'Esprit +Veille_ of 1892-3. The _Youth Between Two Girls, La Case_ (1897), the +beautiful _Navé Navé Mahana_ (Delightful Days) of 1896, with its feeling +of a terrestrial paradise--these are masterpieces of their kind. But the +portrait of himself (1897) already shows signs of inability to finish +and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. And with many of the +succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater +carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. The more +savage Gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. +One is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the Irish dramatist, +Synge. + +The Gauguin who sought solitude of far-off Hiva-Hoa was not the Gauguin +of ten years before. He was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. And +he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. Nevertheless, +before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. +Pictures like the _Jeune Fille à l'Eventail_ (1902) or the magnificent +_Contes Barbares_ (also 1902) in which the Marquesas type appears, are +the last word of Gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new +heaven and earth. The flame burned clear in him just before the +close--then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness. + + +III + +The Marquesas Islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and +basaltic formation of Tahiti, of volcanic origin. They lie about a +thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more +humid and less supportable to white men. Owing to this fact, and to the +fact that they are out of the track of steamers between San Francisco +and Sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character. + +The natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any Polynesian +peoples. In distinction to the Tahitians, who are either red or olive +brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. In this they +resemble the Maories of New Zealand, as in the practice of +face-tattooing common among the males. They were formerly great +fighters and ferocious cannibals, as Herman Melville's "Omoo" tells us. +The first white settlers amongst them were French Roman Catholic +missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by +discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial +abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. The +Marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is +Tahiti. + +It was on the chief island of this group that Gauguin installed himself. +His capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start +constructing another house. This, like his house in Tahiti, was +ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. In +the garden, stood a rude clay statue--a sort of combination of a Buddha +and a Maori idol--under a canopy. Gauguin called this statue Te +Atua--the God, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. On +the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from Morice's +verses in "Noa Noa": + + "The Gods are dead and Tahiti dies of their death, + The sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps, + A sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings: + Now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of Eve, + Who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast, + Sterile gold, sealed by some divine design." + +Altogether in the Marquesas, Gauguin found a great charm and repose. He +seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives +and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king. But his health +was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one Chinese +boy, he lived alone. He even dreamed of abandoning the Marquesas (not +because he was weary of the place, but because he knew his strength was +small) and seeking a more favorable climate in Spain, where he thought +he might be able to paint. + +Except for the constant trouble with his health, his only difficulty was +with the missionaries. With the exception of a few settlers, they were +the only whites on the islands. Gauguin had advanced in savagery to +such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people. He +refused to see that the Catholic Missionaries had at least attempted to +save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the +Protestant Missionaries in Tahiti. The insistence of the Catholics upon +monogamy, upon European dress, upon mission schools and religious +observances infuriated him. He made a statue of a nude woman and set it +up in his garden. The Bishop protested. Gauguin promptly made a +caricature in clay of the bishop, with horns on his head like the Devil, +and set it up facing the statue. Something of the old Gothic love of the +grotesque, something, too, of the typically Parisian desire to "_épater +de bourgeois_" remained in him to the last. + +But this was not all. Gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in +peace. Although de Monfreid had worked devotedly, his position in France +was still insecure; Vollard might at any moment refuse to take more +pictures to sell. The wound he had received by his failure to impress +Paris in 1893 still smarted. He determined to write two articles +containing his opinions on art, technique, painting, life and morality, +in order to confound the Parisian critics. These articles, entitled +"Anecdotes of an Apprentice" and "Before and After," are little more +than a series of feverishly jotted notes. Later, with other notes of a +similar nature, they were embodied in a large album entitled "Avant et +Après," which remains the fullest body of information about Gauguin's +life and art we possess. The _Mercure de France_ judged, perhaps +rightly, that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print +them. + +The other old score that he had to wipe out was with the French colonial +administration. In Tahiti, he had fought the governor, the law courts, +and the gendarmes. Here it was the customs officials who roused his +wrath. Two American ships had recently visited the island and a certain +amount of goods had been sold to the natives, through the connivance of +the gendarmes, without paying tax. Gauguin immediately wrote a letter on +the subject to the Administration, stating the facts as he understood +them and protesting, on behalf of the natives, against the bribery and +corruption of the Customs in this instance. The only reply made was a +notice from the law courts that the Administration intended to take +steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement. Gauguin +appeared in court, where he was promptly condemned to prison for three +months and to a fine of a thousand francs. + +It was ruin, but Gauguin determined to appeal. The tribunal was +irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part, at +least, true. He was sure of winning his case, but an appeal necessitated +a return to Tahiti and the costs of an attorney, and his capital was +again running low. He wrote to de Montfreid, begging him to find a buyer +for three pictures, at the price of fifteen hundred francs; he sent off +ten more pictures to Vollard. Then he prepared to make his appeal. + +Death surprised him suddenly and Paul Gauguin's appeal will never be +heard in this world. + +A letter from the only white man, the Protestant minister Vernier, who +knew him, leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of Gauguin's +death. It was not the eczema of the legs, nor leprosy, as some have +hinted, nor another dose of arsenic, nor syphilis, that ended his life; +it was a simple syncope of the heart. His energy, with which he had kept +up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had +drawn so many beautiful pictures, was worn out. The machine slackened +and stopped. + +Paul Gauguin died on the 6th of May, 1903. + +A few days before his death he had written his last letter to Charles +Morice, the words of which stir one like a trumpet. + +"I am on the ground but I am not beaten. The Indian, who smiles while he +is being tortured, is not conquered. You are mistaken if you meant that +I am wrong in calling myself a savage. I _am_ a savage, and the +civilized feel this, for there is nothing in my work which could produce +bewilderment save this savage strain in me, for which I am not myself +responsible. It is therefore inimitable. Every human work is a +revelation of the individual. Hence there are two kinds of beauty; one +comes from instinct, the other from labor. The union of the two, with +the modifications resulting therefrom, produces great and very +complicated richness. Art-criticism has yet to discover the fact.... +Raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from +discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in +him. Raphael was born with beauty. All the rest in him is modification. + +"Physics, chemistry, and above all the study of Nature, have produced an +epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists robbed +of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of +the productive element they no longer possess. They now act only in +disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone. +Solitude is not to be recommended to every one, for a man must have +strength to bear it and to act alone. All I have learnt from others has +been an impediment to me. It is true I know little, but what I do know +is my own." + +Yet civilization, after all, had the last word. The very bishop, whom +Gauguin in life had hated and caricatured, intervened when he lay cold +and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full Catholic +rites in the cemetery of the Church at Atuana. And, by a concluding +stroke of irony, the grave was left unmarked. Thus one of the greatest +painters of the later nineteenth century, and one of the bravest men the +world has ever seen, mingled his dust with that of the humblest +natives, in the same way as Blake, one of the greatest painters of the +early nineteenth century, had been buried before him in an unmarked +grave among the paupers, at Bunhill Fields. + + +IV + +The immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth +century took place so rapidly and universally, that no one was able to +estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects. At +the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded Europe and +America was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man, born in +the fires of the French Revolution. After 1848 this idea gradually +vanished, and another took its place; the purely material idea of +progress. The perfected application of steam and the consequent +development of machinery; the immense tapping of the world's resources +of coal, metals, agricultural products; the equally immense, universal +exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to +their maximum; the creation of an international finance, resting upon +vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few, whose world-wide +interests were linked together by railways, steamship lines, telegraphs, +telephones; the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist +class, invisibly controlling the old, decayed aristocracy, the official +church, the machinery of the law; a larger middle class, dependent upon +and subservient to the capitalists; and an immense laboring class, +exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes: all these were +virtually the creation of a single century. + +Against this overwhelming flood of change, a few exceptionally gifted +men vaguely protested, affirming the greater value of human life over +mechanical invention; maintaining the antique dignity of man. Their +protest was incoherent, individualistic. These men were like broken and +scattered fragments of dykes, still unsubmerged and striving to hold +back the waters of a flood. Among them must be ranked the artist whose +life-story I have written. + +All that is vital and valuable in French painting of the nineteenth +century, since Ingres, springs directly from the enthusiasm and +spiritual energy of the French Revolution. The somber fury of Delacroix, +the colossal caricature of Daumier; the peasant art of Millet; the sane +realism of Courbet; the mordant irony of Degas and Forain; even the +feeling for nature and the open air which the Impressionists gave us, +all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for +personal freedom, for human liberty and development. When Gauguin +arrived on the scene, the reaction was already taking place. The +official, academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock +of outworn formulas. On the other hand, the Impressionists were striving +to render nature scientifically, unemotionally. Nature was becoming to +them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical +formulas for soil, air, sunlight. Only Puvis de Chavannes remained, +aloof and misunderstood, painting great decorations that seemed but the +remembrance of some golden age of the past, and easel pictures of a +profound, hopeless pessimism. + +Gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against +materialism, against unemotional vision began. At the outset he +attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the Impressionists. But, +by the purest instinct he discovered, as Cézanne had already discovered, +that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered +in color. And he also discovered (this time the discovery came from +Puvis de Chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted +either--that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by +nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that +even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to +suit the harmony of the composition. Thus unconsciously, almost without +volition on his part, he was led to understand that the Primitives +everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great +human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their +vision was or was not exact. And so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for +the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of +natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized +efficiency. + +Unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his +art or to his life. Gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only +a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished +world. And he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and +disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to +harmony with himself. At least the caricature of himself in _Contes +Barbares_ is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled +child that some imagine him to be. Having both the world and himself to +struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should +represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved +only to be, as he said in his last letter to de Montfreid, "a downfall +followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." And so in +his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by Van Gogh after +the disaster that parted them: "Gauguin made one feel that a good +picture should be the equivalent of a good action." + +And indeed it is so. Every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound +moral responsibility. This responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty +of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of Christian +ethics, by which we are ruled. It is not the duty of upholding a system +of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very +roots of life. It is a far nobler, far more difficult task. The duty of +the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, +despite the morbid prejudices of Puritanism, the timid conventionality +of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of +suffering, decay and death. This duty Gauguin in his art strove to +accomplish. He affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's +labor, the earth. Cézanne, perhaps a more accomplished painter, endowed +perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great +painters of the past, shrank from making Gauguin's affirmation. He +accepted in his own life a compromise; in his art he ruthlessly +eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination. And +then, towards the end of his life, Cézanne complained that Gauguin had +vulgarized him. + +"Gauguin has not understood me; never will I accept the lack of +gradation and of tone; it's nonsense." + +It would have been better for Cézanne to have said that he could not, +dared not understand Gauguin. + +Nor is this all that Gauguin accomplished. He restored painting to its +proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts. He showed us that its +place is between architecture and music, and that sculpture is its twin +sister. He was the first man to suspect that the progress of the +scientific spirit among the Greeks had produced the same effects in +disassociating and destroying the arts, as has the progress of the +scientific spirit in the present day. He believed, and constantly +affirmed, that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he +built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies, as well as +upon the chosen architectural proportions of form, which, whether given +by perspective or not, seemed to him necessary. Thus he reconciled the +Venetians and the Primitives, and showed that the goal of both form and +color is decoration. + +William Blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan, who painted +his dream of a golden age in his own way, who steadfastly strove to +grasp the essential truth in every tradition: Egyptian, Cambodian, +Persian, Chinese, Gothic, Greek and Renaissance. But Gauguin could +never, had he known of Blake, have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic +negation, the contemptuous denial of earthliness, of "the delusions of +the goddess Nature." In Gauguin, the spirit never conquered the flesh, +and he remained to the end, a man. Blake was possibly the greater +visionary: Gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build. + + +V + +After Gauguin's death, his art rapidly became almost forgotten in +France. He remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were +not fifty of his pictures in that country. Even the few there are, hang +in scattered private collections, each containing one or at most three +or four. The great bulk of his work is in Germany, Scandinavia and +Russia. It proved impossible even in 1911 to raise sufficient money to +buy _L'Esprit Veille_ for the Louvre. + +It is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able +to assemble a considerable quantity of his work. Gauguin was, above all +things, a decorator, and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater +effect than one. One does not judge Puvis de Chavannes, another +decorator, solely by his easel pictures, but by the great decorative +schemes in Paris, at Amiens and in Boston. This remark applies equally +to other decorators, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and +Veronese. A room hung with twenty Gauguins would produce an immense +effect of monumental power. That such a room exists in Moscow can be +small consolation to Western Europeans at present. + +His pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively, like +Sérusier, or drifted off into academicism, like Bernard, or watered down +their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume +decoration of Maurice Denis. None of them seized Gauguin's secret of +remaining simple, direct and savage. Aristide Maillol is an honorable +exception. A sculptor and tapestry designer, he was able to work upon +the indications that Gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches +and to show us, in part at least, how they might be realized. + +The main stream of French art simply ignored Gauguin. Instead of making +with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition, it went +forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting. The +Neo-Impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were +followed by disciples of Cézanne, who sought to reduce all forms to +certain geometrical primaries, basing their doctrine on certain words +which the master of Aix had let fall concerning the simplification of +form. Out of these emerged Matisse, whose art became, through a more and +more ruthless elimination of modeling, through a more and more arbitrary +placing of colors, an abstraction, an utterly unemotional series of +hieroglyphs. Then Picasso came upon the scene, eliminated color +altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form. The Cubists +followed Picasso. The Futurists in their turn started another kind of +abstract painting, the painting of mechanical energy, the dynamism +latent in form. + +The Expressionists, meanwhile, held to Van Gogh's and Gauguin's idea +that the picture must represent some emotion, but they denied Gauguin's +corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose +this emotion into its pictorial equivalent. Consequently they eliminated +form and strove to paint abstract emotion. Finally, the Vorticists +combined Futurism and Expressionism into a single whole and painted the +abstraction of an abstraction--the emotion of dynamic energy, thus +declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself, an art utterly +innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever. + +The motives of all these confused art movements, perplexing and +apparently in-congruous, were identical. They were all actuated by a +mania for scientific discovery, a desire to analyze phenomena until the +reality behind phenomena could be found. The physicists, chemists, +philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real +world--that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and +electrons, of radiant or non-radiant energy, or perhaps of elasticity +and inelasticity. These young art revolutionaries, who gave themselves +so many queer labels, were not, as many supposed, either insincere or +insane. They were merely smitten with the desire to make painting--and +not only painting, but even other arts as well--a branch of abstract +science. The world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion, +making some abstract concept. Therefore they strove to paint, not what +seemed to them unreal, but their absolute conceptions. This new +metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development +of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the +rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries +by the Byzantine monks of Mount Athos, was rapidly conquering the whole +field of aft when the past war broke out. Nor has the war altogether +suppressed its manifestations. + +The enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past +war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results +achieved by either side. However true it may be to hold the Germans as +primarily responsible for this destruction, in the first instance, yet +it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape +responsibility for the later developments of the struggle. Apart from +Germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war, civilization as a whole +must answer for the horror of its method. A piece of heavy artillery is +equally destructive, whether it be cast at Essen or at Le Creusot; a +Caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a Gotha; the submarine was +first employed in war by the Americans; the machine gun is an English +invention. For all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth +century, with our belief in purely material progress, stand guilty +to-day; and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over +four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come. + +The past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest +between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an +inhuman, scientific, organized machine. And the machine was victorious. +Just as the scientific spirit, conquering art before the war, led to the +extravagances of Cubism and Vorticism so, since the war, it has attacked +life itself; and made of national existence, no longer a problem of +human bravery, resource and intelligence, but merely a problem of +relative man-power and munitions. We have learned to speak of +"man-power" as our books on physics speak of "horse-power." The task we, +in the war, set ourselves was a grisly paradox; we proposed to save +civilization, to undo a great wrong, by destroying the very basis of +human life on which all civilization stands. + +It is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a +few artists who, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, foresaw +that material progress would end in annihilating humanity, that nature +and humanity, hand in hand, are more sacred than all the shells that +could ever be produced, the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws +that could ever be written. With a sense of spiritual release we revert +to those who dreamed of the great return to nature--to Rousseau, +Whitman, Gauguin, as well as to others who, although perhaps lesser men +than they, followed in their path--David Thoreau, Richard Jefferies. +They were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail--the +gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above +æsthetic negation. Their vision was of something not in themselves but +of something higher and nobler, as Gauguin knew when he deliberately +caricatured himself in _Contes Barbares_. As he knew also, the vision +was of something stated only fragmentarily, inscribed as a promise, a +foretaste, an indication of what might be. In Rousseau's prose, in +Whitman's poetry and in Gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope +for self-tortured humanity, and the promise of a land where nature and +man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED + + +WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY: + +1. Paul Gauguin par Jean de Rotonchamp, Imprimé à Weimar par les Soins +du Comte de Kessler et se Trouve à Paris, chez Edouard Druet, Rue de +Faubourg Saint Honoré, No. 114. 1906. Edition limited to 250 copies. + +2. Gauguin, by Charles Morice. Floury, Paris, 1919. This and the +preceding work are the standard sources of Gauguin's life. + +3. Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Charles Daniel de Monfreid. Paris, Cres, +1919. + +4. White Shadows in the South Seas, by Frederick O'Brien. New York, The +Century Co., 1920. A travel book, with a few new sidelights on Gauguin's +final period. + +5. Avant et Après. Paul Gauguin aux Marquises. 1903. 100 copies only +published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript. A +translation into German has also appeared. Kurt Wolf Verlag, Berlin, +1920. + + + +WORKS OF ART CRITICISM IN ENGLISH: + +1. Modern Painting, by Willard Huntingdon Wright. New York, The John +Lane Company. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by +John Gould Fletcher + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL GAUGUIN, HIS LIFE AND ART *** + +***** This file should be named 38848-8.txt or 38848-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/4/38848/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org +(From images generously made available by the Intenet +Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/38848-8.zip b/old/38848-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..97903ff --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-8.zip diff --git a/old/38848-h.zip b/old/38848-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bfb80d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h.zip diff --git a/old/38848-h/38848-h.htm b/old/38848-h/38848-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d963525 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/38848-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3556 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Paul Gauguin, by John Gould Fletcher. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +a:link {color: #800000; text-decoration: none; } +v:link {color: #800000; text-decoration: none; } + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +.small {font-size: 0.8em;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 1em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: + 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by John Gould Fletcher + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art + +Author: John Gould Fletcher + +Release Date: February 12, 2012 [EBook #38848] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL GAUGUIN, HIS LIFE AND ART *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org +(From images generously made available by the Intenet +Archive.) + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>PAUL GAUGUIN</h1> + +<h3>His Life and Art</h3> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>JOHN GOULD FLETCHER</h2> + + +<h4><i>WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS</i></h4> + + +<h5>NICHOLAS L. BROWN</h5> + +<h5>NEW YORK</h5> + +<h5>MCMXXI</h5> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img01" id="img01"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_01.jpg" width="500" alt="Self-portrait of Gauguin." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Self-portrait of Gauguin.</span> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4>TO</h4> + +<h4>M.T.H.S.</h4> + +<h4>WHO HELPED ME WITH</h4> + +<h4>ADVICE AND CRITICISM</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"Improvement makes straight roads; +but the crooked roads without improvement +are the roads of genius."</p> + +<p>WILLIAM BLAKE.</p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + + +<p> +CONTENTS +</p> + +<p class="small"> +<a href="#PART_I_THE_FORMATION_1849-1885">PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_II_THE_STRUGGLE_WITH_IMPRESSIONISM_1885-1889">PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_III_THE_SCHOOL_OF_PONT-AVEN_1889-1891">PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_IV_THE_RETURN_TO_SAVAGERY_1891-1895">PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895</a><br /> +<a href="#PART_V_THE_FIGHT_AGAINST_CIVILIZATION_1895-1903">PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS<br /> +<br /> +<a href="#img01">SELF-PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN</a>, <i>Frontispiece</i><br /> +<a href="#img02">PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN'S MOTHER</a><br /> +<a href="#img03">THE PAINTER SCHUFFENECKER AND HIS FAMILY</a><br /> +<a href="#img04">STRUGGLE OF JACOB WITH THE ANGEL</a><br /> +<a href="#img05">THE IDOL</a><br /> +<a href="#img06">TAHITIAN WOMEN</a><br /> +<a href="#img07">HINA MARURU (FEAST TO HINA)</a><br /> +<a href="#img08">THE OLD SPIRIT</a><br /> +<a href="#img09">CALVARY</a><br /> +<a href="#img10">MATAMUA (OLDEN DAYS)</a><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>PAUL GAUGUIN</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_I_THE_FORMATION_1849-1885" id="PART_I_THE_FORMATION_1849-1885"></a>PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885</h3> + +<p class="center">I</p> +<p>About the middle of the last century, there occurred in Paris a series +of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future +history, secondary only to the days of the French Revolution. You will +seek Paris in vain for any public monument to these events, known as the +Revolution of 1848. Only the name of the hideously utilitarian Boulevard +Raspail may perhaps remind you, that in this year France achieved +another one of those political failures which have been so curiously +common in her history since 1789.</p> + +<p>In February of that year, King Louis Philippe and his ministers had fled +before the rising storm of popular feeling. It seemed at last that the +great popular revolution of the working classes, dreamed of by every +artist since 1789, proclaimed in the Rabelaisian caricatures of Daumier, +latent in the troubled Romanticism of the epoch, was at hand. A +provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the National +Assembly. But the provinces showed that it mattered little to them +whether the form of Government was changed or not. So long as the +peasant had his farm, his cow, his money safely stowed away in a +stocking, a hard-working wife, a pipe and a glass of wine, he was +content with things as they were. If the industrial classes of Paris +were starving, that was not his affair. He shared none of their fanatic +Socialism, none of their dreams of the millennium. He wanted to be left +alone.</p> + +<p>The National Assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate, and the +leaders of the Provisional Government discovered that they preferred to +stand with the majority rather than to fall with the Parisian +extremists. But the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle. On +the fifteenth of May, a mob attempted to take the Assembly by storm, and +failed. On the eighteenth, Lamartine, the former idol of the +Revolutionaries, was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech. The +Government found that it must either provide work and wages for the +Parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force. A scheme was +started, but it proved to be costly, and on the twenty-first of June the +Government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no +further with its project. Three days later the storm broke. Two hundred +and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets, crowned +with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men. For three days the mob +kept up a desperate resistance; then the last barricade fell, the blood +was washed off the pavements, the cause of "moderation" and "good sense" +was restored.</p> + +<p>There is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events. On the +seventh of June a son, Paul, was born to M. and Madame Gauguin, +residing in Paris. This infant, brought obscurely into the world to the +sound of cannon, was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of +Nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching +and as important in its effects as the great attempt of 1848. His life +was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, +the middle-class morality, of the late nineteenth century; his art was +to speak the promise of a renewed world, a world where man could again +walk naked, unashamed and free, as in Eden. He was destined to break +beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities, as the +revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the +government: but his ideas were to point the way to, new conceptions of +art and of life, which only the future can realize.</p> + +<p>Clovis Paul Gauguin, to give the father his full name, was a petty +journalist from Orleans. He had a post as collaborator on one of the +obscure newspapers of Liberal opinion, that so greatly flourished about +this time. His influence upon his son was slight, as is the case with +the fathers of most artists. It is to Madame Gauguin that we must turn +for an explanation of the character of her famous son.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img02" id="img02"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_02.jpg" width="500" alt="Portrait of Gauguin's mother." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Portrait of Gauguin's mother.</span> +</div> + +<p>Aline Marie Gauguin was the daughter of a certain Chazal, of whom we +know nothing, and of the then celebrated Socialist pamphleteer and +agitator, Flora Tristan.</p> + +<p>Flora Tristan was born in 1803 at Lima, Peru. Her father was a Spaniard +of noble descent, Mariano Tristan y Moscoso. He served as an officer in +the Peruvian Army, and probably took part in the wars of independence +which severed Peru from Spain, since we find him and his family later +occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the Republic. In 1818 +he sent his daughter to school in Paris. She eloped the next year with +Chazal and was disowned by her parents. After the birth of her child she +separated from her husband and returned to Peru, seeking a +reconciliation with her family. But the family had determined to do +nothing for the self-willed, impulsive daughter, and she drifted back to +Paris, where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of +strongly Socialistic tendencies. She became a pioneer of woman's +suffrage, of humanitarianism, of the trade-union movement. She toured +France making speeches. In 1836 she had the misfortune to meet Chazal +again in Paris, who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned +to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense. A few years later +she died in Bordeaux, and the trade-unions, remembering her zeal for +their cause and her personal beauty—which had moved them perhaps more +than the fervor of her speeches—subscribed the sum necessary to put up +a monument.</p> + +<p>Such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just +been born into the world. The tragic and violent union of Chazal and +Flora Tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became. +In Chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong +irritability; in Flora Tristan we see whence he drew his love of +personal and individual liberty, his hatred of moral restraint, his +scorn of the bourgeoisie, his Spanish hauteur and stoicism. Half-savage +Spanish blood flowed in his veins, a mixture of Arab, Celt and African. +Perhaps in his Peruvian descent there were even other currents—currents +of that Inca race which the Spaniards had subdued but not conquered. +Whatever else destiny held in store for him, it was certain from the +beginning that Paul Gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the +intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of Paris.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>The earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar +strands of tragedy, romance and savagery which were to recur so often in +his later life. In December, 1851, the makeshift Republic came to an end +and Louis Napoleon, by an easy <i>coup d'état</i>, restored the Empire. +Clovis Gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the Liberal +paper for which he wrote. There was only one hope remaining: that Flora +Tristan's relations in Lima might do something for Paul and his sister +Marie. So the family set out for Peru. On the way, during the terrible +passage through the Straits of Magellan, Clovis Gauguin was seized with +heart failure and died. His body was taken ashore and buried at Port +Famine, or Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in the world, in Chile.</p> + +<p>The mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by +the head of the family, Flora Tristan's uncle, Don Pio Tristan y +Moscoso. Concerning this personage Gauguin himself told many anecdotes +in later years. Probably most of these were inexact to the point of +being fable pure and simple. We must remember that Gauguin at this time +was scarcely four years of age. We know that the family were wealthy +nobles, of high social standing, who lived in the old Castillian manner +of luxury and indolence. From such surroundings Gauguin doubtless +derived much of the "hidalgo manner" that distinguished him throughout +life—a blend of haughtiness, reserve and egoism, masking often a real +shyness before people. And here he saw, also for the first time, works +of art produced by a non-European civilization: ceramics, jewelry, +fabrics of Inca origin. The remembrance of these specimens of savage, +primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's stay in Lima did not last long. Four years later his paternal +grandfather died in France, and his mother returned to that country in +order to obtain her share of his estate, which proved to be only a small +sum.</p> + +<p>In later years, the painter believed, or affected to believe, that if +his mother had remained in Peru and had neglected her relations in +France she would have been left heiress to Don Pio Tristan's property. +It is probable that Gauguin was here merely romancing, as he often did, +when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life. It is an +enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's +mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the +influence of Peruvian life. Peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the +tropics, for exotic, out-of-the-way, old-fashioned places, unspoiled by +the nineteenth century. Unconsciously many of the traits that made his +character so little comprehensible to the Frenchmen of his day were +planted in him during these years.</p> + +<p>France was now to give him something different. He was to be educated, +or rather to receive what passed for an education. He remained at a +seminary at Orleans till the age of seventeen, hating his studies, +becoming more and more intractable and unteachable. This seminary, as +all such institutions in France at the time, was conducted by Jesuit +priests.</p> + +<p>In later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he +had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy, false virtue and +spying. And with malicious irony he said: "And I also learnt there a +little of that spirit of Jesuit casuistry, which is a force not to be +despised in the struggle with other people."</p> + +<p>His sole ambition was to escape, to get to sea again, to make voyages to +the tropics. His mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy, +but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination. He was +therefore placed in the merchant marine. This decision of his mother he +regretted bitterly to the end of his life.</p> + +<p>In 1865 he embarked aboard the <i>Luzitano</i>, a cargo boat, on a voyage +from Havre to Rio de Janeiro. His grade aboard this ship was that of a +pilot's apprentice.</p> + +<p>Of this voyage, which enabled him to see again the tropics, Gauguin +retained in later years important memories.</p> + +<p>In the fragmentary note-books he kept in Tahiti he declared that it was +during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of +the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the Society +Islands in the Pacific. The remembrance of that story may have +influenced him later in his choice of Tahiti as an ideal residence. At +least the appearance of Rio de Janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind +fresh enthusiasm for the tropics. The stay at Rio was further signalized +by a liaison with an actress, of that eminently casual kind which +Gauguin was to experience so often later on. Finally the return voyage +brought about another liaison, this time with a Prussian woman, and in +defiance of ship's discipline. It was certain that his character—was +not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of +self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer. At all +events, the next thing we hear is that Gauguin quitted the merchant +service and enlisted in the French Navy as a common sailor, in February, +1868. Probably by this time his mother had refused to support him, and +he was forced into this position through necessity.</p> + +<p>The cruiser <i>Jerome Napoleon</i>, on which he found himself, was, to his +chagrin, ordered to cruise in northern waters. So instead of seeing the +tropics again, Gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound +Greenland coast and the barren North Cape. This was bad, but still worse +was to follow. The vessel was on its way to Spitzbergen when news was +brought to its captain that France had declared war upon Prussia.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?" said the second officer, seeing the Captain put +the helm about.</p> + +<p>"To Charenton," replied the indignant first officer; Charenton being the +great lunatic asylum near Paris!</p> + +<p>The vessel got no nearer to France than Copenhagen, when the melancholy +news of Sedan came. The name <i>Jerome Napoleon</i> was painted out, that of +<i>Desaix</i> substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain +in the waters off Copenhagen till the close of the war in 1871, +contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>In 1871, after the cessation of hostilities, Gauguin obtained leave, +renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. He was now +heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome +discipline that he had now endured aboard the <i>Desaix</i> for three years. +Besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he +felt that he must seize it.</p> + +<p>His mother had died in the interval since he had last seen France and, +in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do +Paris banker, Gustave Arosa. This man immediately found for Paul a place +at Bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. And now there +opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in +retrospect the most amazing of his career.</p> + +<p>Though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an +instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan +savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing +prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the Bourse, without +troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position +might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. He had not been +long at Bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. +Possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the Paris stock +market had been utterly disorganized by the events of 1870-71, and, now +that peace was signed, France was making one of those rapid recoveries +that have been so common in her history. Stocks were going up and trade +was booming. Gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances +to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as +forty thousand francs.</p> + +<p>In 1873 he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was +never wholly to shake off. His wife, Mette Sophia Gad, was the daughter +of a Protestant clergyman of Copenhagen. The family was a good one and +enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the Danish capital. The +daughters had been educated at Paris, and one of them had married a +member of the Norwegian Parliament, while another had become the first +wife of the painter, Fritz Thaulow.</p> + +<p>When or where Gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it +was probably during the stay of the <i>Desaix</i> at Copenhagen. At any rate +it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil +one, owing to his wife being a Protestant) was delayed owing to the loss +of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of St. Cloud.</p> + +<p>At this time, through his wife's friends and connections, through +Gustave Arosa, through Emile Schuffenecker—a fellow employee at +Bertin's—and through others, a new interest came into his life. He +began to paint, although pressure of work did not permit him to regard +this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first. Arosa was, in +his way, an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by +French artists of the day—among them Delacroix and Courbet. These works +he engraved in photogravure—an art then in its infancy—and sent copies +of the engravings to his personal friends. Through Schuffenecker Gauguin +was brought closely into touch with the Impressionists, who were then +making a sensation in Paris. Gauguin bought brushes and colors and began +by painting on Sundays and holidays. It was only slowly that he began to +look upon painting as anything but a distraction.</p> + +<p>His first essays in art were purely academic. He painted in the +prevailing style of the Salons and even sent one picture to the Salon of +1876. At the same time he began to attempt sculpture. He worked at first +in marble, a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more +coarsely-grained surface of wood, clay or paste. He liked a rough +surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order +to emphasize this roughness.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature. His early years at +sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity. He had a tremendous +interest in the technical processes of art. During his life he was able +to do almost equally well at painting, lithography and sculpture. He +also attempted etching, stained glass and pottery. His writings, +particularly his share in "Noa Noa," show a considerable grasp of +direct, poetic narrative—a gift that might very possibly have made of +him a good poet. Throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely +as a painter of pictures; his influence in opening new channels for +art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work. Even in +literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration. The +problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that +occupied his English contemporary, William Morris, almost as varied as +those that occupied Leonardo da Vinci.</p> + +<p>He acquired knowledge easily; his problem was always how to weigh, sift +and make use of it. But his growth to artistic maturity was slower than +in the case of artists who limit their field of effort, because he +attacked many subjects at the same time.</p> + +<p>It may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof, +not of a complex, but of a primitive nature. Yet it is undoubtedly true +that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost +everything. The interchangeability, the essential unity of all the arts, +is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages. As +civilization and consequently technique become more advanced, it grows +more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch +of art. Perhaps that is why, in our modern industrialized states, the +arts tend to disappear, to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly +diminishing minority.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;"> +<a name="img03" id="img03"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_03.jpg" width="650" alt="The painter Schuffenecker and his family." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The painter Schuffenecker and his family.</span> +</div> + +<p>All this was not suspected by Gauguin at the time, nor for years +afterwards. For the time he was content to paint and to follow the +prevailing fashions in his painting. And he soon found that the +prevailing fashion of the day in Paris was Impressionism.</p> +<p> </p> +<p>To define Impressionism it is not necessary, as many professional +art-critics have done, to enter into long dissertations as to the +supremacy of pure colors, nor to see in Constable or Turner the ancestry +of the movement.</p> + +<p>Impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of Realism—or to +speak better, Naturalism—carried out in painting. This cult had already +possessed in painting one important precursor, Gustave Courbet. But it +is to literature, always the advance guard of the arts, that we must +turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed.</p> + +<p>A little before 1870, which year marks a turning point not only in +France's political but also in her intellectual life, there came a +change over her literature. Romanticism, which had startled the world in +1830 with Lamartine, de Musset, de Vigny, Hugo and Balzac, was now dead. +The heroic, the Napoleonic, the Byronic attitude had somehow gone out of +life. Under the Second Empire, the bourgeois triumphed over the +Tuileries.</p> + +<p>A few years before the crash of 1870, Charles Baudelaire gave to the +world his <i>Fleurs du Mal</i>—the exasperated cry against life of a soul +tortured with too great a sensibility. Almost at the same time Gustave +Flaubert, in <i>Madame Bovary</i>, erected his monument of infamy to the +memory of the bourgeois. These two books opened the path to Naturalism, +to the "human document," to the de Goncourts, to de Maupassant, and to +Zola.</p> + +<p>Impressionism was the logical outgrowth, in another sphere, of the work +of these Naturalist writers.</p> + +<p>It abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural +sunlight.</p> + +<p>It abolished the classical "subject" and left the painter free to paint, +as Manet said, "<i>N'importe quoi</i>."</p> + +<p>Thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric +vibration, foreshadowed by Constable and Turner, but not by them +elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with +equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon Nature, +and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. It was, as Manet said +again, "Nature seen through a temperament."</p> + +<p>Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared +to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending +from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres. +This was the Norman, Puvis de Chavannes.</p> + +<p>But Puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of +walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in +the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while Impressionism was the +<i>succès de scandale</i> of the day.</p> + +<p>Gauguin heard of Impressionism and became a devout follower of its +theories. He painted pictures in the manner of Camille Pissarro, who was +a compatriot of Madame Gauguin, having been born in the Island of St. +Thomas in the Antilles, then Danish territory. Gauguin took part in the +exhibitions of the Impressionist group in 1880 and 1881.</p> + +<p>Huysmans, then as later the disciple of Naturalism pushed to its extreme +limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. Gauguin began to be +talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. +But his work at the Bourse was exhausting his strength and his time.</p> + +<p>Although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, Gauguin +in January, 1883, took the rash step of quitting the financial world and +devoting himself solely to art.</p> + +<p>This decision was, as Dr. Segalen says in his valuable Preface to the +letters Gauguin wrote from Tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. +When Paul Gauguin said to himself, "Henceforward I will paint every +day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition +and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great +impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not +only of his own nature but of modern art.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>It is important to note that Gauguin was thirty-five years of age when +he came to this decision. This proves that the decision was no hasty +one, of which he was liable to repent later. At such an age a man has +arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a Paul +Gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of +living from a mere desire for change. Gauguin had something to express +and knew it. He had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and +shares. And to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all +opposition.</p> + +<p>But had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage, with the desire +for freedom, for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes +only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts, this decision +might never have been taken. As a husband and father he now had others +dependent upon him. That he set aside their claims to follow the deeper +call proves that, as he later said, he believed himself to have the +right to dare everything. And he was probably at first confident of +success, thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as +that of a speculator.</p> + +<p>Madame Gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision. She was +naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful +man, and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his +success. In any case, she was soon destined to sad disillusionment.</p> + +<p>Gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the +sums he had saved. As for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well +known to sell. It was necessary, above all things, to gain time. So he +decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought +with the proceeds of his career on the Bourse, in order to support +himself. The list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly +the direction of his tastes at this period. It included a Manet, several +Renoirs, some Claude Monets, two Cézannes (still life and landscape), an +early Pissarro, together with examples of Guillamin, Sisley, Jongkind, +Lewis Brown and, most significant of all, two designs by Daumier.</p> + +<p>Whether it was that Gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a +style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not +know. Nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an +appreciable sum or not. Probably the amount was small, for the +Impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely +commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. In any +case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. He had +ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in Paris. He +found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the +place of Bertin's. So it was Madame Gauguin's turn to act. She decided +on a removal to Copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their +influence in obtaining a position for her husband.</p> + +<p>Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband +and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid +Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the +passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he +hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and +provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian +Bohemianism—everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he +took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in +maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking +on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. +Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin +for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately +and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment +when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. +Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the +nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her +mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. +But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable +scandal.</p> + +<p>Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield +nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family +change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A +separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came +about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the +painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We +shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that +Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into +which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate +with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with +his wife.</p> + +<p>It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with +her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than +accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame +Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now +disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian +art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to +try his fortune.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had +been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more +consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore +necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the +man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual +equipment.</p> + +<p>Gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of +strong physical development. His hair, which later grew thinner and lost +much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in +large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. The +eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which +were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color—the eyes of one who +has spent many years at sea. The nose was large, thick and aquiline. A +thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the +mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. The chin was +pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted +beard similar in color to the mustache.</p> + +<p>After Gauguin's return from the Antilles in 1887 it is the testimony of +all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an Indian's, and +that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. Even his excessive +devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his +health, had something sailor-like in it. Gauguin rolled his own +cigarettes in the Spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. +His hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman—coarse, +square and red. Altogether he was in appearance curiously Creole; he did +not resemble a Frenchman of France. The dark tint of his skin and the +formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and +hair.</p> + +<p>His personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those +with whom he came in contact. It must be remembered, however, that he +was by nature reserved and even suspicious, as are many people of +fundamental genius. He differed from those about him in that he worked +by instinct, while they worked according to some conscious method. He +therefore obtained out of himself, by means of slow thinking and +laborious effort, the knowledge which many have at the beginning. +Further, the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of +physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little +reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world. Finally, +Gauguin was shy, actually and by nature shy. People took this shyness +for rudeness and this reserve for disdain. And Gauguin was not always +unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding. He carefully cultivated +his rudeness, both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance.</p> + +<p>As regards his work, he was on the way to find his path, although he +never entirely found it, even to the end of his career. His versatility +prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead, like that of many +popular and highly successful painters.</p> + +<p>Mention has already been made of his appearance in 1880 among the +Impressionists and of the praise bestowed by Huysmans on one of his +pictures for its frank realism. This very nude, however, shows Gauguin +massing his shadows, making them heavy and dark, which was the direct +contrary to Impressionist practice. A year later we find Huysmans +complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures; another proof +that the painter was already trying to mass tones, to escape from the +division of tones employed by the Impressionist group.</p> + +<p>We are safe in assuming also that Gauguin felt already an inward desire +to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics. His early years had +shown him the tropics; and the art of the greatest masters, as well as +of the worst daubers, is based on the instinctive knowledge they have +obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later +years. Pissarro, too, had seen the tropics; but they had not in any way +influenced his color sense, which, indeed, grew colder and grayer as his +years advanced. But he may have had something to do with Gauguin's +inclination towards tropical subjects, though the feeling of kinship +with Nature which Gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own.</p> + +<p>If Gauguin had but known it, there waited for him not the future of fame +and fortune of which he dreamed, but seventeen years of life-and-death +struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means +of living nor the slightest encouragement, but only hampered him in +every way, so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures +on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls. He was to +quit his own country, and to go to the ends of the earth, only to find +that the system of civilization possessed by his country, whatever its +other advantages, did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the +fruits of his labor. He was finally to sink into an unmarked grave, to +be almost forgotten, and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when +no longer able to profit by it. Even if Gauguin could have realized +this, it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind. Ready to dare +everything, he strode forward into the future.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_II_THE_STRUGGLE_WITH_IMPRESSIONISM_1885-1889" id="PART_II_THE_STRUGGLE_WITH_IMPRESSIONISM_1885-1889"></a>PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>With the return of Gauguin to Paris there opened for him the second +stage of his career, the struggle to maintain himself on the productions +of his brush and chisel. During the first stage his character had been +formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative +leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor, during which he found +time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the +latest French tradition. He had not only met and talked with men like +Manet, Pissarro, and Cézanne, he also visited the museums of Paris, and +did not confine himself to the Louvre, but made a special study of the +Musée Guimet with its collection of art works from the far East, and +later of the Trocadero, with its casts of Cambodian sculpture. His stay +at Bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment, +the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic +independence.</p> + +<p>Yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these +important years of development than in the case of most of his +contemporaries. "He was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in +art that was going on," says one who knew him in this period, "but not +to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody." What he absorbed +was by instinct; and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge +with people who might fail to make good use of it.</p> + +<p>Amid the noisy chatter of Parisian art-circles he passed silent and +unnoted. He rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of +experimental projects, particularly with sculpture. But very shortly +his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience +of hunger.</p> + +<p>For a time he suffered extreme privation. He was forced at last to +accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting +advertisements on the walls of the Gare du Nord in order to save himself +from starvation.</p> + +<p>"I have known," he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter +Aline, "extreme misery, that is to say hunger and everything that +follows upon hunger. It is nothing, or almost nothing. One grows +accustomed to it and, with will-power, one can end by laughing at it. +But what is terrible is to be prevented from working, from developing +one's intellectual faculties. It is true that suffering sharpens one's +ability. But it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will +kill you.</p> + +<p>"With a great deal of pride I have ended by having a great deal of +energy, and I have forced myself to be full of will-power.</p> + +<p>"Is pride a fault, or must one develop one's pride? I believe pride must +be developed. It is the best weapon we have against the human animal +that is in us."</p> + +<p>This quotation gives us the man entirely. He was one of those who are +not to be beaten, one of those who do not turn back. He was to go +forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path.</p> + +<p>In 1886 he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition +of the Impressionist group, together with a relief in wood, which seems +to foreshadow the later creator of <i>La Guerre et la Paix</i>.</p> + +<p>Most of these early works of Gauguin seem to have disappeared. Very few +can recall seeing one. It is therefore interesting to read the following +appreciation by Felix Fenéon, which shows that Gauguin was already +traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other +impressionists:—</p> + +<p>"The tones of M. Paul Gauguin's pictures are very little separated from +each other; because of this, there is in his work a dull harmony. Dense +trees rise from the fertile soil, abundant and humid, invade the frame, +pursue the sky. The air is heavy. Bricks seen between the trunks +indicate a nearby house; things are lying about, muzzles are scattered +in the thicket—cows. These reds of roofs and of cattle the artist +constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters, +encumbered with long grasses, which run between the tree-trunks."</p> + +<p>This shows clearly that Gauguin was treating landscape at this period +already as a synthesis, a decorative whole and not, like Manet, Pissarro +or the Divisionists, as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric +vibration. As for the relief on wood, Fenéon writes:</p> + +<p>"On the pear-tree wood, which we regret to see left in monochrome, a +naked woman stands out in half relief, her hand to her hair, seated +rectangularly in a landscape. This is the only number of sculpture. +Nothing in painted wood, in glass-paste, in wax."</p> + +<p>Paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach Gauguin. He must +find his own way, create his own tradition. Aloof alike from the +theories of the Impressionists and from those of their successors, the +Pointillists—theories of the disassociation of tones and of the +analytic disintegration of light, based on the scientific treatises of +Chevreuil and Helmholtz—he was painfully tending back to the old +decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit, the harmonious +expression of a single emotion. Hunger proved again the best friend of +the independent artist. He fled from Paris and sought refuge in the +country.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>The place of refuge which Gauguin found was the village of Pont-Aven in +the district of Finistère in Brittany.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon +his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by Tahiti. +Indeed the charm of Tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence.</p> + +<p>The Celtic fringe of Europe—Cornwall, the Highlands of Scotland, +Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia—presents everywhere a great +similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants. +The Celt is an outcast. Driven backward by successive waves of +civilization and conquest, he has finally occupied those lands which +were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in +them undisturbed. Long residence in these desolate places has made of +him a natural mystic, a conservative. Perhaps he might never have been +anything else had not the nineteenth century—with its railroads and the +life-weariness of its cultivated classes—made of him a curiosity. The +hordes of tourists, of bad artists, of dealers in journalese, who rave +about Brittany, Cornwall, or Ireland as picturesque summer-resorts, show +that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to +remain a savage.</p> + +<p>Paul Gauguin did not assuredly go to Brittany to discover the +picturesque. Had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher +than the painting of Charles Cottet or of Lucien Simon. His real home as +an artist, as he was later to discover, lay elsewhere—under less +troubled skies, in the midst of more tropical vegetation. But the gloom, +the melancholy inertia, the mystic faith, the simplicity of this land of +wind-mills, small trees, granite coasts and menhirs, worked strongly on +the yet untamed primitive in him. Stronger still perhaps was the appeal +of the sea, the most restless and yet the most changeless element in +nature. Gauguin was in appearance, as in manners, a sailor—the eye, the +direct curt speech, the reserved disdain, the freedom of manners, all +these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences. In Brittany +he found the sea; he found an unspoiled people; he found, above all, +repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that, like the +bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne, frothed eternally in +the cafés of Paris. Brittany gave him greater faith in himself; Brittany +began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly +stifling him.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;"> +<a name="img04" id="img04"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_04.jpg" width="650" alt="Struggle of Jacob with the Angel." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Struggle of Jacob with the Angel.</span> +</div> + +<p>His first stay in Pont-Aven was destined to be short. It is chiefly +remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by Emile Bernard, then +only about seventeen years of age, whose relations with Gauguin and +other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be +examined in detail.</p> + +<p>Bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up, +mushroom-like, in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary +controversy. At the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic +and extremely bad poetry. He next went in for painting, raced off to +Brittany to see Gauguin, was received with coolness, ran back to Paris. +Here he found Van Gogh fresh from Holland and, when Van Gogh in turn +went to Arles, became his most industrious correspondent. Later he heard +that the crazy old hermit, Paul Cézanne, was living at Aix—so off to +Aix went Bernard. More letters were the outcome of the visit.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and +neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of Gauguin's Breton +style, then to a combination of Cézanne and Gauguin, to conclude with +painting of Oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from +that of Gerome. He imitated everyone in turn, only to end by becoming +that drab eclectic thing—what the French call a "pompier" or we an +"Academician." Thus he justified Gauguin's sardonic prophecy that +"Bernard would end up something like Benjamin Constant!"</p> + +<p>We owe Bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful +letters which Van Gogh wrote to him, and—more precious debt—that he +has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic +Cézanne revealed a glimpse of his agony. But we owe Bernard nothing in +that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose +style he was the first to copy—Paul Gauguin. But of this more later.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The winter of 1886 found Gauguin again in Paris. Here he met another +artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite +different from that of Emile Bernard.</p> + +<p>This was Vincent Van Gogh, newly arrived from Holland. Gauguin has left +on record in a piece of prose called <i>Les Crevettes Roses</i> his first +impression of Van Gogh, which proves beyond dispute that Gauguin loved +Van Gogh and admired him, despite his habitual reserve and the haughty +disdain with which he was already looking upon all things European.</p> + +<p>At this time Gauguin was still painfully seeking, still patiently and +laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization. Van Gogh, +although five years younger, had fully realized himself in essence—was, +in fact, realized from the beginning. The difference between them was +that Van Gogh was an humble Dutch peasant, with the mystic blend of +religion and animality which is common to Flemish and Dutch artists (for +example, Breughel, Rubens or Verhaeren), while Gauguin was a Spaniard, +hard and aristocratic, but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the +strain of French blood.</p> + +<p>For Van Gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of +the sun, which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric +ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it. For Gauguin the +future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left +him half-an-European to the end, his work only a broken fragment of what +he had dreamed.</p> + +<p>It is a pity, in a way, that these men ever met. But their meeting and +the drama which was played out later between them, had in it the +inevitable quality of Greek tragedy. For the moment their meeting was +without result, except that perhaps it woke Gauguin to a realization +that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art. In +short, one must be religious. But where was Gauguin to find his +religion?</p> + +<p>Certainly not in Paris, the capital of intellectual skepticism. Nor, for +the moment, in sleepy and mournful Brittany. The memories of his early +initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he +undertook, in 1887, a voyage to the Martinique in company with a young +painter, Charles Laval.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to Gauguin his +own primitivism, although it left him for the time an invalid, +threatened with dysentery, suffering from constant intestinal pains, and +although it brought Laval to the brink of the grave.</p> + +<p>If the reader wishes to know something of what Martinique was at this +time, he should turn to Lafcadio Hearn's "Two Years in the French West +Indies." Hearn, like Gauguin, was a disillusionized cosmopolite, +disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the +pedantic and Puritanic hypocrisy of our Occidental civilization. Like +Gauguin, Hearn found in the West Indies a revelation of a world which +had not lost touch with Nature—a world of men who were content to +remain, in Nature's eyes, something as ephemeral and as harmonious as +the trees, the flowers, the beasts among which they lived. Like Gauguin +again, Hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision, but yet kept faith +with it to the last.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img05" id="img05"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_05.jpg" width="500" alt="The Idol." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The Idol.</span> +</div> + +<p>In the pictures which Gauguin produced during his stay in Martinique, we +find the first rude indications of his later manner—the manner of a +mystic poet who sees all life, the life of man, of vegetation, of the +earth and the sea, as being parallel, harmonious manifestations of the +same Divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other.</p> + +<p>If Gauguin did not realize himself in Martinique, he at least found +himself on the road to realization. But the unchecked power of the sun, +steadily sapping not only the white race, but also the race of mixed +blood, with which he, like Hearn, felt so much sympathy, banished him +from this Eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future.</p> + +<p>His health demanded a return to France. He came back, bringing with him +pictures—experimental, tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and +gloom of the tropics with Pissarro's analysis of paler northern +sunlight. He brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures +which he, as yet, could not paint. He brought back with him an idea.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>After seeing the Antilles and returning to Paris, Gauguin was again +brought face to face with the problem against which he had already +struggled—the problem of his poverty.</p> + +<p>He had obtained at Martinique the vision of a new world of art, which he +knew he was some day destined to realize. But for the present he had +neither lodging and studio, nor resources of any kind. He was forced to +live on charity.</p> + +<p>Charity came to him in the shape of Emile Schuffenecker, who had also +given up finance for a career as artist.</p> + +<p>Schuffenecker was not a genius, but he knew ability when he saw it, and +opened his doors freely to this needy colleague. It is a pity that +Gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting +Schuffenecker as an artist.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful +episodes of his life. One is almost inclined to think with Emile Bernard +that "the basis of Gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism," or, +with Meier-Graefe, that Gauguin was nothing but a great child. Neither +of these views is, however, wholly correct.</p> + +<p>Gauguin was the son, be it remembered, of a radical journalist and the +grandson of a Socialist pamphleteer. Journalism in France is not the +same thing as in England. There is scarcely any polite journalism in +France. Gauguin himself was always talking, according to Bernard, of art +and life needing "the blow of the fist." Paul Déroulède, Edmond Drumont, +Henri Rochefort, Octave Mirbeau, Zola, Clemenceau, and other celebrated +journalists of the Dreyfus period (the heyday of French journalism) knew +quite well what this "blow of the fist" meant, and practiced it upon +every opportunity.</p> + +<p>Moreover, Gauguin was nearly forty, had knocked about the world a great +deal, banging himself against many sharp corners in the process, and +was face to face with want. It is also possible that he felt bound, for +the sake of his wife and children, to make as much money as possible. +Finally, he believed in himself as an artist, if no one else did. The +world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either +hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt. As he +put it himself, "Is it necessary to be modest, or, in other words, an +imbecile?"</p> + +<p>So he accepted the use of Schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his +own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at Schuffenecker's attempt +to paint. Later on we find him accepting similarly Van Gogh's +hospitality, irritating Van Gogh to the pitch of madness, and—after Van +Gogh's death—sending to Bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed +exhibition of Van Gogh's pictures on the ground that Van Gogh was only a +madman. And later still, when Van Gogh's reputation began to rise in +public esteem, Gauguin declared that Van Gogh had learned from him and +had called him master.</p> + +<p>Such traits are deplorable, if we consider Gauguin as an ordinary man. +But if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it +conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite +certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. Gauguin +sinned in good company, with Michaelangelo who thought Raphael had +plotted against him, and with Berlioz who has left on record his opinion +of Wagner's music. To understand Gauguin one must share to some extent +the opinion of Flaubert—which, incidentally, Browning almost +endorses—that the man is nothing, the work is all.</p> + +<p>It is not easy to read between the lines of Gauguin's self-imposed +reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. If we +attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was +almost without friends. Van Gogh he loved without understanding. Daniel +de Monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. The shadowy figure of +Tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly +moved him.</p> + +<p>Puvis de Chavannes, an artist to whom Gauguin owed much, similarly held +himself aloof from all. So did Degas and Ingres, two other artists of +Gauguin's stamp. So in ancient Greece did Sophocles.</p> + +<p>The truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on +the surface of things. One can only sympathize with them, share their +imaginings through long and patient study. Gauguin was not altogether +strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. But his work +increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. +Schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in Paris just long +enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy Manet's +<i>Olympia</i>, a picture he greatly admired. Then once more he took the road +to Brittany.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>Despite the fact that Gauguin had, before leaving Paris, held his first +one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation +was not improved. He was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined +at Martinique, remained bad.</p> + +<p>He was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock +of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. In Gauguin's +case the chances were very small. He was crushed by his own impotence to +realize the art he had dreamed.</p> + +<p>It was at this juncture that Vincent Van Gogh, now at Aries, came +forward and offered him a lodging, despite the fact that he himself +could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the +self-sacrificing efforts of his brother Theodore.</p> + +<p>For a time Gauguin did not respond to Van Gogh's generous offer to +share their fortunes in common. But he sent his own portrait to Vincent, +a gloomy, powerful piece of painting which, in the opinion of some, so +startlingly resembles Robert Louis Stevenson—like Gauguin a wanderer, +but with what a difference! To Vincent this portrait suggested a +prisoner, with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows. He was more than +ever determined to draw Gauguin out of the slough of despond into which +he was falling, and to work together with him for the better +establishment of both their reputations.</p> + +<p>One can only admire Van Gogh for this decision. An artist of a childlike +simplicity of soul, a combination of Don Quixote, the Good Samaritan and +that Jesus of Nazareth whom he loved, Van Gogh was even greater as a man +than as an artist. But Gauguin was, as he knew himself later, greater as +an artist than as a man. It was natural for him to accept the invitation +of a man whom he knew, after all, very slightly, because he saw in this +acceptance possible advantages to himself.</p> + +<p>Van Gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed, as was Gauguin's, by +a strong reserve of nervous strength. His was one of those souls whose +longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced +by William Blake:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And I be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen +by Whitman:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">O, to struggle against odds, to meet enemies undaunted!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium face to face,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">nonchalance,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To be indeed a God!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Van Gogh was a lyric painter. His desire was to lose himself in the +ecstacy of the divine. Gauguin was a narrative, an epic painter. His aim +was to grow to divine stature through self-realization.</p> + +<p>What could there be in common between the fervent admirer of Rembrandt, +Delacroix, Monticelli, Ziem, and the brooding, patient workman who was +building up his art on the classic tradition of Ingres, Cézanne and +Degas? Surely even less than between Michaelangelo and Tintoretto.</p> + +<p>A drama between these men was inevitable. It was not slow in declaring +itself.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Of what actually occurred we have only Gauguin's account, of +how Van Gogh first attacked him, and then strove to take his own life.</p> + +<p>Van Gogh, upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent +itself, went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at Arles, where, as his +grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that +devoured him, he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun. Gauguin +returned to Brittany, as he said, "armed against all suffering." But he +had seen something. In striving to paint Van Gogh's portrait he had seen +a vision, once again to quote his own words, of "Jesus preaching +goodness and humility." And perhaps, in Vincent's hour of agony, while +he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he +had loved and had painted so lovingly, Gauguin had another vision—of +the sombre Garden of Gethsemane.</p> + +<p>Thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that +desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul, between nature and +God, between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth, which he +was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize, despite the +baseness of that other part in him, the civilized, unprimitive part, +which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of +baseness.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Gauguin and Van Gogh were actually together from the 20th +October to the 23d December, 1888.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_III_THE_SCHOOL_OF_PONT-AVEN_1889-1891" id="PART_III_THE_SCHOOL_OF_PONT-AVEN_1889-1891"></a>PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>In 1889 there opened in Paris on the Champ-de-Mars the Universal +Exposition, to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the Bastile. Of +this exhibition and of the palace built to house it, nothing now remains +except the melancholy Eiffel Tower.</p> + +<p>The pictures admitted to the exhibition were, rather naturally, of a +kind sanctioned by academic officialdom. Wherefore visitors who happened +to patronize the Café Volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled +to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock +all their susceptibilities in art matters. Their perplexity cannot have +been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title: +"Catalogue of the Exposition of Pictures of the Impressionist and +Syntheticist Group, held on the Premises of M. Volpini, at the +Champ-de-Mars, 1889."</p> + +<p>The exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the Café +Volpini had for the most part never heard. Their names were:—E. +Schuffenecker, Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, Louis Roy, +Léon Fauché, Georges Daniel, Ludovic Nemo (a pseudonym of Bernard's) and +lastly, Paul Gauguin. Lithographs, printed in black upon yellow paper +and not less extraordinary than the pictures, were also visible upon +request. These were by Bernard and Gauguin.</p> + +<p>The result of this exhibition was that the public laughed, the papers +protested, the young students of art in the various ateliers of Paris +were stimulated to furious discussion. But a few spirits, more +venturesome or more prophetic, took the trouble to test the new ideas. A +few, chief among them Sérusier of the Académie Julian, even set out to +visit the birthplace of the new movement, a lonely inn kept by a family +of the name of Gloanec at Le Poldu, a short distance from Pont-Aven.</p> + +<p>A brief survey of the history of Syntheticism is necessary to an +understanding of the theories of the new school. Here we enter upon +debatable ground. It has already been said that the chief opponents of +the academicism of Cabanel and Bougereau were the Impressionists. Their +movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its +third. The earliest of the Impressionists, led by Manet, insisted that a +picture was only nature seen through a temperament; in other words, that +a picture must be naturalistic. This doctrine found parallel literary +expression in the writings of the de Goncourts, de Maupassant and Zola. +The first phase in Impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained +a belief in form.</p> + +<p>It was succeeded by an analytical phase, based upon the application to +color of the scientific theories of light, of Rood, Chevreuil and +Helmholtz. To Claude Monet, the founder of this new school of +Impressionism, nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere. Form +was abandoned.</p> + +<p>After Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Guillamin, a new group, of whom +the chief were Seurat and Signac, attempted to combine the tenets of +their two sets of predecessors. They retained formal composition but +broke up color into minute points or dots. This third generation of +Impressionists were originally termed Neo-Impressionists but now, more +frequently, Pointillists.</p> + +<p>Three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory. +Puvis de Chavannes had, within the very precincts of the official salon, +created an art based on something wholly distinct, alike from the +photographic and frigid eclecticism of Cabanel and Bougereau and from +the work of both Manet and Monet. Puvis was a decorator who could think +and paint only in terms of walls. He had achieved, after a long +struggle, a decorative synthesis of his own, based upon the ruthless +simplification of masses, contours and coloring. Reserved, cold, +solitary, he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his +old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of Giotto, that +father of all European painting.</p> + +<p>Paul Cézanne, the hermit of Aix, had faced the problem of painting with +the Impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his +true spiritual ancestors—the Venetians and El Greco. As a result he was +thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth, for he lived +far from Paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited. +Finally, Degas, associating himself with the Impressionists at the +outset, had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of +Ingres, who might be called the last of Florentines. Degas was +considered an artist of small importance because, unlike Manet, he +scorned to give himself airs. He lived a retired life in Paris, and did +not exhibit.</p> + +<p>These three men—Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas—had, through +their own inner necessity, become syntheticists. But no one of them +preached Syntheticism, because their adherence to the creed was +unconscious. The doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with +Paul Gauguin at the Café Volpini in 1889, who lived and worked with him +at the Gloanec inn, near Pont-Aven. It was from these men that the +reaction against Impressionism started, a reaction which, in its turn, +was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of +mathematical and analytical abstraction of line, color and form, which +we know as Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. It was these men surrounding +Gauguin, who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition +which goes back through Giotto and Cimabue to the Byzantine mosaics, +and, through these, to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages. +With Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning +of a new tradition. With Gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance +of an old one.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>As early as 1886, in an article in the <i>Revue Indépendante</i>, the +well-known critic Eduard Dujardin had spoken of a group calling +themselves the Cloissonists, who painted in flat patches of tone, +divided from each other by black lines.</p> + +<p>Cloissonism, as the name indicates, was borrowed from the Japanese. But +as a method of painting, it had been derived less from cloisonné enamel +than from the technique of the Japanese color-print artists.</p> + +<p>The artistic gods of the Cloissonists were Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. +It may be remembered that since 1865 men like Zola, Manet, Monet, +Whistler, the de Goncourts—in short the entire generation of the +naturalists—had collected these color prints, written about them, +talked about them.</p> + +<p>Gauguin himself, when he returned to Paris at the close of this year +1889, pinned a frieze of Hokusai and Utamaro prints round the walls of +his studio.</p> + +<p>But the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of +Cloissonism, of which the leader was Anquetin (later ranked with the +Syntheticists), does not fully explain the use of Syntheticism with its +greater insistence upon decorative unity, and its clearer affinities to +the work of the Italian primitives.</p> + +<p>As to the origin of Syntheticism we have divergent statements from +contemporary witnesses.</p> + +<p>The English artist, A.S. Hartrick, who was studying in Paris from 1886 +to 1889 and who knew personally both Gauguin and Van Gogh, ascribes the +Synthetic theory to Gauguin in these terms:—</p> + +<p>"From a study of thirteenth century glass he (Gauguin) got an idea of +design and color which exactly suited his state of development, and he +then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own, using oil paint +as a vehicle."<a name="FNanchor_1_2" id="FNanchor_1_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_2" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Of similar opinion is the well known French artist and writer, Maurice +Denis, whose work has done so much to popularise Gauguin. He declares in +his book "Theories,"<a name="FNanchor_2_3" id="FNanchor_2_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_3" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> that Gauguin was the "incontestable originator" +and master of the new movement, to which he gives two names: +Neo-Traditionism and Symbolism. In the first account which he wrote of +the movement in 1890, an account obtained from the lips of Paul +Sérusier, one of the earliest of Gauguin's disciples after 1889, Denis +includes the following interesting paragraph:</p> + +<p>"Did not Paul Gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history +of modeling?</p> + +<p>"At the beginning there was the pure arabesque, as little deceptive of +the eye as possible; a wall is empty; cover it with symmetrical spots +of form, harmonious in color:—stained glass, Egyptian pictures, +Byzantine mosaics.</p> + +<p>"From this comes the painted bas-relief:—metopes of the Greek temple, +the church of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>"Then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye +practised in Antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the +Italian primitives, who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings +modeled to imitate bas-relief, but in other respects preserve the first +idea of decorative unity. Recall also under what conditions +Michaelangelo, a sculptor, decorated the Sistine ceiling.</p> + +<p>"Perfection of this modeling; modeling in high-relief. This leads from +the first academy of the Caracchi to our decadence."</p> + +<p>Emile Bernard holds a contrary opinion. His view was originally +published in the <i>Mercure de France</i> and reasserted in his preface to +the letters written to him by Van Gogh.<a name="FNanchor_3_4" id="FNanchor_3_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_4" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Bernard, who revolted from +the Atelier Cormon with Anquetin, had, as we have seen, been repulsed +by Gauguin in in 1886. After a brief return to Paris he went off to +Saint-Briac, where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and +painted the windows, in imitation of stained-glass, employing essence of +turpentine as a medium. In 1888, before Gauguin came to Arles, Bernard +was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of +Theodore Van Gogh and, although young enough to be Gauguin's son (being +about twenty at this time), shared with him the honors of the Volpini +exhibition.</p> + +<p>Bernard claims that he, and he alone, invented Syntheticism, and bases +his claim on the evidence of the pictures (all dated) which Gauguin +painted previous to 1888, and in which Gauguin was still definitely +Impressionist in technique. He maintains that Gauguin abruptly changed +his style after the second meeting in 1888, when he first saw what his +younger rival had been doing. Furthermore, Bernard contends that this +style was solely based upon the application of Cézanne's discoveries in +technique.</p> + +<p>Against these contentions there are three objections to be made.</p> + +<p>In the first place it is known that Gauguin, during his stay in +Martinique in 1887, painted pictures that are undeniably essays in +syntheticism. Martinique showed Gauguin the impossibility of painting +tropic sunlight by means of the Impressionistic division of tones. +Always purely intuitive as an artist, Gauguin began to realize at +Martinique, however vaguely, that one cannot reproduce the natural +decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color +attempted by Pissarro and the other Impressionists. He therefore sought +to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the +contrast of colors.</p> + +<p>In the second place, Bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was +not he, but Gauguin, who after 1888 painted those magnificent pictures +<i>Le Christ Jaune, Le Christ Vert</i> and <i>La Vision après le Sermon</i><a name="FNanchor_4_5" id="FNanchor_4_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_5" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and +carved the two superb bas-reliefs <i>Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez +Heureuses</i> and <i>Soyez Mystérieuses</i>. Moreover, the careful reader of Van +Gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout '88 and '89 +Bernard stood in relation to Gauguin as a pupil to a master. Finally, +even if Bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did +induce Gauguin to reject the last vestiges of Impressionism, his story +fails to account for the masterly grasp of Synthetic Symbolism shown by +Gauguin immediately after their second meeting.</p> + +<p>It is quite impossible to trace to Cézanne's essays in Synthetic +Impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either +Bernard or Gauguin. Cézanne, later on, even went so far as to assert +that Gauguin had misunderstood him. Therefore it is clear that the +opinions of A.S. Hartrick and of Maurice Denis better fit the facts. +Gauguin was the sole originator of the Synthetic style. That style was +derived, perhaps mainly, from the careful study of thirteenth century +glass, which does perfectly what Gauguin wished to do: translate the +effect of sunlight into luminous color. But it was also derived from +Egyptian painting, Byzantine mosaics and the Kakemonos of the Japanese. +In short, it was as complete a rejection of Impressionism as possible +and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced +color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved, +in the nineteenth century, in the works of artists whom Gauguin admired: +Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes, Cézanne and Degas.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_2" id="Footnote_1_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_2"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> "Post-Impressionism," by A.S. Hartrick. <i>Imprint,</i> May, +1913.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_3" id="Footnote_2_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_3"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Paris, l'Occident, 1912.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_4" id="Footnote_3_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_4"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Paris, Vollard, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_5" id="Footnote_4_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_5"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Now known as <i>La Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange</i>.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The exhibition at the Café Volpini brought notoriety to Gauguin. Various +young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art"—the phrase is +Gauguin's—which they were being taught in the ateliers of Paris, took +the road for Pont-Aven. Among these were Paul Sérusier, Chamaillard, and +the Dutchman, De Haahn.</p> + +<p>Acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of +Sérusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with Neo-Platonic +mysticism, Gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite +doctrine. Hitherto he had been an artist of the type of Ingres, working +purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. +But his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula +this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create.</p> + +<p>Artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves. +Whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been +greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy. The public always +takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods. +All art is a synthesis, and no artist can be at the same time synthetic +and analytical.</p> + +<p>Gauguin was no exception to this rule. Take for example, his +often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors:—</p> + +<p>"Always use colors of the same origin. Indigo is the best basis. It +becomes yellow in saltpeter, red in vinegar. You can obtain it at any +chemist's. Keep to these three colors."</p> + +<p>Gauguin himself did not follow this precept. An examination of his +palette shows that it was arranged thus, from left to right:—ultramarine, +silver white, emerald green, veronese green, yellow +ochre, burnt sienna, yellow chrome, vermilion, and crimson lake. No +artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously +fugitive, whether used pure or in mixture.</p> + +<p>So with another celebrated saying: "Seek harmony and not contrast, the +agreement and not—the clash of color." This saying not only goes +contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors, +but is opposed to those equally famous dicta: "Does that trunk of a tree +seem to you blue? Paint it as blue as possible," and, "A mile of green, +is more green than half a mile."</p> + +<p>It is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of Gauguin's +teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark. Gauguin was not +a man holding a high-school debate on theory, but a creator. He refused +even to be called a decorator, he preferred the title of artisan. He +declared outright that he had no technique. "Or perhaps I have one, but +very vagabond, very elastic, according to the way I feel when I awaken +in the morning, a technique which I apply to my own liking in order to +express my thought, without taking account of the truth of Nature, +externally apparent. People think nowadays that all the technical means +of painting are exhausted. I do not believe it, if I am to judge by the +numerous observations which I have made and put into practice.... +Painters have still much to discover."</p> + +<p>Gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them +this remark: "Do what you please, so long as it is intelligent." This +did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition. He +knew that tradition is not a "recipe for making art," but the sum-total +of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same +problems that face the artists of to-day. He realized that the essential +substance of art is always the same. Art is an eternal renewal of this +substance. "The artist is not born of a single unity. If he adds a new +link to the chain already begun, it is much. The artist is known by the +quality of his transposition."</p> + +<p>The "transposition" that he himself strove for may be clearly read in +his pictures. He strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art +of the great Venetians, by blending the Venetian glow of color with the +calm line of Primitive and especially of Egyptian Primitive design. His +problem was essentially the same as that of Puvis de Chavannes, the +problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to +leave it still essentially a wall and not, as Veronese and Tiepolo left +it, an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery. Puvis had solved the +problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by +simplifying his drawing. Gauguin solved his by the elimination of +modeling, and of graduations of tone, and by reducing his drawing to the +strongest possible arabesque of outline. In everything he sought for the +essential form, the form that contains all the other inessential forms. +As Sérusier puts it: "The synthetic theory of art consists in reducing +all form to the smallest possible number of component +forms:—straight lines, arcs of a circle, a few angles, arcs of an +ellipse." And to express this form he sought for the most harmonious +balance of color. Maurice Denis says:—"Recall that a picture, before +being a war-horse, a nude or some anecdote, is essentially a flat +surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 650px;"> +<a name="img06" id="img06"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_06.jpg" width="650" alt="Tahitian Women." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Tahitian Women.</span> +</div> + +<p>Therefore and above all, Gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the +model, but from memory. He admitted that it was useful for young +painters to have a model, as all knowledge of facts could only be +obtained from the study of models. But he added that it was better to +draw a curtain before the model while painting it. One of his pupils +declared: "We went into the country to paint seascapes and to the +seashore to do landscapes."</p> + +<p>Gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods +practiced for centuries by the great Chinese and Japanese painters. He +would have enjoyed that story of a Chinese painter, who was sent out by +the Emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the Empire, +and who returned without having painted anything. When the Emperor asked +him: "But where are your pictures?" he replied: "I have them here"—and +pointed to his forehead. Gauguin, with his hatred of copying either from +nature or from the masters of the past, would also have appreciated the +Chinese idea of a "copy"—a free rearrangement of old material according +to one's temperament.</p> + +<p>Lastly, he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose. "Let +everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul. Avoid all animated +attitudes. Each of your figures should be perfectly static. Give +everything a clear outline." This counsel sounds strange to ears +deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of +Cubists, Futurists and Vorticists. But to Gauguin it was the basis of +his own mystical religion. He gave it to the world, however, not for +this reason, but because he realized that painting to be decorative +must be architectural. He himself was a builder, an artisan. In Brittany +he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived; he made +furniture, carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself, +worked at bas-reliefs, decorated pottery. Movement, restlessness, would +have but troubled the lines of that ideal building, which, even then, he +was erecting in his dreams.</p> + +<p>Such was the doctrine of Paul Gauguin. It may seem strange that such +ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary. In the Far East at +all events, they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries. +Revolutionary or not, Gauguin went on his way undisturbed. From an +examination of his letters, and of the statements of those who knew him, +the fact emerged that this "anarchist" preserved throughout his life a +great respect for artists of the past. Rembrandt especially, in his +mystical and visionary phase, appealed to him and Rembrandt's influence +may be traced in more than one of Gauguin's Tahitian pictures. +Velazquez, Rubens, Proudhon, Corot, Whistler—Gauguin was able to learn +something from all these men as well as from Memling and Holbein. As for +his pupils, the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following +his precepts may be judged by the fact that Gauguin remarked about one +of them: "His faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be +considered a master," and by the fact that the first synthetic picture +of another was, according to Maurice Denis, painted on the lid of a +cigar box!</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>It is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of +Gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that +went on in his soul: a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of +civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at Tahiti.</p> + +<p>Gauguin, as has been seen, was not naturally but only deliberately a +teacher of others. Especially in his intimate and personal concerns, he +commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve. In the matter of views on +art, he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and +paradoxical opinions which, if disputed, were merely affirmed with +greater violence.</p> + +<p>It is related of him that, if any one persisted in holding an opinion +contrary to his own, Gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from +those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an +embarrassed silence.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, we owe to the fortunate preservation of various +fragmentary notes, made in the solitude of his last desperate years, +indications of what Gauguin's religious and political opinions were. +Here are some of them:—</p> + +<p>"If I gaze before me into space, I have a vague sense of the Infinite; +nevertheless I am the conclusion of something that has been begun. I +understand then, that there has been a beginning and that there will be +no end.</p> + +<p>"In this I do not possess the explanation of a mystery, but merely the +mysterious sense of this mystery—and this sensation is intimately +linked to the belief in an eternal life, promised by Jesus.</p> + +<p>"But then, if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into +the world, it is necessary to believe, with the Buddhists, that we have +always existed.</p> + +<p>"A change of skin.</p> + +<p>"All this is very strange.</p> + +<p>"The unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it +is, unfathomable. God does not belong to the scholar, the logician. He +belongs to the poets, to their dreams. He is the symbol of Beauty, +Beauty itself."</p> + +<p>From these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in +Gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures: <i>Le Christ Jaune</i> and <i>Le +Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers</i>; when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs: +<i>Soyez Amoureuses and Soyez Mystérieuses</i>; when he drew the lithographs: +<i>La Cigale et les Fourmis</i>, and <i>Léda</i> which bears the defiant +inscription "Honi soit qui mal y pense."</p> + +<p>Gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious +illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in +nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a +false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the +wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the +thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live.</p> + +<p>Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he +recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a +protest that had failed. Humanity had not yet produced, save by +exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and +giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." A +terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in Europe for the next +generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind.</p> + +<p>Therefore, in contemplating Christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, +of the futility of this sacrifice. His attitude to Christianity became +purely Protestant. Across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of +the beneficent Virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of +maternity.</p> + +<p>In <i>Le Christ Jaune</i> he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved +impotent to elevate mankind to its level. <i>Le Christ au Jardin +d'Oliviers</i> echoes the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me?" The terrible little picture, <i>Les Misères Humaines</i> sums +up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted +civilization. Even the later Tahitian <i>Birth of Christ</i> renders nothing +but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. In the <i>Ia Orana +Maria</i>, or the Salutation to Mary, the Virgin is represented merely as a +happy human mother.</p> + +<p>Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at +Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, +the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was +better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against +the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. Thus in his art he +aimed at repose, the quietism of the Buddhists. His knowledge of +Buddhism was not deep—indeed in his eyes, Buddhism, too, was a vain +revolt against nature—but his respect for Buddhistic doctrine remained +greater than his respect for Christianity. At the bottom of his soul +there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "Eat, +drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die."</p> + +<p>As he put it later in the pages of his Tahitian recital:—</p> + +<p>"To the eyes of Tagatha (the God) the most splendid glories of kings and +their ministers are but dust and spittle:</p> + +<p>"To his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six +serpents:</p> + +<p>"To his eyes, the search for the Way of Buddha is like the coming of +flowers."</p> + +<p>It is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man +who was never more than half an European, that we are able to understand +how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the +bas-relief, <i>Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez Heureuses</i> and the somber +despair of <i>Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers</i>. That mind, as we have +seen, was neither wholly Christian or Pagan—though the untamed Pagan +element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined +Christian side. Therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether Gauguin +as an artist, displayed more of the Classic tradition than of the +Gothic. Gothic as well as Classical strains remained mingled in him up +to the last. Throughout his work there runs a longing—obscure, +tormented, and ultimately foiled—for a natural religion: a religion +that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, +like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain +renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still +without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker.</p> + +<p>At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced +naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris +was on the verge of her æsthetic nineties. A small group of writers, +chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a +sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in +consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled +Decadents. This title was soon abandoned for the better designation of +Symbolists.</p> + +<p>Gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of Symbolism as a sort of hero. Here +was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious. He had definitely +broken away from his own commercial surroundings. He had defiantly +ruptured his own family ties. He had abolished Impressionist science and +had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the +process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular +art. His appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, +sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. He +became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of +symbol.</p> + +<p>Some critics have stated that Gauguin's head was turned by this +adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he +remained what he had always been. No man was less fitted for living in +the midst of cultivated society than he. For a time, during that strange +epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, +largely an European; but this was merely on the surface and had +completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. An +invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in +him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. This +shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. But +to every one else Gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order +to keep them at a distance. And, generally, he succeeded.</p> + +<p>It is small wonder then that Schuffenecker shortly found his guest again +intolerable, and that Gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging. +Schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. He seems never to have realized +that Gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love +and understand. In losing Gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever +likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already +acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing Gauguin's +collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by Cezanne, Van Gogh, +and Odilon Redon.</p> + +<p>Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he +ever had—who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was +Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel +taken part in the Volpini exhibition.</p> + +<p>It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community +of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea.</p> + +<p>De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a +certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. Every +summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's +cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, +and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the +Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of +dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the +complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering +his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her +end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as +"the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on +the former's return from Martinique in 1887.</p> + +<p>To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it +was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to +their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both +were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made +of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and +nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were +due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was +of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the +creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few +attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last +stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of +all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de +Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img07" id="img07"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_07.jpg" width="500" alt="Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina)." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).</span> +</div> + +<p>The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a +Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of +what induced him to take this decision.<a name="FNanchor_1_6" id="FNanchor_1_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_6" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He chanced to attend, or to +read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der +Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to +suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a +terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without +winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to +lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life +means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such +phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held +out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he +might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was +fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live +in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships +of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans +gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him +there, all the better—his isolation would then be complete.<a name="FNanchor_2_7" id="FNanchor_2_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_7" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the +proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin +sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various +symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece +entitled <i>Loss Of Maidenhood</i>, which has fortunately vanished, and an +etching representing Mallarmé with Poe's Raven in the background. +Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only +concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday.</p> + +<p>At all events Gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were +auctioned off at the Hôtel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine +thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make +his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that +this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A +banquet was held at the Café Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were +assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a +similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally +a benefit performance was given by the Théâtre d'Art for the departing +artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of +his last years.<a name="FNanchor_3_8" id="FNanchor_3_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_8" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in +the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play +<i>L'Intruse</i> made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. +Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to +expect. And yet he did not draw back.</p> + +<p>On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his +voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on +Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the +mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's +self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. +And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, +touching words:—</p> + +<p>"Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family +and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my +thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more +terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have +made, which is utterly irreparable."</p> + +<p>With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_6" id="Footnote_1_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_6"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Les Marges</i>, Paris, May 15, 1918.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_7" id="Footnote_2_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_7"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters +show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility +of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_8" id="Footnote_3_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_8"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit +whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_IV_THE_RETURN_TO_SAVAGERY_1891-1895" id="PART_IV_THE_RETURN_TO_SAVAGERY_1891-1895"></a>PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South +Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's +knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical +but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous +for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge +of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. +Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and +the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the +chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were +discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different +in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or +from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us +through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the +Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in +different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social +organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; +they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin +in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by +thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, +abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting +currents. How then had they reached Tahiti?</p> + +<p>The anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of +the Caucasian or Indo-European. Though their skin is dark, it is for the +most part less dark than that of the natives of India. Set a Maori +soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the +difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to +give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. In other +characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian. They are +a tall, well built, massive race, contrasting favorably with the Malay. +Their hair is black—or in some cases copper brown—and wavy, again +contrasting with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the +Papuan. Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases +very beautiful. Only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to +artificial flattening in infancy.</p> + +<p>We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after +the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which must have been settled +late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European +stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked ships, +capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a +voyage of some weeks. (We know the Polynesians were capable of building +such ships.) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, +where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, +whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, +eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island. In order to +accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and +astronomical knowledge must have been great. Later on, under the +influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, +careless, effeminate. And, as such, they were discovered by the +enterprising Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchman with his Parisian vices, by +the thorough and scientific German. The combined influences of +missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the +inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889.</p> + +<p>To these people came Paul Gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their +history. It is true that he was weary of Europe and had set out with the +aim he had cherished since the Martinique days—to be the first painter +of the tropics. But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, +because he believed that here was a country where one could live for +almost nothing. It must always be remembered that Gauguin had no private +means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, +did not sell. Cezanne, Degas, could afford not to sell their pictures +because they had other resources. But Gauguin was forced to find some +way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would +take the public some time to accept. In a letter to de Monfreid he +stated his system: "From the beginning, I knew that this would be a life +from day to day; so, logically, I habituated myself to it. Instead of +losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, I put all my +strength into the day—like the wrestler who does not employ his body +except in the moment of wrestling. When I lie down in the evening I say +to myself: One more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead. +In my work as a painter, ditto—I do not trouble about anything, but +each day for itself—at the end of a certain time, this covers a +considerable extent of surface. If men would not waste their time in +disconnected struggles and labors! Every day a link. That is the great +point."</p> + +<p>Such was the frame of mind in which Gauguin went to Tahiti. What he +found there was not the "Pays de Cocaigne" he probably expected. The +Gods do not give their gifts in this fashion. Gauguin asked much from +Tahiti and much was given. But he asked for material comfort and was +offered instead spiritual salvation. In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at +last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought +him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its +own terrible parable to all men.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>On the night of the eighth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of +voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. He +was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last +winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to +take to his bed.</p> + +<p>He was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. Although +possessed of a normally strong constitution, fortified by the open-air +existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as +boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, +when he reached Tahiti, became immediately worse. This was largely due +to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the +privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for +livelihood.</p> + +<p>His prospects were not brilliant. The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant +and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took +him for a spy sent out from Paris, and by every possible means attempted +to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited +native population. The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, +disgusted him. The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to +all whites.</p> + +<p>A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his +interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old +royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen +Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in +her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven +years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying +gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct.</p> + +<p>Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official +ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the +attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the +embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to +revive at any favorable opportunity.</p> + +<p>He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut—a process +which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live +as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still +further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him +from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to +approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, +money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by +enigmatic and evasive smiles.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given +by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream +than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the +natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the +natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of +the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as +"dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to +a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his +vanity, and smiled behind his back.</p> + +<p>Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for +his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he +had suddenly aged—a common experience enough for white men coming +suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble. +This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was +taking its little revenge.</p> + +<p>He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage +back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would +come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now +spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was +invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img08" id="img08"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_08.jpg" width="500" alt="The Old Spirit." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The Old Spirit.</span> +</div> + +<p>On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures +to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas <i>L'Esprit Veille</i>. +The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the +next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily +declined and he was every day less talked about.</p> + +<p>Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to +make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him +and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his +unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, +Bernard, Sérusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting +that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cézanne and Van Gogh +were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his +departure from Paris was rapidly fading.</p> + +<p>He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent +pictures—pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he +believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as +elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary +material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, +could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a +longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make +himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps +it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old.</p> + +<p>On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Marseilles with four +francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the +height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat +in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, +during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite +failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them +such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And +yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might +well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to +its owner, as well as others, only misfortune.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>Paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the +world. Since her spoiled darling Napoleon fell, there has been no one to +whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. There are a +few exceptions to this rule. Hugo, because he lived in exile; Balzac, +because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; +and of recent years Verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafés, the +vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a +prison. Such men may be the idols of Paris. For the rest, Paris is +willing only to think of her children as sons for a day.</p> + +<p>Gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of Paris. But he had +already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his.</p> + +<p>Had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength +of the sensation his pictures had created in Denmark and subsequently in +Sweden, Norway, and Germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an +arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his +work. But Gauguin demanded all or nothing! And, as was the case before +with his mother and her Peruvian relatives, the result was nothing.</p> + +<p>He decided to give a general exhibition of his entire Tahitian work, +forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. Durand-Ruel gave him a +gallery and Charles Morice, chief of the young symbolists whom Gauguin +had met after the Volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which +probably only served to mystify the public still further.</p> + +<p>For the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce +frank bewilderment. Of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three +remained unsold. What misled visitors more than anything else were the +titles that Gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. These titles +were in the Tahitian language. Every one immediately supposed that in +order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the +history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of Tahiti. Naturally +therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archæological and ethnological +puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key.</p> + +<p>Gauguin, of course, had intended something else. Just as he had used +Brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of Christ, so he +had used Tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery +of life as it was lived in Eden and in the days of man's awakening—in +that Golden Age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. But +it was useless for him to try to explain that Tahiti had merely given +him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures.</p> + +<p>Morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and +listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of +the crowd. It was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the +Indian who smiles at the stake. Only Degas came and understood. To him +on the last day of the exhibit, Gauguin said: "Monsieur Degas, you have +forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured +handed it to the astonished painter.</p> + +<p>The bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his, had +not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save Gauguin +for better things, sent him means of salvation. A brother of his father +died in Orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. From his estate, Gauguin +inherited thirteen thousand francs.</p> + +<p>The exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly. +Instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and +determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle Paris. Morice +admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. If +this was the case Gauguin would have done well had he uttered the +well-known prayer, "Deliver me from my friends!" For Morice, even, +admitted later that it was, under the circumstances, a mistake.</p> + +<p>About Gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have +grown with the years. It is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were +colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with Tahitian subjects in +imitation of stained glass (these same windows were, by the way, on +exhibition at a dealer's in Paris a few years ago). It is true that his +rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. It +is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said +to have come from Java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than +anything else. It is true also that he wore a strange costume, +consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons, a blue +waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat +with a blue ribbon. But the importance of these and of similar details +is very slight. Gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time +that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the +attention of heedless Paris were dead also and forgotten.</p> + +<p>Despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, Gauguin found himself +ill-at-ease. The facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the +tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. He wandered off +to Bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before Memling and +astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of Rubens. He lost +interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, Seguin and O'Connor. +After a vain attempt to get a post from the Government as a resident in +Oceania, he again drifted back to Pont-Aven.</p> + +<p>There, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto +model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. In a moment, all +his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him. +He was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way. +He attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping +behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin.</p> + +<p>The mulatto fled, took a train to Paris, entered the empty studio, +seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. As for Gauguin, +he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and +smoking a cigarette.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>Little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague +understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at Pont-Aven, +this understanding became a conviction.</p> + +<p>He saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to +accomplish and why he had failed. He knew now what his art had been; a +great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had +gone on in his soul. What he had fought against was the cunning +extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of +nineteenth century Europe. And nineteenth century Europe had risen +against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. He must either +submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul.</p> + +<p>Among the people of Tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very +folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, +among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral +dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else. +Among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived +vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the +scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a +door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists +nor theologians could ever pierce. Among these savages he had found a +dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be +destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own +soul.</p> + +<p>On September 20, 1894, he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid:—</p> + +<p>"As you say, I have not given any news of myself recently and every one +is complaining. The reason is, you see, that I have lost all my strength +through suffering, above all at night, which I frequently pass without +any sleep. And into the bargain naturally I have done nothing this +infernal month except spend money. For the rest, I have made a fixed +resolve to go back and live always in Oceania and shall return to Paris +in December in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my +bazar at no matter what price. If I succeed I shall leave as soon as +possible in February. I can then finish my days without care for the +morrow and without the external struggle against fools—Farewell to +painting, except as a means of distraction. My house will be in +sculptured wood."</p> + +<p>The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned +to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An +auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his +return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in +Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a +time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a +preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's +response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint +against Gauguin:</p> + +<p>"You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I +wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, +behind the Institute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, +close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse! I would have willingly given you +this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you +wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a +breathing space, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the +outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, +more brutally, by an 'I will not.'</p> + +<p>... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it—I know that this +avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only +strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to +remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with +reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain +partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art +a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate +a super-annuated style of painting.</p> + +<p>... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the +southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your +studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw +trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and +men which only you can create.</p> + +<p>"A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no God can +live—Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, +but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny +for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an +Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or +two!</p> + +<p>"This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, +who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound +sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in +watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, +and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this +Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ +and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not +desire this pitiful God who accepts blows. My God is rather +Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men.</p> + +<p>"No, Gauguin is not formed from the work of Chavannes, nor from that of +Manet, nor from that of Bastien-Lepage.</p> + +<p>"Who is he then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome +civilization; something of a Titan who, jealous of his Creator, in +his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up +his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring +to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img09" id="img09"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_09.jpg" width="500" alt="Calvary." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Calvary.</span> +</div> + +<p>"Bon voyage, Master: but come back here to me. I shall by that time +perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me +to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since I am +beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating +a new world."</p> + +<p>To this letter, Gauguin replied-with the following profession of +faith:—</p> + +<p>"I have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for +my catalog. I had the idea of asking you for a preface, when I saw you +the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue +northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. I had +then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization +and my barbarism.</p> + +<p>"You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of +youth.</p> + +<p>"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and +harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a +sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and +the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my +studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. +This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will +be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch +to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage +happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana?</p> + +<p>"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked +before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without +shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil +and a sorrow."</p> + +<p>In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand +francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his +feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he +left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, +that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in +Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled +"Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best +commentary on and the final analysis of his mind.</p> + +<p>We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the +book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on +his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; +perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his +refers in passing to events that took place as late as 1897.</p> + +<p>Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery—the +conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with +civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet +realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while +civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying.</p> + +<p>To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary +artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, +in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic +ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the +professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others +feel, in the incidents of a naïve story, the essence of Tahiti—the soul +of the native.</p> + +<p>It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to +savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether +it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain +undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the +royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that +event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a +native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, +that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations +with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, +owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial +triumph in France.</p> + +<p>These facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon +which the fascinating story of Gauguin's spiritual development is bit by +bit, built up. He made use of these facts in the same way as he made use +of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful +forms. All art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital +he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, +savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are +at liberty to believe or not as we choose.</p> + +<p>So we follow him from Papeete into the backwoods. We find him holding +aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple +hospitality. We see him making his first tentative attempts at +establishing a community of thought. He tries to persuade the natives to +sit for their portraits—with little success. He tries to find solace +in the companionship of the half-caste Titi, in vain. Then Jotefa comes +upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto +unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of +sex, and thereby rendered sex more dangerous, more artificial, more +unnatural. So he gets his first gleam of intelligence. The next comes, +when Jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is +not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others. +This further enlightens him. He contrasts this opinion on art as +something useful to man with art as the European sees it, a mere +freakish amusement. Finally, he hazards everything. He takes a young +native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. All goes +well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the +natives. They laugh at his luck. He asks them why. Because his line has +caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife +being unfaithful to him. He returns home, half-believing the +superstition. The native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. He cannot +beat her. He can only forgive and understand. So the story closes.</p> + +<p>From such a story, we should naturally receive the impression that +Gauguin's life in Tahiti was ideally happy. But his letters reveal that +he was even more unhappy there than in France. So whatever elements of +fact may be in his story, it is evident that they cannot be disentangled +from the fictional details. It is better to take "Noa Noa" altogether as +a series of fictitious adventures, designed to bring out the fact that +Gauguin became, despite himself, as nearly one with the natives as it is +possible for any European to be. Thus we see, bit by bit, the Tahitians +claiming him as one of their own, from the day that he is forced by +necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused, +to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even +their easy tolerance of marital infidelity. If we look at the story in +this light, it becomes an allegory easily readable, an allegory of +civilization going down before primitive nature, expressed in a series +of parables.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, Gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and +devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked +Charles Morice to collaborate. Morice thereupon wrote a series of highly +florid descriptions and poems, inspired by Gauguin's pictures, in a +style strongly tinged with the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé. These +poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of Gauguin's +recital.<a name="FNanchor_1_9" id="FNanchor_1_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_9" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The result is that "Noa Noa" contains two books; the first +Gauguin's, the second, Morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused +unless he remembers that the sections by Gauguin are all headed "Le +Conteur Parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous +story. Morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions +add anything to Gauguin's recital. Some people may even prefer the glow +of Morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of Gauguin's poetry. Gauguin +himself philosophically remarked that he wished Morice's work to stand +beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a +civilized decadent and a naïve and brutal savage.</p> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_9" id="Footnote_1_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_9"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> They have been wisely omitted from the English +translation.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="PART_V_THE_FIGHT_AGAINST_CIVILIZATION_1895-1903" id="PART_V_THE_FIGHT_AGAINST_CIVILIZATION_1895-1903"></a>PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903</h3> + + +<p class="center">I</p> + +<p>With Gauguin's last return to Tahiti there opened for him the final and +most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against +encroaching civilization. The letters that he sent to de Monfreid during +this period are painful reading. They breathe the weary cry of a man who +knows that Fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a +warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but +to fight on. For Gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had +carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. The wound +in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under +the climate of Tahiti, it reopened. Owing to the rash exposure of his +skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by +eczema. Night after night was spent in sleepless pain. To add to his +troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on +him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the +white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. It seemed +to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies.</p> + +<p>Before leaving France, a number of friends had agreed to buy his +pictures, and assure him a steady income. These now withdrew their +support. He had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of +sculptured wood which he dreamed of; the construction of the house +carried away his remaining capital. He was everywhere fleeced, not only +by the French colonists, but also by the natives, who were growing more +and more corrupt every day, thanks to the happy influence of +civilization. Even after his house was built, he was not allowed to +keep it in peace. The owner of the ground died, leaving his affairs in a +tangle; Gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the +house, or see it destroyed. This last he refused to do, so he was +forced, finally, to borrow money, a thing he had never done in his life +before.</p> + +<p>Towards the end of 1897, his situation grew even worse. His eyes, now +permanently inflamed, were so painful that he could not even touch a +brush. The tragic portrait of himself in profile, which he sent about +this time to de Monfreid, clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight. +De Monfreid had sent him colors, but these were useless—he could not +even exchange them for bread. And to add to all he was in debt, more and +more heavily, month after month. De Monfreid wrote him encouragingly, +tried to sell his pictures, spoke of articles, of a press campaign on +his behalf. The answer was—"I only desire silence, silence and again +silence. Let me die in peace, forgotten, or if I ought to live, let me +live in peace, forgotten.... What matter if I am the pupil of Bernard or +Sérusier? If I have painted daubs, why set out to gild them, to deceive +people as to their quality?"</p> + +<p>Early in 1898 his resolution was taken. Weary, exhausted, at the end of +his tether, he decided to meet death half-way. He finished a large +picture, a sort of strange allegory of despair, entitled <i>D'où venons +nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?</i> and then took arsenic. The dose +was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea, which recurred +for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food. Meanwhile +his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had +taken him so much trouble to build.</p> + +<p>In order to obtain food, he shortly afterwards returned to Papeete and, +at the age of fifty, took up a position as a shipping clerk at the Board +of Public Works, with a salary of six francs a day. To such straits was +he reduced, and yet he continued the fight. Can one help admiring his +tenacity?</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the devoted de Monfreid had been busy. He had enlisted the +interest of Degas, of Vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling +some of the artist's pictures. Gauguin might now have counted upon a +steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. But with him, +there was to be no compromise. Because Bernard, Sérusier, Maurice Denis +had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some +influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them +or to exhibit in their company. Of course he merely made himself more +unpopular in Paris by such conduct. But Gauguin's personality was of a +kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. He admired +genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as Degas, Poe, +Balzac, and Mallarmé. For ordinary society, he preferred either natives +or children. Nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de Monfreid's +efforts, he found himself out of debt in 1899 and able to return to his +house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. Things seemed to +improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease +of his legs. He set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower +seeds which de Monfreid had sent, at his request, from France. Ill, +ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his +goal.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<a name="img10" id="img10"></a> +<img src="images/gauguin_10.jpg" width="500" alt="Matamua (Olden Days)." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Matamua (Olden Days).</span> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">II</p> + +<p>It is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in Gauguin's career, +unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical +ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from +the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the +time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. He had +been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown +power was now pursuing him with its hatred. In his next stage, we find +him turning even against the natives.</p> + +<p>On his return to Tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged +thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. She had served him +devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed +him in his illness. After his return to the house from Papeete, she had +resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. Now, for +some reason or no reason, Gauguin suddenly took it into his head that +she had robbed him, and drove her out. The poor soul, however, returned +and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to +call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a +violation of his domicile. Of course, the law did nothing.</p> + +<p>This only further enraged Gauguin. He decided to attack the entire +colonial administration. Since his return, he had been everywhere +treated by the Europeans at Tahiti as a madman or fool. Now he would get +his revenge.</p> + +<p>With the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several +numbers of a paper called, first <i>Les Guèpes</i>, and later <i>Le Sourire</i>. +The contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff +that Gauguin ever wrote. But these crude gibes at the governor and at +the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude +caricatures that Gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to +have produced a stir. People began to fear him at last; it was, for a +moment, a triumph.</p> + +<p>But Tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. A railway +had been built into the interior; the Protestant missionaries grew every +day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the +natives. Gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to +de Monfreid for medicines. But shortly he found his own need of medicine +as great as that of any of the wretched natives. An epidemic of +influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the +hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. To add to his griefs, +the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an +impossible figure.</p> + +<p>Hearing that life in the Marquesas Islands was cheaper, that the natives +there were physically more unspoilt, also that Europeans were few and +far between, he decided to quit Tahiti and install himself in the +island of Hiva-Hoa or Dominica. He hoped to find there elements of a +purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. This hope was destined +to be realized only in part.</p> + +<p>Gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, +Martinique, Brittany and Tahiti. He might have done better work at other +places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. In the +case of his removal to the Marquesas it was the strength that was +lacking.</p> + +<p>Traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his +eyes are to be found even in his latest Tahitian pictures. Owing to his +habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. +The first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, +superior to the productions of 1891-93. The <i>Te Arii Vahine</i> or +Reclining Woman, of 1896 is finer in design even than the <i>L'Esprit +Veille</i> of 1892-3. The <i>Youth Between Two Girls, La Case</i> (1897), the +beautiful <i>Navé Navé Mahana</i> (Delightful Days) of 1896, with its feeling +of a terrestrial paradise—these are masterpieces of their kind. But the +portrait of himself (1897) already shows signs of inability to finish +and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. And with many of the +succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater +carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. The more +savage Gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. +One is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the Irish dramatist, +Synge.</p> + +<p>The Gauguin who sought solitude of far-off Hiva-Hoa was not the Gauguin +of ten years before. He was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. And +he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. Nevertheless, +before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. +Pictures like the <i>Jeune Fille à l'Eventail</i> (1902) or the magnificent +<i>Contes Barbares</i> (also 1902) in which the Marquesas type appears, are +the last word of Gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new +heaven and earth. The flame burned clear in him just before the +close—then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">III</p> + +<p>The Marquesas Islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and +basaltic formation of Tahiti, of volcanic origin. They lie about a +thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more +humid and less supportable to white men. Owing to this fact, and to the +fact that they are out of the track of steamers between San Francisco +and Sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character.</p> + +<p>The natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any Polynesian +peoples. In distinction to the Tahitians, who are either red or olive +brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. In this they +resemble the Maories of New Zealand, as in the practice of +face-tattooing common among the males. They were formerly great +fighters and ferocious cannibals, as Herman Melville's "Omoo" tells us. +The first white settlers amongst them were French Roman Catholic +missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by +discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial +abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. The +Marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is +Tahiti.</p> + +<p>It was on the chief island of this group that Gauguin installed himself. +His capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start +constructing another house. This, like his house in Tahiti, was +ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. In +the garden, stood a rude clay statue—a sort of combination of a Buddha +and a Maori idol—under a canopy. Gauguin called this statue Te +Atua—the God, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. On +the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from Morice's +verses in "Noa Noa":</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"The Gods are dead and Tahiti dies of their death,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">The sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of Eve,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Sterile gold, sealed by some divine design."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Altogether in the Marquesas, Gauguin found a great charm and repose. He +seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives +and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king. But his health +was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one Chinese +boy, he lived alone. He even dreamed of abandoning the Marquesas (not +because he was weary of the place, but because he knew his strength was +small) and seeking a more favorable climate in Spain, where he thought +he might be able to paint.</p> + +<p>Except for the constant trouble with his health, his only difficulty was +with the missionaries. With the exception of a few settlers, they were +the only whites on the islands. Gauguin had advanced in savagery to +such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people. He +refused to see that the Catholic Missionaries had at least attempted to +save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the +Protestant Missionaries in Tahiti. The insistence of the Catholics upon +monogamy, upon European dress, upon mission schools and religious +observances infuriated him. He made a statue of a nude woman and set it +up in his garden. The Bishop protested. Gauguin promptly made a +caricature in clay of the bishop, with horns on his head like the Devil, +and set it up facing the statue. Something of the old Gothic love of the +grotesque, something, too, of the typically Parisian desire to "<i>épater +de bourgeois</i>" remained in him to the last.</p> + +<p>But this was not all. Gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in +peace. Although de Monfreid had worked devotedly, his position in France +was still insecure; Vollard might at any moment refuse to take more +pictures to sell. The wound he had received by his failure to impress +Paris in 1893 still smarted. He determined to write two articles +containing his opinions on art, technique, painting, life and morality, +in order to confound the Parisian critics. These articles, entitled +"Anecdotes of an Apprentice" and "Before and After," are little more +than a series of feverishly jotted notes. Later, with other notes of a +similar nature, they were embodied in a large album entitled "Avant et +Après," which remains the fullest body of information about Gauguin's +life and art we possess. The <i>Mercure de France</i> judged, perhaps +rightly, that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print +them.</p> + +<p>The other old score that he had to wipe out was with the French colonial +administration. In Tahiti, he had fought the governor, the law courts, +and the gendarmes. Here it was the customs officials who roused his +wrath. Two American ships had recently visited the island and a certain +amount of goods had been sold to the natives, through the connivance of +the gendarmes, without paying tax. Gauguin immediately wrote a letter on +the subject to the Administration, stating the facts as he understood +them and protesting, on behalf of the natives, against the bribery and +corruption of the Customs in this instance. The only reply made was a +notice from the law courts that the Administration intended to take +steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement. Gauguin +appeared in court, where he was promptly condemned to prison for three +months and to a fine of a thousand francs.</p> + +<p>It was ruin, but Gauguin determined to appeal. The tribunal was +irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part, at +least, true. He was sure of winning his case, but an appeal necessitated +a return to Tahiti and the costs of an attorney, and his capital was +again running low. He wrote to de Montfreid, begging him to find a buyer +for three pictures, at the price of fifteen hundred francs; he sent off +ten more pictures to Vollard. Then he prepared to make his appeal.</p> + +<p>Death surprised him suddenly and Paul Gauguin's appeal will never be +heard in this world.</p> + +<p>A letter from the only white man, the Protestant minister Vernier, who +knew him, leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of Gauguin's +death. It was not the eczema of the legs, nor leprosy, as some have +hinted, nor another dose of arsenic, nor syphilis, that ended his life; +it was a simple syncope of the heart. His energy, with which he had kept +up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had +drawn so many beautiful pictures, was worn out. The machine slackened +and stopped.</p> + +<p>Paul Gauguin died on the 6th of May, 1903.</p> + +<p>A few days before his death he had written his last letter to Charles +Morice, the words of which stir one like a trumpet.</p> + +<p>"I am on the ground but I am not beaten. The Indian, who smiles while he +is being tortured, is not conquered. You are mistaken if you meant that +I am wrong in calling myself a savage. I <i>am</i> a savage, and the +civilized feel this, for there is nothing in my work which could produce +bewilderment save this savage strain in me, for which I am not myself +responsible. It is therefore inimitable. Every human work is a +revelation of the individual. Hence there are two kinds of beauty; one +comes from instinct, the other from labor. The union of the two, with +the modifications resulting therefrom, produces great and very +complicated richness. Art-criticism has yet to discover the fact.... +Raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from +discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in +him. Raphael was born with beauty. All the rest in him is modification.</p> + +<p>"Physics, chemistry, and above all the study of Nature, have produced an +epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists robbed +of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of +the productive element they no longer possess. They now act only in +disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone. +Solitude is not to be recommended to every one, for a man must have +strength to bear it and to act alone. All I have learnt from others has +been an impediment to me. It is true I know little, but what I do know +is my own."</p> + +<p>Yet civilization, after all, had the last word. The very bishop, whom +Gauguin in life had hated and caricatured, intervened when he lay cold +and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full Catholic +rites in the cemetery of the Church at Atuana. And, by a concluding +stroke of irony, the grave was left unmarked. Thus one of the greatest +painters of the later nineteenth century, and one of the bravest men the +world has ever seen, mingled his dust with that of the humblest +natives, in the same way as Blake, one of the greatest painters of the +early nineteenth century, had been buried before him in an unmarked +grave among the paupers, at Bunhill Fields.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">IV</p> + +<p>The immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth +century took place so rapidly and universally, that no one was able to +estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects. At +the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded Europe and +America was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man, born in +the fires of the French Revolution. After 1848 this idea gradually +vanished, and another took its place; the purely material idea of +progress. The perfected application of steam and the consequent +development of machinery; the immense tapping of the world's resources +of coal, metals, agricultural products; the equally immense, universal +exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to +their maximum; the creation of an international finance, resting upon +vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few, whose world-wide +interests were linked together by railways, steamship lines, telegraphs, +telephones; the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist +class, invisibly controlling the old, decayed aristocracy, the official +church, the machinery of the law; a larger middle class, dependent upon +and subservient to the capitalists; and an immense laboring class, +exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes: all these were +virtually the creation of a single century.</p> + +<p>Against this overwhelming flood of change, a few exceptionally gifted +men vaguely protested, affirming the greater value of human life over +mechanical invention; maintaining the antique dignity of man. Their +protest was incoherent, individualistic. These men were like broken and +scattered fragments of dykes, still unsubmerged and striving to hold +back the waters of a flood. Among them must be ranked the artist whose +life-story I have written.</p> + +<p>All that is vital and valuable in French painting of the nineteenth +century, since Ingres, springs directly from the enthusiasm and +spiritual energy of the French Revolution. The somber fury of Delacroix, +the colossal caricature of Daumier; the peasant art of Millet; the sane +realism of Courbet; the mordant irony of Degas and Forain; even the +feeling for nature and the open air which the Impressionists gave us, +all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for +personal freedom, for human liberty and development. When Gauguin +arrived on the scene, the reaction was already taking place. The +official, academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock +of outworn formulas. On the other hand, the Impressionists were striving +to render nature scientifically, unemotionally. Nature was becoming to +them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical +formulas for soil, air, sunlight. Only Puvis de Chavannes remained, +aloof and misunderstood, painting great decorations that seemed but the +remembrance of some golden age of the past, and easel pictures of a +profound, hopeless pessimism.</p> + +<p>Gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against +materialism, against unemotional vision began. At the outset he +attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the Impressionists. But, +by the purest instinct he discovered, as Cézanne had already discovered, +that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered +in color. And he also discovered (this time the discovery came from +Puvis de Chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted +either—that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by +nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that +even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to +suit the harmony of the composition. Thus unconsciously, almost without +volition on his part, he was led to understand that the Primitives +everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great +human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their +vision was or was not exact. And so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for +the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of +natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized +efficiency.</p> + +<p>Unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his +art or to his life. Gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only +a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished +world. And he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and +disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to +harmony with himself. At least the caricature of himself in <i>Contes +Barbares</i> is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled +child that some imagine him to be. Having both the world and himself to +struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should +represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved +only to be, as he said in his last letter to de Montfreid, "a downfall +followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." And so in +his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by Van Gogh after +the disaster that parted them: "Gauguin made one feel that a good +picture should be the equivalent of a good action."</p> + +<p>And indeed it is so. Every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound +moral responsibility. This responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty +of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of Christian +ethics, by which we are ruled. It is not the duty of upholding a system +of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very +roots of life. It is a far nobler, far more difficult task. The duty of +the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, +despite the morbid prejudices of Puritanism, the timid conventionality +of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of +suffering, decay and death. This duty Gauguin in his art strove to +accomplish. He affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's +labor, the earth. Cézanne, perhaps a more accomplished painter, endowed +perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great +painters of the past, shrank from making Gauguin's affirmation. He +accepted in his own life a compromise; in his art he ruthlessly +eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination. And +then, towards the end of his life, Cézanne complained that Gauguin had +vulgarized him.</p> + +<p>"Gauguin has not understood me; never will I accept the lack of +gradation and of tone; it's nonsense."</p> + +<p>It would have been better for Cézanne to have said that he could not, +dared not understand Gauguin.</p> + +<p>Nor is this all that Gauguin accomplished. He restored painting to its +proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts. He showed us that its +place is between architecture and music, and that sculpture is its twin +sister. He was the first man to suspect that the progress of the +scientific spirit among the Greeks had produced the same effects in +disassociating and destroying the arts, as has the progress of the +scientific spirit in the present day. He believed, and constantly +affirmed, that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he +built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies, as well as +upon the chosen architectural proportions of form, which, whether given +by perspective or not, seemed to him necessary. Thus he reconciled the +Venetians and the Primitives, and showed that the goal of both form and +color is decoration.</p> + +<p>William Blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan, who painted +his dream of a golden age in his own way, who steadfastly strove to +grasp the essential truth in every tradition: Egyptian, Cambodian, +Persian, Chinese, Gothic, Greek and Renaissance. But Gauguin could +never, had he known of Blake, have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic +negation, the contemptuous denial of earthliness, of "the delusions of +the goddess Nature." In Gauguin, the spirit never conquered the flesh, +and he remained to the end, a man. Blake was possibly the greater +visionary: Gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +<p class="center">V</p> + +<p>After Gauguin's death, his art rapidly became almost forgotten in +France. He remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were +not fifty of his pictures in that country. Even the few there are, hang +in scattered private collections, each containing one or at most three +or four. The great bulk of his work is in Germany, Scandinavia and +Russia. It proved impossible even in 1911 to raise sufficient money to +buy <i>L'Esprit Veille</i> for the Louvre.</p> + +<p>It is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able +to assemble a considerable quantity of his work. Gauguin was, above all +things, a decorator, and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater +effect than one. One does not judge Puvis de Chavannes, another +decorator, solely by his easel pictures, but by the great decorative +schemes in Paris, at Amiens and in Boston. This remark applies equally +to other decorators, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and +Veronese. A room hung with twenty Gauguins would produce an immense +effect of monumental power. That such a room exists in Moscow can be +small consolation to Western Europeans at present.</p> + +<p>His pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively, like +Sérusier, or drifted off into academicism, like Bernard, or watered down +their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume +decoration of Maurice Denis. None of them seized Gauguin's secret of +remaining simple, direct and savage. Aristide Maillol is an honorable +exception. A sculptor and tapestry designer, he was able to work upon +the indications that Gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches +and to show us, in part at least, how they might be realized.</p> + +<p>The main stream of French art simply ignored Gauguin. Instead of making +with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition, it went +forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting. The +Neo-Impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were +followed by disciples of Cézanne, who sought to reduce all forms to +certain geometrical primaries, basing their doctrine on certain words +which the master of Aix had let fall concerning the simplification of +form. Out of these emerged Matisse, whose art became, through a more and +more ruthless elimination of modeling, through a more and more arbitrary +placing of colors, an abstraction, an utterly unemotional series of +hieroglyphs. Then Picasso came upon the scene, eliminated color +altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form. The Cubists +followed Picasso. The Futurists in their turn started another kind of +abstract painting, the painting of mechanical energy, the dynamism +latent in form.</p> + +<p>The Expressionists, meanwhile, held to Van Gogh's and Gauguin's idea +that the picture must represent some emotion, but they denied Gauguin's +corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose +this emotion into its pictorial equivalent. Consequently they eliminated +form and strove to paint abstract emotion. Finally, the Vorticists +combined Futurism and Expressionism into a single whole and painted the +abstraction of an abstraction—the emotion of dynamic energy, thus +declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself, an art utterly +innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever.</p> + +<p>The motives of all these confused art movements, perplexing and +apparently in-congruous, were identical. They were all actuated by a +mania for scientific discovery, a desire to analyze phenomena until the +reality behind phenomena could be found. The physicists, chemists, +philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real +world—that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and +electrons, of radiant or non-radiant energy, or perhaps of elasticity +and inelasticity. These young art revolutionaries, who gave themselves +so many queer labels, were not, as many supposed, either insincere or +insane. They were merely smitten with the desire to make painting—and +not only painting, but even other arts as well—a branch of abstract +science. The world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion, +making some abstract concept. Therefore they strove to paint, not what +seemed to them unreal, but their absolute conceptions. This new +metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development +of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the +rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries +by the Byzantine monks of Mount Athos, was rapidly conquering the whole +field of aft when the past war broke out. Nor has the war altogether +suppressed its manifestations.</p> + +<p>The enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past +war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results +achieved by either side. However true it may be to hold the Germans as +primarily responsible for this destruction, in the first instance, yet +it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape +responsibility for the later developments of the struggle. Apart from +Germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war, civilization as a whole +must answer for the horror of its method. A piece of heavy artillery is +equally destructive, whether it be cast at Essen or at Le Creusot; a +Caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a Gotha; the submarine was +first employed in war by the Americans; the machine gun is an English +invention. For all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth +century, with our belief in purely material progress, stand guilty +to-day; and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over +four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come.</p> + +<p>The past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest +between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an +inhuman, scientific, organized machine. And the machine was victorious. +Just as the scientific spirit, conquering art before the war, led to the +extravagances of Cubism and Vorticism so, since the war, it has attacked +life itself; and made of national existence, no longer a problem of +human bravery, resource and intelligence, but merely a problem of +relative man-power and munitions. We have learned to speak of +"man-power" as our books on physics speak of "horse-power." The task we, +in the war, set ourselves was a grisly paradox; we proposed to save +civilization, to undo a great wrong, by destroying the very basis of +human life on which all civilization stands.</p> + +<p>It is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a +few artists who, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, foresaw +that material progress would end in annihilating humanity, that nature +and humanity, hand in hand, are more sacred than all the shells that +could ever be produced, the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws +that could ever be written. With a sense of spiritual release we revert +to those who dreamed of the great return to nature—to Rousseau, +Whitman, Gauguin, as well as to others who, although perhaps lesser men +than they, followed in their path—David Thoreau, Richard Jefferies. +They were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail—the +gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above +æsthetic negation. Their vision was of something not in themselves but +of something higher and nobler, as Gauguin knew when he deliberately +caricatured himself in <i>Contes Barbares</i>. As he knew also, the vision +was of something stated only fragmentarily, inscribed as a promise, a +foretaste, an indication of what might be. In Rousseau's prose, in +Whitman's poetry and in Gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope +for self-tortured humanity, and the promise of a land where nature and +man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED</h3> + + +<p>WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY:</p> + +<p>1. Paul Gauguin par Jean de Rotonchamp, Imprimé à Weimar par les Soins +du Comte de Kessler et se Trouve à Paris, chez Edouard Druet, Rue de +Faubourg Saint Honoré, No. 114. 1906. Edition limited to 250 copies.</p> + +<p>2. Gauguin, by Charles Morice. Floury, Paris, 1919. This and the +preceding work are the standard sources of Gauguin's life.</p> + +<p>3. Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Charles Daniel de Monfreid. Paris, Cres, +1919.</p> + +<p>4. White Shadows in the South Seas, by Frederick O'Brien. New York, The +Century Co., 1920. A travel book, with a few new sidelights on Gauguin's +final period.</p> + +<p>5. Avant et Après. Paul Gauguin aux Marquises. 1903. 100 copies only +published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript. A +translation into German has also appeared. Kurt Wolf Verlag, Berlin, +1920.</p> + + + +<p>WORKS OF ART CRITICISM IN ENGLISH:</p> + +<p>1. Modern Painting, by Willard Huntingdon Wright. New York, The John +Lane Company.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by +John Gould Fletcher + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL GAUGUIN, HIS LIFE AND ART *** + +***** This file should be named 38848-h.htm or 38848-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/4/38848/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org +(From images generously made available by the Intenet +Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..57348e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_01.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1db1e90 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_02.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..adec07b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_03.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..182dcb0 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_04.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3079edf --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_05.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..07bef96 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_06.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..74f2254 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_07.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..76074a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_08.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ffb7f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_09.jpg diff --git a/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..62b905f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848-h/images/gauguin_10.jpg diff --git a/old/38848.txt b/old/38848.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2f5365d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3369 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by John Gould Fletcher + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art + +Author: John Gould Fletcher + +Release Date: February 12, 2012 [EBook #38848] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL GAUGUIN, HIS LIFE AND ART *** + + + + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org +(From images generously made available by the Intenet +Archive.) + + + + + +PAUL GAUGUIN + +His Life and Art + +BY + +JOHN GOULD FLETCHER + + +_WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + +NICHOLAS L. BROWN + +NEW YORK + +MCMXXI + + + +[Illustration: Self-portrait of Gauguin.] + + + +TO + +M.T.H.S. + +WHO HELPED ME WITH + +ADVICE AND CRITICISM + + + +"Improvement makes straight roads; +but the crooked roads without improvement +are the roads of genius." + +WILLIAM BLAKE. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885 + PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889 + PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891 + PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 + PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + SELF-PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN, _Frontispiece_ + PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN'S MOTHER + THE PAINTER SCHUFFENECKER AND HIS FAMILY + STRUGGLE OF JACOB WITH THE ANGEL + THE IDOL + TAHITIAN WOMEN + HINA MARURU (FEAST TO HINA) + THE OLD SPIRIT + CALVARY + MATAMUA (OLDEN DAYS) + + + + +PAUL GAUGUIN + + + + +PART I: THE FORMATION 1849-1885 + + +About the middle of the last century, there occurred in Paris a series +of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future +history, secondary only to the days of the French Revolution. You will +seek Paris in vain for any public monument to these events, known as the +Revolution of 1848. Only the name of the hideously utilitarian Boulevard +Raspail may perhaps remind you, that in this year France achieved +another one of those political failures which have been so curiously +common in her history since 1789. + +In February of that year, King Louis Philippe and his ministers had fled +before the rising storm of popular feeling. It seemed at last that the +great popular revolution of the working classes, dreamed of by every +artist since 1789, proclaimed in the Rabelaisian caricatures of Daumier, +latent in the troubled Romanticism of the epoch, was at hand. A +provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the National +Assembly. But the provinces showed that it mattered little to them +whether the form of Government was changed or not. So long as the +peasant had his farm, his cow, his money safely stowed away in a +stocking, a hard-working wife, a pipe and a glass of wine, he was +content with things as they were. If the industrial classes of Paris +were starving, that was not his affair. He shared none of their fanatic +Socialism, none of their dreams of the millennium. He wanted to be left +alone. + +The National Assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate, and the +leaders of the Provisional Government discovered that they preferred to +stand with the majority rather than to fall with the Parisian +extremists. But the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle. On +the fifteenth of May, a mob attempted to take the Assembly by storm, and +failed. On the eighteenth, Lamartine, the former idol of the +Revolutionaries, was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech. The +Government found that it must either provide work and wages for the +Parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force. A scheme was +started, but it proved to be costly, and on the twenty-first of June the +Government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no +further with its project. Three days later the storm broke. Two hundred +and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets, crowned +with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men. For three days the mob +kept up a desperate resistance; then the last barricade fell, the blood +was washed off the pavements, the cause of "moderation" and "good sense" +was restored. + +There is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events. On the +seventh of June a son, Paul, was born to M. and Madame Gauguin, +residing in Paris. This infant, brought obscurely into the world to the +sound of cannon, was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of +Nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching +and as important in its effects as the great attempt of 1848. His life +was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, +the middle-class morality, of the late nineteenth century; his art was +to speak the promise of a renewed world, a world where man could again +walk naked, unashamed and free, as in Eden. He was destined to break +beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities, as the +revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the +government: but his ideas were to point the way to, new conceptions of +art and of life, which only the future can realize. + +Clovis Paul Gauguin, to give the father his full name, was a petty +journalist from Orleans. He had a post as collaborator on one of the +obscure newspapers of Liberal opinion, that so greatly flourished about +this time. His influence upon his son was slight, as is the case with +the fathers of most artists. It is to Madame Gauguin that we must turn +for an explanation of the character of her famous son. + +[Illustration: Portrait of Gauguin's mother.] + +Aline Marie Gauguin was the daughter of a certain Chazal, of whom we +know nothing, and of the then celebrated Socialist pamphleteer and +agitator, Flora Tristan. + +Flora Tristan was born in 1803 at Lima, Peru. Her father was a Spaniard +of noble descent, Mariano Tristan y Moscoso. He served as an officer in +the Peruvian Army, and probably took part in the wars of independence +which severed Peru from Spain, since we find him and his family later +occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the Republic. In 1818 +he sent his daughter to school in Paris. She eloped the next year with +Chazal and was disowned by her parents. After the birth of her child she +separated from her husband and returned to Peru, seeking a +reconciliation with her family. But the family had determined to do +nothing for the self-willed, impulsive daughter, and she drifted back to +Paris, where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of +strongly Socialistic tendencies. She became a pioneer of woman's +suffrage, of humanitarianism, of the trade-union movement. She toured +France making speeches. In 1836 she had the misfortune to meet Chazal +again in Paris, who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned +to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense. A few years later +she died in Bordeaux, and the trade-unions, remembering her zeal for +their cause and her personal beauty--which had moved them perhaps more +than the fervor of her speeches--subscribed the sum necessary to put up +a monument. + +Such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just +been born into the world. The tragic and violent union of Chazal and +Flora Tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became. +In Chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong +irritability; in Flora Tristan we see whence he drew his love of +personal and individual liberty, his hatred of moral restraint, his +scorn of the bourgeoisie, his Spanish hauteur and stoicism. Half-savage +Spanish blood flowed in his veins, a mixture of Arab, Celt and African. +Perhaps in his Peruvian descent there were even other currents--currents +of that Inca race which the Spaniards had subdued but not conquered. +Whatever else destiny held in store for him, it was certain from the +beginning that Paul Gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the +intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of Paris. + + +II + +The earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar +strands of tragedy, romance and savagery which were to recur so often in +his later life. In December, 1851, the makeshift Republic came to an end +and Louis Napoleon, by an easy _coup d'etat_, restored the Empire. +Clovis Gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the Liberal +paper for which he wrote. There was only one hope remaining: that Flora +Tristan's relations in Lima might do something for Paul and his sister +Marie. So the family set out for Peru. On the way, during the terrible +passage through the Straits of Magellan, Clovis Gauguin was seized with +heart failure and died. His body was taken ashore and buried at Port +Famine, or Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in the world, in Chile. + +The mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by +the head of the family, Flora Tristan's uncle, Don Pio Tristan y +Moscoso. Concerning this personage Gauguin himself told many anecdotes +in later years. Probably most of these were inexact to the point of +being fable pure and simple. We must remember that Gauguin at this time +was scarcely four years of age. We know that the family were wealthy +nobles, of high social standing, who lived in the old Castillian manner +of luxury and indolence. From such surroundings Gauguin doubtless +derived much of the "hidalgo manner" that distinguished him throughout +life--a blend of haughtiness, reserve and egoism, masking often a real +shyness before people. And here he saw, also for the first time, works +of art produced by a non-European civilization: ceramics, jewelry, +fabrics of Inca origin. The remembrance of these specimens of savage, +primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years. + +Gauguin's stay in Lima did not last long. Four years later his paternal +grandfather died in France, and his mother returned to that country in +order to obtain her share of his estate, which proved to be only a small +sum. + +In later years, the painter believed, or affected to believe, that if +his mother had remained in Peru and had neglected her relations in +France she would have been left heiress to Don Pio Tristan's property. +It is probable that Gauguin was here merely romancing, as he often did, +when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life. It is an +enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's +mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the +influence of Peruvian life. Peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the +tropics, for exotic, out-of-the-way, old-fashioned places, unspoiled by +the nineteenth century. Unconsciously many of the traits that made his +character so little comprehensible to the Frenchmen of his day were +planted in him during these years. + +France was now to give him something different. He was to be educated, +or rather to receive what passed for an education. He remained at a +seminary at Orleans till the age of seventeen, hating his studies, +becoming more and more intractable and unteachable. This seminary, as +all such institutions in France at the time, was conducted by Jesuit +priests. + +In later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he +had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy, false virtue and +spying. And with malicious irony he said: "And I also learnt there a +little of that spirit of Jesuit casuistry, which is a force not to be +despised in the struggle with other people." + +His sole ambition was to escape, to get to sea again, to make voyages to +the tropics. His mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy, +but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination. He was +therefore placed in the merchant marine. This decision of his mother he +regretted bitterly to the end of his life. + +In 1865 he embarked aboard the _Luzitano_, a cargo boat, on a voyage +from Havre to Rio de Janeiro. His grade aboard this ship was that of a +pilot's apprentice. + +Of this voyage, which enabled him to see again the tropics, Gauguin +retained in later years important memories. + +In the fragmentary note-books he kept in Tahiti he declared that it was +during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of +the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the Society +Islands in the Pacific. The remembrance of that story may have +influenced him later in his choice of Tahiti as an ideal residence. At +least the appearance of Rio de Janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind +fresh enthusiasm for the tropics. The stay at Rio was further signalized +by a liaison with an actress, of that eminently casual kind which +Gauguin was to experience so often later on. Finally the return voyage +brought about another liaison, this time with a Prussian woman, and in +defiance of ship's discipline. It was certain that his character--was +not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of +self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer. At all +events, the next thing we hear is that Gauguin quitted the merchant +service and enlisted in the French Navy as a common sailor, in February, +1868. Probably by this time his mother had refused to support him, and +he was forced into this position through necessity. + +The cruiser _Jerome Napoleon_, on which he found himself, was, to his +chagrin, ordered to cruise in northern waters. So instead of seeing the +tropics again, Gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound +Greenland coast and the barren North Cape. This was bad, but still worse +was to follow. The vessel was on its way to Spitzbergen when news was +brought to its captain that France had declared war upon Prussia. + +"Where are you going?" said the second officer, seeing the Captain put +the helm about. + +"To Charenton," replied the indignant first officer; Charenton being the +great lunatic asylum near Paris! + +The vessel got no nearer to France than Copenhagen, when the melancholy +news of Sedan came. The name _Jerome Napoleon_ was painted out, that of +_Desaix_ substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain +in the waters off Copenhagen till the close of the war in 1871, +contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize. + + +III + +In 1871, after the cessation of hostilities, Gauguin obtained leave, +renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. He was now +heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome +discipline that he had now endured aboard the _Desaix_ for three years. +Besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he +felt that he must seize it. + +His mother had died in the interval since he had last seen France and, +in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do +Paris banker, Gustave Arosa. This man immediately found for Paul a place +at Bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. And now there +opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in +retrospect the most amazing of his career. + +Though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an +instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan +savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing +prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the Bourse, without +troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position +might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. He had not been +long at Bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. +Possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the Paris stock +market had been utterly disorganized by the events of 1870-71, and, now +that peace was signed, France was making one of those rapid recoveries +that have been so common in her history. Stocks were going up and trade +was booming. Gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances +to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as +forty thousand francs. + +In 1873 he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was +never wholly to shake off. His wife, Mette Sophia Gad, was the daughter +of a Protestant clergyman of Copenhagen. The family was a good one and +enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the Danish capital. The +daughters had been educated at Paris, and one of them had married a +member of the Norwegian Parliament, while another had become the first +wife of the painter, Fritz Thaulow. + +When or where Gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it +was probably during the stay of the _Desaix_ at Copenhagen. At any rate +it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil +one, owing to his wife being a Protestant) was delayed owing to the loss +of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of St. Cloud. + +At this time, through his wife's friends and connections, through +Gustave Arosa, through Emile Schuffenecker--a fellow employee at +Bertin's--and through others, a new interest came into his life. He +began to paint, although pressure of work did not permit him to regard +this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first. Arosa was, in +his way, an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by +French artists of the day--among them Delacroix and Courbet. These works +he engraved in photogravure--an art then in its infancy--and sent copies +of the engravings to his personal friends. Through Schuffenecker Gauguin +was brought closely into touch with the Impressionists, who were then +making a sensation in Paris. Gauguin bought brushes and colors and began +by painting on Sundays and holidays. It was only slowly that he began to +look upon painting as anything but a distraction. + +His first essays in art were purely academic. He painted in the +prevailing style of the Salons and even sent one picture to the Salon of +1876. At the same time he began to attempt sculpture. He worked at first +in marble, a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more +coarsely-grained surface of wood, clay or paste. He liked a rough +surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order +to emphasize this roughness. + +Gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature. His early years at +sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity. He had a tremendous +interest in the technical processes of art. During his life he was able +to do almost equally well at painting, lithography and sculpture. He +also attempted etching, stained glass and pottery. His writings, +particularly his share in "Noa Noa," show a considerable grasp of +direct, poetic narrative--a gift that might very possibly have made of +him a good poet. Throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely +as a painter of pictures; his influence in opening new channels for +art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work. Even in +literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration. The +problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that +occupied his English contemporary, William Morris, almost as varied as +those that occupied Leonardo da Vinci. + +He acquired knowledge easily; his problem was always how to weigh, sift +and make use of it. But his growth to artistic maturity was slower than +in the case of artists who limit their field of effort, because he +attacked many subjects at the same time. + +It may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof, +not of a complex, but of a primitive nature. Yet it is undoubtedly true +that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost +everything. The interchangeability, the essential unity of all the arts, +is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages. As +civilization and consequently technique become more advanced, it grows +more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch +of art. Perhaps that is why, in our modern industrialized states, the +arts tend to disappear, to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly +diminishing minority. + +[Illustration: The painter Schuffenecker and his family.] + +All this was not suspected by Gauguin at the time, nor for years +afterwards. For the time he was content to paint and to follow the +prevailing fashions in his painting. And he soon found that the +prevailing fashion of the day in Paris was Impressionism. + + * * * * * + +To define Impressionism it is not necessary, as many professional +art-critics have done, to enter into long dissertations as to the +supremacy of pure colors, nor to see in Constable or Turner the ancestry +of the movement. + +Impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of Realism--or to +speak better, Naturalism--carried out in painting. This cult had already +possessed in painting one important precursor, Gustave Courbet. But it +is to literature, always the advance guard of the arts, that we must +turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed. + +A little before 1870, which year marks a turning point not only in +France's political but also in her intellectual life, there came a +change over her literature. Romanticism, which had startled the world in +1830 with Lamartine, de Musset, de Vigny, Hugo and Balzac, was now dead. +The heroic, the Napoleonic, the Byronic attitude had somehow gone out of +life. Under the Second Empire, the bourgeois triumphed over the +Tuileries. + +A few years before the crash of 1870, Charles Baudelaire gave to the +world his _Fleurs du Mal_--the exasperated cry against life of a soul +tortured with too great a sensibility. Almost at the same time Gustave +Flaubert, in _Madame Bovary_, erected his monument of infamy to the +memory of the bourgeois. These two books opened the path to Naturalism, +to the "human document," to the de Goncourts, to de Maupassant, and to +Zola. + +Impressionism was the logical outgrowth, in another sphere, of the work +of these Naturalist writers. + +It abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural +sunlight. + +It abolished the classical "subject" and left the painter free to paint, +as Manet said, "_N'importe quoi_." + +Thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric +vibration, foreshadowed by Constable and Turner, but not by them +elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with +equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon Nature, +and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. It was, as Manet said +again, "Nature seen through a temperament." + +Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared +to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending +from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres. +This was the Norman, Puvis de Chavannes. + +But Puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of +walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in +the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while Impressionism was the +_succes de scandale_ of the day. + +Gauguin heard of Impressionism and became a devout follower of its +theories. He painted pictures in the manner of Camille Pissarro, who was +a compatriot of Madame Gauguin, having been born in the Island of St. +Thomas in the Antilles, then Danish territory. Gauguin took part in the +exhibitions of the Impressionist group in 1880 and 1881. + +Huysmans, then as later the disciple of Naturalism pushed to its extreme +limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. Gauguin began to be +talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. +But his work at the Bourse was exhausting his strength and his time. + +Although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, Gauguin +in January, 1883, took the rash step of quitting the financial world and +devoting himself solely to art. + +This decision was, as Dr. Segalen says in his valuable Preface to the +letters Gauguin wrote from Tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. +When Paul Gauguin said to himself, "Henceforward I will paint every +day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition +and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great +impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not +only of his own nature but of modern art. + + +IV + +It is important to note that Gauguin was thirty-five years of age when +he came to this decision. This proves that the decision was no hasty +one, of which he was liable to repent later. At such an age a man has +arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a Paul +Gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of +living from a mere desire for change. Gauguin had something to express +and knew it. He had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and +shares. And to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all +opposition. + +But had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage, with the desire +for freedom, for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes +only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts, this decision +might never have been taken. As a husband and father he now had others +dependent upon him. That he set aside their claims to follow the deeper +call proves that, as he later said, he believed himself to have the +right to dare everything. And he was probably at first confident of +success, thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as +that of a speculator. + +Madame Gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision. She was +naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful +man, and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his +success. In any case, she was soon destined to sad disillusionment. + +Gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the +sums he had saved. As for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well +known to sell. It was necessary, above all things, to gain time. So he +decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought +with the proceeds of his career on the Bourse, in order to support +himself. The list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly +the direction of his tastes at this period. It included a Manet, several +Renoirs, some Claude Monets, two Cezannes (still life and landscape), an +early Pissarro, together with examples of Guillamin, Sisley, Jongkind, +Lewis Brown and, most significant of all, two designs by Daumier. + +Whether it was that Gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a +style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not +know. Nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an +appreciable sum or not. Probably the amount was small, for the +Impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely +commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. In any +case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. He had +ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in Paris. He +found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the +place of Bertin's. So it was Madame Gauguin's turn to act. She decided +on a removal to Copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their +influence in obtaining a position for her husband. + +Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband +and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid +Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the +passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he +hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and +provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian +Bohemianism--everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he +took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in +maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking +on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. +Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin +for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately +and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment +when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. +Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his aesthetic interest in the +nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her +mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. +But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable +scandal. + +Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield +nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family +change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A +separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came +about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the +painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We +shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that +Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into +which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate +with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with +his wife. + +It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with +her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than +accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame +Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now +disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian +art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to +try his fortune. + + +V + +He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had +been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more +consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore +necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the +man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual +equipment. + +Gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of +strong physical development. His hair, which later grew thinner and lost +much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in +large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. The +eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which +were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color--the eyes of one who +has spent many years at sea. The nose was large, thick and aquiline. A +thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the +mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. The chin was +pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted +beard similar in color to the mustache. + +After Gauguin's return from the Antilles in 1887 it is the testimony of +all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an Indian's, and +that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. Even his excessive +devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his +health, had something sailor-like in it. Gauguin rolled his own +cigarettes in the Spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. +His hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman--coarse, +square and red. Altogether he was in appearance curiously Creole; he did +not resemble a Frenchman of France. The dark tint of his skin and the +formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and +hair. + +His personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those +with whom he came in contact. It must be remembered, however, that he +was by nature reserved and even suspicious, as are many people of +fundamental genius. He differed from those about him in that he worked +by instinct, while they worked according to some conscious method. He +therefore obtained out of himself, by means of slow thinking and +laborious effort, the knowledge which many have at the beginning. +Further, the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of +physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little +reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world. Finally, +Gauguin was shy, actually and by nature shy. People took this shyness +for rudeness and this reserve for disdain. And Gauguin was not always +unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding. He carefully cultivated +his rudeness, both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance. + +As regards his work, he was on the way to find his path, although he +never entirely found it, even to the end of his career. His versatility +prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead, like that of many +popular and highly successful painters. + +Mention has already been made of his appearance in 1880 among the +Impressionists and of the praise bestowed by Huysmans on one of his +pictures for its frank realism. This very nude, however, shows Gauguin +massing his shadows, making them heavy and dark, which was the direct +contrary to Impressionist practice. A year later we find Huysmans +complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures; another proof +that the painter was already trying to mass tones, to escape from the +division of tones employed by the Impressionist group. + +We are safe in assuming also that Gauguin felt already an inward desire +to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics. His early years had +shown him the tropics; and the art of the greatest masters, as well as +of the worst daubers, is based on the instinctive knowledge they have +obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later +years. Pissarro, too, had seen the tropics; but they had not in any way +influenced his color sense, which, indeed, grew colder and grayer as his +years advanced. But he may have had something to do with Gauguin's +inclination towards tropical subjects, though the feeling of kinship +with Nature which Gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own. + +If Gauguin had but known it, there waited for him not the future of fame +and fortune of which he dreamed, but seventeen years of life-and-death +struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means +of living nor the slightest encouragement, but only hampered him in +every way, so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures +on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls. He was to +quit his own country, and to go to the ends of the earth, only to find +that the system of civilization possessed by his country, whatever its +other advantages, did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the +fruits of his labor. He was finally to sink into an unmarked grave, to +be almost forgotten, and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when +no longer able to profit by it. Even if Gauguin could have realized +this, it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind. Ready to dare +everything, he strode forward into the future. + + + + +PART II: THE STRUGGLE WITH IMPRESSIONISM 1885-1889 + + +I + +With the return of Gauguin to Paris there opened for him the second +stage of his career, the struggle to maintain himself on the productions +of his brush and chisel. During the first stage his character had been +formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative +leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor, during which he found +time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the +latest French tradition. He had not only met and talked with men like +Manet, Pissarro, and Cezanne, he also visited the museums of Paris, and +did not confine himself to the Louvre, but made a special study of the +Musee Guimet with its collection of art works from the far East, and +later of the Trocadero, with its casts of Cambodian sculpture. His stay +at Bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment, +the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic +independence. + +Yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these +important years of development than in the case of most of his +contemporaries. "He was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in +art that was going on," says one who knew him in this period, "but not +to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody." What he absorbed +was by instinct; and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge +with people who might fail to make good use of it. + +Amid the noisy chatter of Parisian art-circles he passed silent and +unnoted. He rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of +experimental projects, particularly with sculpture. But very shortly +his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience +of hunger. + +For a time he suffered extreme privation. He was forced at last to +accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting +advertisements on the walls of the Gare du Nord in order to save himself +from starvation. + +"I have known," he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter +Aline, "extreme misery, that is to say hunger and everything that +follows upon hunger. It is nothing, or almost nothing. One grows +accustomed to it and, with will-power, one can end by laughing at it. +But what is terrible is to be prevented from working, from developing +one's intellectual faculties. It is true that suffering sharpens one's +ability. But it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will +kill you. + +"With a great deal of pride I have ended by having a great deal of +energy, and I have forced myself to be full of will-power. + +"Is pride a fault, or must one develop one's pride? I believe pride must +be developed. It is the best weapon we have against the human animal +that is in us." + +This quotation gives us the man entirely. He was one of those who are +not to be beaten, one of those who do not turn back. He was to go +forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path. + +In 1886 he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition +of the Impressionist group, together with a relief in wood, which seems +to foreshadow the later creator of _La Guerre et la Paix_. + +Most of these early works of Gauguin seem to have disappeared. Very few +can recall seeing one. It is therefore interesting to read the following +appreciation by Felix Feneon, which shows that Gauguin was already +traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other +impressionists:-- + +"The tones of M. Paul Gauguin's pictures are very little separated from +each other; because of this, there is in his work a dull harmony. Dense +trees rise from the fertile soil, abundant and humid, invade the frame, +pursue the sky. The air is heavy. Bricks seen between the trunks +indicate a nearby house; things are lying about, muzzles are scattered +in the thicket--cows. These reds of roofs and of cattle the artist +constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters, +encumbered with long grasses, which run between the tree-trunks." + +This shows clearly that Gauguin was treating landscape at this period +already as a synthesis, a decorative whole and not, like Manet, Pissarro +or the Divisionists, as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric +vibration. As for the relief on wood, Feneon writes: + +"On the pear-tree wood, which we regret to see left in monochrome, a +naked woman stands out in half relief, her hand to her hair, seated +rectangularly in a landscape. This is the only number of sculpture. +Nothing in painted wood, in glass-paste, in wax." + +Paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach Gauguin. He must +find his own way, create his own tradition. Aloof alike from the +theories of the Impressionists and from those of their successors, the +Pointillists--theories of the disassociation of tones and of the +analytic disintegration of light, based on the scientific treatises of +Chevreuil and Helmholtz--he was painfully tending back to the old +decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit, the harmonious +expression of a single emotion. Hunger proved again the best friend of +the independent artist. He fled from Paris and sought refuge in the +country. + + +II + +The place of refuge which Gauguin found was the village of Pont-Aven in +the district of Finistere in Brittany. + +There is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon +his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by Tahiti. +Indeed the charm of Tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence. + +The Celtic fringe of Europe--Cornwall, the Highlands of Scotland, +Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia--presents everywhere a great +similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants. +The Celt is an outcast. Driven backward by successive waves of +civilization and conquest, he has finally occupied those lands which +were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in +them undisturbed. Long residence in these desolate places has made of +him a natural mystic, a conservative. Perhaps he might never have been +anything else had not the nineteenth century--with its railroads and the +life-weariness of its cultivated classes--made of him a curiosity. The +hordes of tourists, of bad artists, of dealers in journalese, who rave +about Brittany, Cornwall, or Ireland as picturesque summer-resorts, show +that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to +remain a savage. + +Paul Gauguin did not assuredly go to Brittany to discover the +picturesque. Had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher +than the painting of Charles Cottet or of Lucien Simon. His real home as +an artist, as he was later to discover, lay elsewhere--under less +troubled skies, in the midst of more tropical vegetation. But the gloom, +the melancholy inertia, the mystic faith, the simplicity of this land of +wind-mills, small trees, granite coasts and menhirs, worked strongly on +the yet untamed primitive in him. Stronger still perhaps was the appeal +of the sea, the most restless and yet the most changeless element in +nature. Gauguin was in appearance, as in manners, a sailor--the eye, the +direct curt speech, the reserved disdain, the freedom of manners, all +these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences. In Brittany +he found the sea; he found an unspoiled people; he found, above all, +repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that, like the +bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne, frothed eternally in +the cafes of Paris. Brittany gave him greater faith in himself; Brittany +began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly +stifling him. + +[Illustration: Struggle of Jacob with the Angel.] + +His first stay in Pont-Aven was destined to be short. It is chiefly +remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by Emile Bernard, then +only about seventeen years of age, whose relations with Gauguin and +other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be +examined in detail. + +Bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up, +mushroom-like, in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary +controversy. At the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic +and extremely bad poetry. He next went in for painting, raced off to +Brittany to see Gauguin, was received with coolness, ran back to Paris. +Here he found Van Gogh fresh from Holland and, when Van Gogh in turn +went to Arles, became his most industrious correspondent. Later he heard +that the crazy old hermit, Paul Cezanne, was living at Aix--so off to +Aix went Bernard. More letters were the outcome of the visit. + +Meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and +neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of Gauguin's Breton +style, then to a combination of Cezanne and Gauguin, to conclude with +painting of Oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from +that of Gerome. He imitated everyone in turn, only to end by becoming +that drab eclectic thing--what the French call a "pompier" or we an +"Academician." Thus he justified Gauguin's sardonic prophecy that +"Bernard would end up something like Benjamin Constant!" + +We owe Bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful +letters which Van Gogh wrote to him, and--more precious debt--that he +has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic +Cezanne revealed a glimpse of his agony. But we owe Bernard nothing in +that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose +style he was the first to copy--Paul Gauguin. But of this more later. + + +III + +The winter of 1886 found Gauguin again in Paris. Here he met another +artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite +different from that of Emile Bernard. + +This was Vincent Van Gogh, newly arrived from Holland. Gauguin has left +on record in a piece of prose called _Les Crevettes Roses_ his first +impression of Van Gogh, which proves beyond dispute that Gauguin loved +Van Gogh and admired him, despite his habitual reserve and the haughty +disdain with which he was already looking upon all things European. + +At this time Gauguin was still painfully seeking, still patiently and +laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization. Van Gogh, +although five years younger, had fully realized himself in essence--was, +in fact, realized from the beginning. The difference between them was +that Van Gogh was an humble Dutch peasant, with the mystic blend of +religion and animality which is common to Flemish and Dutch artists (for +example, Breughel, Rubens or Verhaeren), while Gauguin was a Spaniard, +hard and aristocratic, but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the +strain of French blood. + +For Van Gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of +the sun, which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric +ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it. For Gauguin the +future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left +him half-an-European to the end, his work only a broken fragment of what +he had dreamed. + +It is a pity, in a way, that these men ever met. But their meeting and +the drama which was played out later between them, had in it the +inevitable quality of Greek tragedy. For the moment their meeting was +without result, except that perhaps it woke Gauguin to a realization +that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art. In +short, one must be religious. But where was Gauguin to find his +religion? + +Certainly not in Paris, the capital of intellectual skepticism. Nor, for +the moment, in sleepy and mournful Brittany. The memories of his early +initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he +undertook, in 1887, a voyage to the Martinique in company with a young +painter, Charles Laval. + +There is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to Gauguin his +own primitivism, although it left him for the time an invalid, +threatened with dysentery, suffering from constant intestinal pains, and +although it brought Laval to the brink of the grave. + +If the reader wishes to know something of what Martinique was at this +time, he should turn to Lafcadio Hearn's "Two Years in the French West +Indies." Hearn, like Gauguin, was a disillusionized cosmopolite, +disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the +pedantic and Puritanic hypocrisy of our Occidental civilization. Like +Gauguin, Hearn found in the West Indies a revelation of a world which +had not lost touch with Nature--a world of men who were content to +remain, in Nature's eyes, something as ephemeral and as harmonious as +the trees, the flowers, the beasts among which they lived. Like Gauguin +again, Hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision, but yet kept faith +with it to the last. + +[Illustration: The Idol.] + +In the pictures which Gauguin produced during his stay in Martinique, we +find the first rude indications of his later manner--the manner of a +mystic poet who sees all life, the life of man, of vegetation, of the +earth and the sea, as being parallel, harmonious manifestations of the +same Divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other. + +If Gauguin did not realize himself in Martinique, he at least found +himself on the road to realization. But the unchecked power of the sun, +steadily sapping not only the white race, but also the race of mixed +blood, with which he, like Hearn, felt so much sympathy, banished him +from this Eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future. + +His health demanded a return to France. He came back, bringing with him +pictures--experimental, tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and +gloom of the tropics with Pissarro's analysis of paler northern +sunlight. He brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures +which he, as yet, could not paint. He brought back with him an idea. + + +IV + +After seeing the Antilles and returning to Paris, Gauguin was again +brought face to face with the problem against which he had already +struggled--the problem of his poverty. + +He had obtained at Martinique the vision of a new world of art, which he +knew he was some day destined to realize. But for the present he had +neither lodging and studio, nor resources of any kind. He was forced to +live on charity. + +Charity came to him in the shape of Emile Schuffenecker, who had also +given up finance for a career as artist. + +Schuffenecker was not a genius, but he knew ability when he saw it, and +opened his doors freely to this needy colleague. It is a pity that +Gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting +Schuffenecker as an artist. + +Gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful +episodes of his life. One is almost inclined to think with Emile Bernard +that "the basis of Gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism," or, +with Meier-Graefe, that Gauguin was nothing but a great child. Neither +of these views is, however, wholly correct. + +Gauguin was the son, be it remembered, of a radical journalist and the +grandson of a Socialist pamphleteer. Journalism in France is not the +same thing as in England. There is scarcely any polite journalism in +France. Gauguin himself was always talking, according to Bernard, of art +and life needing "the blow of the fist." Paul Deroulede, Edmond Drumont, +Henri Rochefort, Octave Mirbeau, Zola, Clemenceau, and other celebrated +journalists of the Dreyfus period (the heyday of French journalism) knew +quite well what this "blow of the fist" meant, and practiced it upon +every opportunity. + +Moreover, Gauguin was nearly forty, had knocked about the world a great +deal, banging himself against many sharp corners in the process, and +was face to face with want. It is also possible that he felt bound, for +the sake of his wife and children, to make as much money as possible. +Finally, he believed in himself as an artist, if no one else did. The +world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either +hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt. As he +put it himself, "Is it necessary to be modest, or, in other words, an +imbecile?" + +So he accepted the use of Schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his +own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at Schuffenecker's attempt +to paint. Later on we find him accepting similarly Van Gogh's +hospitality, irritating Van Gogh to the pitch of madness, and--after Van +Gogh's death--sending to Bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed +exhibition of Van Gogh's pictures on the ground that Van Gogh was only a +madman. And later still, when Van Gogh's reputation began to rise in +public esteem, Gauguin declared that Van Gogh had learned from him and +had called him master. + +Such traits are deplorable, if we consider Gauguin as an ordinary man. +But if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it +conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite +certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. Gauguin +sinned in good company, with Michaelangelo who thought Raphael had +plotted against him, and with Berlioz who has left on record his opinion +of Wagner's music. To understand Gauguin one must share to some extent +the opinion of Flaubert--which, incidentally, Browning almost +endorses--that the man is nothing, the work is all. + +It is not easy to read between the lines of Gauguin's self-imposed +reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. If we +attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was +almost without friends. Van Gogh he loved without understanding. Daniel +de Monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. The shadowy figure of +Tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly +moved him. + +Puvis de Chavannes, an artist to whom Gauguin owed much, similarly held +himself aloof from all. So did Degas and Ingres, two other artists of +Gauguin's stamp. So in ancient Greece did Sophocles. + +The truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on +the surface of things. One can only sympathize with them, share their +imaginings through long and patient study. Gauguin was not altogether +strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. But his work +increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. +Schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in Paris just long +enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy Manet's +_Olympia_, a picture he greatly admired. Then once more he took the road +to Brittany. + + +V + +Despite the fact that Gauguin had, before leaving Paris, held his first +one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation +was not improved. He was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined +at Martinique, remained bad. + +He was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock +of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. In Gauguin's +case the chances were very small. He was crushed by his own impotence to +realize the art he had dreamed. + +It was at this juncture that Vincent Van Gogh, now at Aries, came +forward and offered him a lodging, despite the fact that he himself +could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the +self-sacrificing efforts of his brother Theodore. + +For a time Gauguin did not respond to Van Gogh's generous offer to +share their fortunes in common. But he sent his own portrait to Vincent, +a gloomy, powerful piece of painting which, in the opinion of some, so +startlingly resembles Robert Louis Stevenson--like Gauguin a wanderer, +but with what a difference! To Vincent this portrait suggested a +prisoner, with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows. He was more than +ever determined to draw Gauguin out of the slough of despond into which +he was falling, and to work together with him for the better +establishment of both their reputations. + +One can only admire Van Gogh for this decision. An artist of a childlike +simplicity of soul, a combination of Don Quixote, the Good Samaritan and +that Jesus of Nazareth whom he loved, Van Gogh was even greater as a man +than as an artist. But Gauguin was, as he knew himself later, greater as +an artist than as a man. It was natural for him to accept the invitation +of a man whom he knew, after all, very slightly, because he saw in this +acceptance possible advantages to himself. + +Van Gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed, as was Gauguin's, by +a strong reserve of nervous strength. His was one of those souls whose +longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced +by William Blake:-- + + I will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death + Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate, + And I be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood. + +Gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen +by Whitman:-- + + O, to struggle against odds, to meet enemies undaunted! + To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand + To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium face to face, + To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect + nonchalance, + To be indeed a God! + +Van Gogh was a lyric painter. His desire was to lose himself in the +ecstacy of the divine. Gauguin was a narrative, an epic painter. His aim +was to grow to divine stature through self-realization. + +What could there be in common between the fervent admirer of Rembrandt, +Delacroix, Monticelli, Ziem, and the brooding, patient workman who was +building up his art on the classic tradition of Ingres, Cezanne and +Degas? Surely even less than between Michaelangelo and Tintoretto. + +A drama between these men was inevitable. It was not slow in declaring +itself.[1] Of what actually occurred we have only Gauguin's account, of +how Van Gogh first attacked him, and then strove to take his own life. + +Van Gogh, upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent +itself, went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at Arles, where, as his +grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that +devoured him, he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun. Gauguin +returned to Brittany, as he said, "armed against all suffering." But he +had seen something. In striving to paint Van Gogh's portrait he had seen +a vision, once again to quote his own words, of "Jesus preaching +goodness and humility." And perhaps, in Vincent's hour of agony, while +he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he +had loved and had painted so lovingly, Gauguin had another vision--of +the sombre Garden of Gethsemane. + +Thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that +desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul, between nature and +God, between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth, which he +was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize, despite the +baseness of that other part in him, the civilized, unprimitive part, +which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of +baseness. + + +[Footnote 1: Gauguin and Van Gogh were actually together from the 20th +October to the 23d December, 1888.] + + + + +PART III: THE SCHOOL OF PONT-AVEN 1889-1891 + + +I + +In 1889 there opened in Paris on the Champ-de-Mars the Universal +Exposition, to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the Bastile. Of +this exhibition and of the palace built to house it, nothing now remains +except the melancholy Eiffel Tower. + +The pictures admitted to the exhibition were, rather naturally, of a +kind sanctioned by academic officialdom. Wherefore visitors who happened +to patronize the Cafe Volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled +to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock +all their susceptibilities in art matters. Their perplexity cannot have +been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title: +"Catalogue of the Exposition of Pictures of the Impressionist and +Syntheticist Group, held on the Premises of M. Volpini, at the +Champ-de-Mars, 1889." + +The exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the Cafe +Volpini had for the most part never heard. Their names were:--E. +Schuffenecker, Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Louis Anquetin, Louis Roy, +Leon Fauche, Georges Daniel, Ludovic Nemo (a pseudonym of Bernard's) and +lastly, Paul Gauguin. Lithographs, printed in black upon yellow paper +and not less extraordinary than the pictures, were also visible upon +request. These were by Bernard and Gauguin. + +The result of this exhibition was that the public laughed, the papers +protested, the young students of art in the various ateliers of Paris +were stimulated to furious discussion. But a few spirits, more +venturesome or more prophetic, took the trouble to test the new ideas. A +few, chief among them Serusier of the Academie Julian, even set out to +visit the birthplace of the new movement, a lonely inn kept by a family +of the name of Gloanec at Le Poldu, a short distance from Pont-Aven. + +A brief survey of the history of Syntheticism is necessary to an +understanding of the theories of the new school. Here we enter upon +debatable ground. It has already been said that the chief opponents of +the academicism of Cabanel and Bougereau were the Impressionists. Their +movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its +third. The earliest of the Impressionists, led by Manet, insisted that a +picture was only nature seen through a temperament; in other words, that +a picture must be naturalistic. This doctrine found parallel literary +expression in the writings of the de Goncourts, de Maupassant and Zola. +The first phase in Impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained +a belief in form. + +It was succeeded by an analytical phase, based upon the application to +color of the scientific theories of light, of Rood, Chevreuil and +Helmholtz. To Claude Monet, the founder of this new school of +Impressionism, nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere. Form +was abandoned. + +After Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Guillamin, a new group, of whom +the chief were Seurat and Signac, attempted to combine the tenets of +their two sets of predecessors. They retained formal composition but +broke up color into minute points or dots. This third generation of +Impressionists were originally termed Neo-Impressionists but now, more +frequently, Pointillists. + +Three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory. +Puvis de Chavannes had, within the very precincts of the official salon, +created an art based on something wholly distinct, alike from the +photographic and frigid eclecticism of Cabanel and Bougereau and from +the work of both Manet and Monet. Puvis was a decorator who could think +and paint only in terms of walls. He had achieved, after a long +struggle, a decorative synthesis of his own, based upon the ruthless +simplification of masses, contours and coloring. Reserved, cold, +solitary, he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his +old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of Giotto, that +father of all European painting. + +Paul Cezanne, the hermit of Aix, had faced the problem of painting with +the Impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his +true spiritual ancestors--the Venetians and El Greco. As a result he was +thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth, for he lived +far from Paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited. +Finally, Degas, associating himself with the Impressionists at the +outset, had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of +Ingres, who might be called the last of Florentines. Degas was +considered an artist of small importance because, unlike Manet, he +scorned to give himself airs. He lived a retired life in Paris, and did +not exhibit. + +These three men--Puvis de Chavannes, Cezanne and Degas--had, through +their own inner necessity, become syntheticists. But no one of them +preached Syntheticism, because their adherence to the creed was +unconscious. The doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with +Paul Gauguin at the Cafe Volpini in 1889, who lived and worked with him +at the Gloanec inn, near Pont-Aven. It was from these men that the +reaction against Impressionism started, a reaction which, in its turn, +was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of +mathematical and analytical abstraction of line, color and form, which +we know as Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. It was these men surrounding +Gauguin, who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition +which goes back through Giotto and Cimabue to the Byzantine mosaics, +and, through these, to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages. +With Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning +of a new tradition. With Gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance +of an old one. + + +II + +As early as 1886, in an article in the _Revue Independante_, the +well-known critic Eduard Dujardin had spoken of a group calling +themselves the Cloissonists, who painted in flat patches of tone, +divided from each other by black lines. + +Cloissonism, as the name indicates, was borrowed from the Japanese. But +as a method of painting, it had been derived less from cloisonne enamel +than from the technique of the Japanese color-print artists. + +The artistic gods of the Cloissonists were Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. +It may be remembered that since 1865 men like Zola, Manet, Monet, +Whistler, the de Goncourts--in short the entire generation of the +naturalists--had collected these color prints, written about them, +talked about them. + +Gauguin himself, when he returned to Paris at the close of this year +1889, pinned a frieze of Hokusai and Utamaro prints round the walls of +his studio. + +But the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of +Cloissonism, of which the leader was Anquetin (later ranked with the +Syntheticists), does not fully explain the use of Syntheticism with its +greater insistence upon decorative unity, and its clearer affinities to +the work of the Italian primitives. + +As to the origin of Syntheticism we have divergent statements from +contemporary witnesses. + +The English artist, A.S. Hartrick, who was studying in Paris from 1886 +to 1889 and who knew personally both Gauguin and Van Gogh, ascribes the +Synthetic theory to Gauguin in these terms:-- + +"From a study of thirteenth century glass he (Gauguin) got an idea of +design and color which exactly suited his state of development, and he +then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own, using oil paint +as a vehicle."[1] + +Of similar opinion is the well known French artist and writer, Maurice +Denis, whose work has done so much to popularise Gauguin. He declares in +his book "Theories,"[2] that Gauguin was the "incontestable originator" +and master of the new movement, to which he gives two names: +Neo-Traditionism and Symbolism. In the first account which he wrote of +the movement in 1890, an account obtained from the lips of Paul +Serusier, one of the earliest of Gauguin's disciples after 1889, Denis +includes the following interesting paragraph: + +"Did not Paul Gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history +of modeling? + +"At the beginning there was the pure arabesque, as little deceptive of +the eye as possible; a wall is empty; cover it with symmetrical spots +of form, harmonious in color:--stained glass, Egyptian pictures, +Byzantine mosaics. + +"From this comes the painted bas-relief:--metopes of the Greek temple, +the church of the Middle Ages. + +"Then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye +practised in Antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the +Italian primitives, who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings +modeled to imitate bas-relief, but in other respects preserve the first +idea of decorative unity. Recall also under what conditions +Michaelangelo, a sculptor, decorated the Sistine ceiling. + +"Perfection of this modeling; modeling in high-relief. This leads from +the first academy of the Caracchi to our decadence." + +Emile Bernard holds a contrary opinion. His view was originally +published in the _Mercure de France_ and reasserted in his preface to +the letters written to him by Van Gogh.[3] Bernard, who revolted from +the Atelier Cormon with Anquetin, had, as we have seen, been repulsed +by Gauguin in in 1886. After a brief return to Paris he went off to +Saint-Briac, where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and +painted the windows, in imitation of stained-glass, employing essence of +turpentine as a medium. In 1888, before Gauguin came to Arles, Bernard +was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of +Theodore Van Gogh and, although young enough to be Gauguin's son (being +about twenty at this time), shared with him the honors of the Volpini +exhibition. + +Bernard claims that he, and he alone, invented Syntheticism, and bases +his claim on the evidence of the pictures (all dated) which Gauguin +painted previous to 1888, and in which Gauguin was still definitely +Impressionist in technique. He maintains that Gauguin abruptly changed +his style after the second meeting in 1888, when he first saw what his +younger rival had been doing. Furthermore, Bernard contends that this +style was solely based upon the application of Cezanne's discoveries in +technique. + +Against these contentions there are three objections to be made. + +In the first place it is known that Gauguin, during his stay in +Martinique in 1887, painted pictures that are undeniably essays in +syntheticism. Martinique showed Gauguin the impossibility of painting +tropic sunlight by means of the Impressionistic division of tones. +Always purely intuitive as an artist, Gauguin began to realize at +Martinique, however vaguely, that one cannot reproduce the natural +decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color +attempted by Pissarro and the other Impressionists. He therefore sought +to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the +contrast of colors. + +In the second place, Bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was +not he, but Gauguin, who after 1888 painted those magnificent pictures +_Le Christ Jaune, Le Christ Vert_ and _La Vision apres le Sermon_[4] and +carved the two superb bas-reliefs _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez +Heureuses_ and _Soyez Mysterieuses_. Moreover, the careful reader of Van +Gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout '88 and '89 +Bernard stood in relation to Gauguin as a pupil to a master. Finally, +even if Bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did +induce Gauguin to reject the last vestiges of Impressionism, his story +fails to account for the masterly grasp of Synthetic Symbolism shown by +Gauguin immediately after their second meeting. + +It is quite impossible to trace to Cezanne's essays in Synthetic +Impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either +Bernard or Gauguin. Cezanne, later on, even went so far as to assert +that Gauguin had misunderstood him. Therefore it is clear that the +opinions of A.S. Hartrick and of Maurice Denis better fit the facts. +Gauguin was the sole originator of the Synthetic style. That style was +derived, perhaps mainly, from the careful study of thirteenth century +glass, which does perfectly what Gauguin wished to do: translate the +effect of sunlight into luminous color. But it was also derived from +Egyptian painting, Byzantine mosaics and the Kakemonos of the Japanese. +In short, it was as complete a rejection of Impressionism as possible +and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced +color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved, +in the nineteenth century, in the works of artists whom Gauguin admired: +Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes, Cezanne and Degas. + + +[Footnote 1: "Post-Impressionism," by A.S. Hartrick. _Imprint,_ May, +1913.] + +[Footnote 2: Paris, l'Occident, 1912.] + +[Footnote 3: Paris, Vollard, 1911.] + +[Footnote 4: Now known as _La Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange_.] + + +III + +The exhibition at the Cafe Volpini brought notoriety to Gauguin. Various +young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art"--the phrase is +Gauguin's--which they were being taught in the ateliers of Paris, took +the road for Pont-Aven. Among these were Paul Serusier, Chamaillard, and +the Dutchman, De Haahn. + +Acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of +Serusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with Neo-Platonic +mysticism, Gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite +doctrine. Hitherto he had been an artist of the type of Ingres, working +purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. +But his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula +this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create. + +Artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves. +Whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been +greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy. The public always +takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods. +All art is a synthesis, and no artist can be at the same time synthetic +and analytical. + +Gauguin was no exception to this rule. Take for example, his +often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors:-- + +"Always use colors of the same origin. Indigo is the best basis. It +becomes yellow in saltpeter, red in vinegar. You can obtain it at any +chemist's. Keep to these three colors." + +Gauguin himself did not follow this precept. An examination of his +palette shows that it was arranged thus, from left to right: +--ultramarine, silver white, emerald green, veronese green, yellow +ochre, burnt sienna, yellow chrome, vermilion, and crimson lake. No +artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously +fugitive, whether used pure or in mixture. + +So with another celebrated saying: "Seek harmony and not contrast, the +agreement and not--the clash of color." This saying not only goes +contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors, +but is opposed to those equally famous dicta: "Does that trunk of a tree +seem to you blue? Paint it as blue as possible," and, "A mile of green, +is more green than half a mile." + +It is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of Gauguin's +teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark. Gauguin was not +a man holding a high-school debate on theory, but a creator. He refused +even to be called a decorator, he preferred the title of artisan. He +declared outright that he had no technique. "Or perhaps I have one, but +very vagabond, very elastic, according to the way I feel when I awaken +in the morning, a technique which I apply to my own liking in order to +express my thought, without taking account of the truth of Nature, +externally apparent. People think nowadays that all the technical means +of painting are exhausted. I do not believe it, if I am to judge by the +numerous observations which I have made and put into practice.... +Painters have still much to discover." + +Gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them +this remark: "Do what you please, so long as it is intelligent." This +did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition. He +knew that tradition is not a "recipe for making art," but the sum-total +of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same +problems that face the artists of to-day. He realized that the essential +substance of art is always the same. Art is an eternal renewal of this +substance. "The artist is not born of a single unity. If he adds a new +link to the chain already begun, it is much. The artist is known by the +quality of his transposition." + +The "transposition" that he himself strove for may be clearly read in +his pictures. He strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art +of the great Venetians, by blending the Venetian glow of color with the +calm line of Primitive and especially of Egyptian Primitive design. His +problem was essentially the same as that of Puvis de Chavannes, the +problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to +leave it still essentially a wall and not, as Veronese and Tiepolo left +it, an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery. Puvis had solved the +problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by +simplifying his drawing. Gauguin solved his by the elimination of +modeling, and of graduations of tone, and by reducing his drawing to the +strongest possible arabesque of outline. In everything he sought for the +essential form, the form that contains all the other inessential forms. +As Serusier puts it: "The synthetic theory of art consists in reducing +all form to the smallest possible number of component +forms:--straight lines, arcs of a circle, a few angles, arcs of an +ellipse." And to express this form he sought for the most harmonious +balance of color. Maurice Denis says:--"Recall that a picture, before +being a war-horse, a nude or some anecdote, is essentially a flat +surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order." + +[Illustration: Tahitian Women.] + +Therefore and above all, Gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the +model, but from memory. He admitted that it was useful for young +painters to have a model, as all knowledge of facts could only be +obtained from the study of models. But he added that it was better to +draw a curtain before the model while painting it. One of his pupils +declared: "We went into the country to paint seascapes and to the +seashore to do landscapes." + +Gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods +practiced for centuries by the great Chinese and Japanese painters. He +would have enjoyed that story of a Chinese painter, who was sent out by +the Emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the Empire, +and who returned without having painted anything. When the Emperor asked +him: "But where are your pictures?" he replied: "I have them here"--and +pointed to his forehead. Gauguin, with his hatred of copying either from +nature or from the masters of the past, would also have appreciated the +Chinese idea of a "copy"--a free rearrangement of old material according +to one's temperament. + +Lastly, he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose. "Let +everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul. Avoid all animated +attitudes. Each of your figures should be perfectly static. Give +everything a clear outline." This counsel sounds strange to ears +deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of +Cubists, Futurists and Vorticists. But to Gauguin it was the basis of +his own mystical religion. He gave it to the world, however, not for +this reason, but because he realized that painting to be decorative +must be architectural. He himself was a builder, an artisan. In Brittany +he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived; he made +furniture, carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself, +worked at bas-reliefs, decorated pottery. Movement, restlessness, would +have but troubled the lines of that ideal building, which, even then, he +was erecting in his dreams. + +Such was the doctrine of Paul Gauguin. It may seem strange that such +ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary. In the Far East at +all events, they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries. +Revolutionary or not, Gauguin went on his way undisturbed. From an +examination of his letters, and of the statements of those who knew him, +the fact emerged that this "anarchist" preserved throughout his life a +great respect for artists of the past. Rembrandt especially, in his +mystical and visionary phase, appealed to him and Rembrandt's influence +may be traced in more than one of Gauguin's Tahitian pictures. +Velazquez, Rubens, Proudhon, Corot, Whistler--Gauguin was able to learn +something from all these men as well as from Memling and Holbein. As for +his pupils, the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following +his precepts may be judged by the fact that Gauguin remarked about one +of them: "His faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be +considered a master," and by the fact that the first synthetic picture +of another was, according to Maurice Denis, painted on the lid of a +cigar box! + + +IV + +It is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of +Gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that +went on in his soul: a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of +civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at Tahiti. + +Gauguin, as has been seen, was not naturally but only deliberately a +teacher of others. Especially in his intimate and personal concerns, he +commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve. In the matter of views on +art, he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and +paradoxical opinions which, if disputed, were merely affirmed with +greater violence. + +It is related of him that, if any one persisted in holding an opinion +contrary to his own, Gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from +those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an +embarrassed silence. + +Nevertheless, we owe to the fortunate preservation of various +fragmentary notes, made in the solitude of his last desperate years, +indications of what Gauguin's religious and political opinions were. +Here are some of them:-- + +"If I gaze before me into space, I have a vague sense of the Infinite; +nevertheless I am the conclusion of something that has been begun. I +understand then, that there has been a beginning and that there will be +no end. + +"In this I do not possess the explanation of a mystery, but merely the +mysterious sense of this mystery--and this sensation is intimately +linked to the belief in an eternal life, promised by Jesus. + +"But then, if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into +the world, it is necessary to believe, with the Buddhists, that we have +always existed. + +"A change of skin. + +"All this is very strange. + +"The unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it +is, unfathomable. God does not belong to the scholar, the logician. He +belongs to the poets, to their dreams. He is the symbol of Beauty, +Beauty itself." + +From these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in +Gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures: _Le Christ Jaune_ and _Le +Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_; when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs: +_Soyez Amoureuses and Soyez Mysterieuses_; when he drew the lithographs: +_La Cigale et les Fourmis_, and _Leda_ which bears the defiant +inscription "Honi soit qui mal y pense." + +Gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious +illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in +nature and in man. Among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a +false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the +wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the +thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live. + +Against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he +recognized in Jesus Christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a +protest that had failed. Humanity had not yet produced, save by +exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and +giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." A +terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in Europe for the next +generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind. + +Therefore, in contemplating Christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, +of the futility of this sacrifice. His attitude to Christianity became +purely Protestant. Across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of +the beneficent Virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of +maternity. + +In _Le Christ Jaune_ he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved +impotent to elevate mankind to its level. _Le Christ au Jardin +d'Oliviers_ echoes the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou +forsaken me?" The terrible little picture, _Les Miseres Humaines_ sums +up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted +civilization. Even the later Tahitian _Birth of Christ_ renders nothing +but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. In the _Ia Orana +Maria_, or the Salutation to Mary, the Virgin is represented merely as a +happy human mother. + +Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at +Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, +the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was +better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against +the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. Thus in his art he +aimed at repose, the quietism of the Buddhists. His knowledge of +Buddhism was not deep--indeed in his eyes, Buddhism, too, was a vain +revolt against nature--but his respect for Buddhistic doctrine remained +greater than his respect for Christianity. At the bottom of his soul +there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "Eat, +drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die." + +As he put it later in the pages of his Tahitian recital:-- + +"To the eyes of Tagatha (the God) the most splendid glories of kings and +their ministers are but dust and spittle: + +"To his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six +serpents: + +"To his eyes, the search for the Way of Buddha is like the coming of +flowers." + +It is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man +who was never more than half an European, that we are able to understand +how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the +bas-relief, _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez Heureuses_ and the somber +despair of _Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_. That mind, as we have +seen, was neither wholly Christian or Pagan--though the untamed Pagan +element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined +Christian side. Therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether Gauguin +as an artist, displayed more of the Classic tradition than of the +Gothic. Gothic as well as Classical strains remained mingled in him up +to the last. Throughout his work there runs a longing--obscure, +tormented, and ultimately foiled--for a natural religion: a religion +that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, +like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis. + + +V + +By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain +renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still +without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker. + +At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced +naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris +was on the verge of her aesthetic nineties. A small group of writers, +chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarme, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a +sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in +consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled +Decadents. This title was soon abandoned for the better designation of +Symbolists. + +Gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of Symbolism as a sort of hero. Here +was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious. He had definitely +broken away from his own commercial surroundings. He had defiantly +ruptured his own family ties. He had abolished Impressionist science and +had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the +process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular +art. His appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, +sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. He +became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of +symbol. + +Some critics have stated that Gauguin's head was turned by this +adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he +remained what he had always been. No man was less fitted for living in +the midst of cultivated society than he. For a time, during that strange +epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, +largely an European; but this was merely on the surface and had +completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. An +invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in +him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. This +shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. But +to every one else Gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order +to keep them at a distance. And, generally, he succeeded. + +It is small wonder then that Schuffenecker shortly found his guest again +intolerable, and that Gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging. +Schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. He seems never to have realized +that Gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love +and understand. In losing Gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever +likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already +acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing Gauguin's +collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by Cezanne, Van Gogh, +and Odilon Redon. + +Gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he +ever had--who was willing to give him the use of a studio. This was +Daniel de Monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name George Daniel +taken part in the Volpini exhibition. + +It is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community +of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea. + +De Monfreid, like Gauguin, had been a sailor. He was a man enjoying a +certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. Every +summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's +cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, +and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the +Mediterranean. This went on for years until de Monfreid, weary of +dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the +complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering +his schooner to the Naval School at Cette, where she ultimately met her +end. At this period he was known to his artistic friends in Paris as +"the captain," and had been introduced to Gauguin by Schuffenecker, on +the former's return from Martinique in 1887. + +To this man all lovers of Gauguin's art owe an immense debt. Whether it +was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to +their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both +were painters (de Monfreid's experiences in the Mediterranean had made +of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and +nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were +due, is unknown. The fact remains that the friendship between them was +of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the +creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few +attain. In finding de Monfreid, Gauguin experienced almost the last +stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. The last stroke of +all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de +Monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave Europe for Tahiti. + +[Illustration: Hina Maruru (Feast to Hina).] + +The happy discovery of a letter which Gauguin wrote at this time to a +Danish painter, Willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of +what induced him to take this decision.[1] He chanced to attend, or to +read the report of, a lecture on Tahiti, given by a certain Van der +Veere. Van der Veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to +suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. He pictured Tahiti as a +terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "Under a sky without +winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the Tahitian has only to +lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. For him life +means singing and making love." It is easy to picture the effect of such +phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like Gauguin. Tahiti held +out the hope that Martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he +might be the first painter of the tropics. Gauguin's imagination was +fired by the idea. He declared that he intended to quit Europe and live +in Tahiti henceforward. There he could perhaps forget all the hardships +of the past, and die forgotten by Paris, happy and free to paint "sans +gloire aucune pour les autres." And if his children could join him +there, all the better--his isolation would then be complete.[2] + +The young Symbolists of course shouted "Bravo!" at the news of the +proposed voyage. Tahiti! Another symbol! They had already spoilt Gauguin +sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various +symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece +entitled _Loss Of Maidenhood_, which has fortunately vanished, and an +etching representing Mallarme with Poe's Raven in the background. +Perhaps their eagerness to see Gauguin safely embarked for Tahiti only +concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday. + +At all events Gauguin was feted, wined, dined. Thirty of his works were +auctioned off at the Hotel Drouot, producing the small sum of nine +thousand six hundred and eighty francs. The Government consented to make +his voyage to Oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that +this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. A +banquet was held at the Cafe Voltaire, where all the Symbolists were +assembled. Gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a +similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. Finally +a benefit performance was given by the Theatre d'Art for the departing +artist and also for Verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of +his last years.[3] + +The most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in +the program by a strange stroke of irony, Maurice Maeterlinck's play +_L'Intruse_ made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. +Death walked the stage before Gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to +expect. And yet he did not draw back. + +On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his +voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on +Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the +mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's +self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. +And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, +touching words:-- + +"Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family +and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my +thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more +terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have +made, which is utterly irreparable." + +With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization. + + +[Footnote 1: _Les Marges_, Paris, May 15, 1918.] + +[Footnote 2: Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters +show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility +of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.] + +[Footnote 3: It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit +whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.] + + + + +PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 + + +I + +Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South +Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's +knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical +but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous +for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge +of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. +Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and +the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the +chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were +discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different +in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or +from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us +through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the +Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in +different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social +organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; +they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin +in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by +thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, +abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting +currents. How then had they reached Tahiti? + +The anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of +the Caucasian or Indo-European. Though their skin is dark, it is for the +most part less dark than that of the natives of India. Set a Maori +soldier from New Zealand beside an Indian cavalryman and note the +difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to +give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. In other +characteristics too the Polynesians are essentially Caucasian. They are +a tall, well built, massive race, contrasting favorably with the Malay. +Their hair is black--or in some cases copper brown--and wavy, again +contrasting with the straight hair of the Malay or the fuzzy mop of the +Papuan. Finally, the cast of face is purely Caucasian and in many cases +very beautiful. Only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to +artificial flattening in infancy. + +We must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after +the Christian era (the folk-lore of Hawaii, which must have been settled +late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of Indo-European +stock set sail from some part of the Indian peninsula in decked ships, +capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a +voyage of some weeks. (We know the Polynesians were capable of building +such ships.) From India they made their way to the Malay peninsula, +where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to Samoa, +whence they spread northwards to Hawaii, southwards to New Zealand, +eastwards to Tahiti, to the Marquesas and to Easter Island. In order to +accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and +astronomical knowledge must have been great. Later on, under the +influence of too luxuriant a climate, the Polynesians became indolent, +careless, effeminate. And, as such, they were discovered by the +enterprising Anglo-Saxon, by the Frenchman with his Parisian vices, by +the thorough and scientific German. The combined influences of +missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the +inhabitants from 150,000 in 1774 to 10,000 in 1889. + +To these people came Paul Gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their +history. It is true that he was weary of Europe and had set out with the +aim he had cherished since the Martinique days--to be the first painter +of the tropics. But it is probable that he chose Tahiti at hazard, +because he believed that here was a country where one could live for +almost nothing. It must always be remembered that Gauguin had no private +means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, +did not sell. Cezanne, Degas, could afford not to sell their pictures +because they had other resources. But Gauguin was forced to find some +way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would +take the public some time to accept. In a letter to de Monfreid he +stated his system: "From the beginning, I knew that this would be a life +from day to day; so, logically, I habituated myself to it. Instead of +losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, I put all my +strength into the day--like the wrestler who does not employ his body +except in the moment of wrestling. When I lie down in the evening I say +to myself: One more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow I shall be dead. +In my work as a painter, ditto--I do not trouble about anything, but +each day for itself--at the end of a certain time, this covers a +considerable extent of surface. If men would not waste their time in +disconnected struggles and labors! Every day a link. That is the great +point." + +Such was the frame of mind in which Gauguin went to Tahiti. What he +found there was not the "Pays de Cocaigne" he probably expected. The +Gods do not give their gifts in this fashion. Gauguin asked much from +Tahiti and much was given. But he asked for material comfort and was +offered instead spiritual salvation. In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin found, at +last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought +him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its +own terrible parable to all men. + + +II + +On the night of the eighth of June 1891, after sixty-three days of +voyaging, Gauguin at last arrived at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. He +was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last +winter in Paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to +take to his bed. + +He was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. Although +possessed of a normally strong constitution, fortified by the open-air +existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as +boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, +when he reached Tahiti, became immediately worse. This was largely due +to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the +privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for +livelihood. + +His prospects were not brilliant. The governor, Lacascade, an ignorant +and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took +him for a spy sent out from Paris, and by every possible means attempted +to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited +native population. The society of the pseudo-European capital, Papeete, +disgusted him. The natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to +all whites. + +A few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his +interest. It was the death of the last male representative of the old +royal house of Tahiti, Pomare V, the son of the unfortunate Queen +Pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist Great Britain's sympathy in +her opposition to the French occupation. Pomare V had abdicated eleven +years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying +gleams of Tahitian hopes for independence became extinct. + +Pomare was buried in the uniform of a French Admiral, with full official +ceremony and according to the rites of Christianity; but in the +attitude of the natives to this event, Gauguin was able to see that the +embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to +revive at any favorable opportunity. + +He decided to quit Papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process +which went far to exhaust his small capital. There he attempted to live +as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. This made still +further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him +from France. The natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to +approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, +money. His efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by +enigmatic and evasive smiles. + +Nevertheless Gauguin persisted. Though we must regard the account given +by himself in the pages of "Noa Noa" as representing rather the dream +than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the +natives to accept him as one of their own kind. But, unfortunately, the +natives had seen thousands of Europeans before him, either voyagers of +the Pierre Loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as +"dirty Kanakas." They now had their revenge in the only way possible to +a conquered race. They spent his money, flattered his painting and his +vanity, and smiled behind his back. + +Before a year was out his capital had vanished. There were no buyers for +his pictures on the island and Paris was far away. Gauguin found that he +had suddenly aged--a common experience enough for white men coming +suddenly into a tropic climate. His heart began to give him trouble. +This savage Eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was +taking its little revenge. + +He attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage +back to France. In vain. He hoped that buyers for his pictures would +come forward in Paris. Useless. Fortunately his fame was now +spreading to neutral countries. Thanks to his wife's efforts he was +invited to take part in an exhibition in Denmark. + +[Illustration: The Old Spirit.] + +On the eighth of December, 1892, he forwarded a packet of eight pictures +to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas _L'Esprit Veille_. +The picture created an immense stir at Copenhagen when exhibited the +next year and brought him in some money. But in Paris his fame steadily +declined and he was every day less talked about. + +Albert Aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to +make his art known, was dead. Theodore Van Gogh, who had supported him +and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his +unfortunate brother into the grave. Meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, +Bernard, Serusier and the rest, were going about Paris vaguely hinting +that they had taught Gauguin something and that Cezanne and Van Gogh +were better artists. The halo of victory which had crowned his +departure from Paris was rapidly fading. + +He had painted already at Tahiti, as he knew, magnificent +pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before. Moreover, he +believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in Paris as +elsewhere. What he had seen in Tahiti had given him the necessary +material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, +could work. His health and his future prospects could only suffer by a +longer stay. He believed that in returning to Paris he could make +himself once and for all an outstanding figure. If he did not, perhaps +it would be better to give up painting altogether. He was growing old. + +On the thirtieth of August 1893, he arrived at Marseilles with four +francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the +height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat +in the Red Sea. It is almost incredible to think of, that this man, +during the two years he had been away from France, had painted, despite +failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them +such masterpieces as L'Esprit Veille, Matamua, and Ia Orana Maria. And +yet this very same man arrived back in France a pauper! Truly, he might +well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to +its owner, as well as others, only misfortune. + + +III + +Paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the +world. Since her spoiled darling Napoleon fell, there has been no one to +whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. There are a +few exceptions to this rule. Hugo, because he lived in exile; Balzac, +because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; +and of recent years Verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafes, the +vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a +prison. Such men may be the idols of Paris. For the rest, Paris is +willing only to think of her children as sons for a day. + +Gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of Paris. But he had +already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his. + +Had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength +of the sensation his pictures had created in Denmark and subsequently in +Sweden, Norway, and Germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an +arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his +work. But Gauguin demanded all or nothing! And, as was the case before +with his mother and her Peruvian relatives, the result was nothing. + +He decided to give a general exhibition of his entire Tahitian work, +forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. Durand-Ruel gave him a +gallery and Charles Morice, chief of the young symbolists whom Gauguin +had met after the Volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which +probably only served to mystify the public still further. + +For the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce +frank bewilderment. Of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three +remained unsold. What misled visitors more than anything else were the +titles that Gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. These titles +were in the Tahitian language. Every one immediately supposed that in +order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the +history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of Tahiti. Naturally +therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archaeological and ethnological +puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key. + +Gauguin, of course, had intended something else. Just as he had used +Brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of Christ, so he +had used Tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery +of life as it was lived in Eden and in the days of man's awakening--in +that Golden Age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. But +it was useless for him to try to explain that Tahiti had merely given +him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures. + +Morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and +listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of +the crowd. It was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the +Indian who smiles at the stake. Only Degas came and understood. To him +on the last day of the exhibit, Gauguin said: "Monsieur Degas, you have +forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured +handed it to the astonished painter. + +The bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his, had +not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save Gauguin +for better things, sent him means of salvation. A brother of his father +died in Orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. From his estate, Gauguin +inherited thirteen thousand francs. + +The exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly. +Instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and +determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle Paris. Morice +admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. If +this was the case Gauguin would have done well had he uttered the +well-known prayer, "Deliver me from my friends!" For Morice, even, +admitted later that it was, under the circumstances, a mistake. + +About Gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have +grown with the years. It is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were +colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with Tahitian subjects in +imitation of stained glass (these same windows were, by the way, on +exhibition at a dealer's in Paris a few years ago). It is true that his +rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. It +is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said +to have come from Java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than +anything else. It is true also that he wore a strange costume, +consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons, a blue +waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat +with a blue ribbon. But the importance of these and of similar details +is very slight. Gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time +that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the +attention of heedless Paris were dead also and forgotten. + +Despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, Gauguin found himself +ill-at-ease. The facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the +tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. He wandered off +to Bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before Memling and +astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of Rubens. He lost +interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, Seguin and O'Connor. +After a vain attempt to get a post from the Government as a resident in +Oceania, he again drifted back to Pont-Aven. + +There, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto +model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. In a moment, all +his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him. +He was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way. +He attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping +behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin. + +The mulatto fled, took a train to Paris, entered the empty studio, +seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. As for Gauguin, +he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and +smoking a cigarette. + + +IV + +Little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague +understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at Pont-Aven, +this understanding became a conviction. + +He saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to +accomplish and why he had failed. He knew now what his art had been; a +great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had +gone on in his soul. What he had fought against was the cunning +extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of +nineteenth century Europe. And nineteenth century Europe had risen +against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. He must either +submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul. + +Among the people of Tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very +folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, +among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral +dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else. +Among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived +vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the +scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a +door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists +nor theologians could ever pierce. Among these savages he had found a +dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be +destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own +soul. + +On September 20, 1894, he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid:-- + +"As you say, I have not given any news of myself recently and every one +is complaining. The reason is, you see, that I have lost all my strength +through suffering, above all at night, which I frequently pass without +any sleep. And into the bargain naturally I have done nothing this +infernal month except spend money. For the rest, I have made a fixed +resolve to go back and live always in Oceania and shall return to Paris +in December in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my +bazar at no matter what price. If I succeed I shall leave as soon as +possible in February. I can then finish my days without care for the +morrow and without the external struggle against fools--Farewell to +painting, except as a means of distraction. My house will be in +sculptured wood." + +The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned +to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An +auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his +return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in +Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a +time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a +preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's +response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint +against Gauguin: + +"You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I +wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, +behind the Institute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, +close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse! I would have willingly given you +this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you +wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a +breathing space, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the +outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, +more brutally, by an 'I will not.' + +... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it--I know that this +avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only +strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to +remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with +reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain +partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art +a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate +a super-annuated style of painting. + +... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the +southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your +studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw +trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and +men which only you can create. + +"A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no God can +live--Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, +but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny +for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an +Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or +two! + +"This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, +who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound +sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in +watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, +and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this +Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ +and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not +desire this pitiful God who accepts blows. My God is rather +Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men. + +"No, Gauguin is not formed from the work of Chavannes, nor from that of +Manet, nor from that of Bastien-Lepage. + +"Who is he then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome +civilization; something of a Titan who, jealous of his Creator, in +his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up +his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring +to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do. + +[Illustration: Calvary.] + +"Bon voyage, Master: but come back here to me. I shall by that time +perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me +to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since I am +beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating +a new world." + +To this letter, Gauguin replied-with the following profession of +faith:-- + +"I have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for +my catalog. I had the idea of asking you for a preface, when I saw you +the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue +northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. I had +then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization +and my barbarism. + +"You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of +youth. + +"Before the Eve of my choice, which I have painted in forms and +harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a +sorrow of the past. The Eve of your civilized conception makes you and +the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old Eve, which in my +studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. +This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will +be a Paradise, which I shall have only sketched out. And from the sketch +to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage +happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana? + +"The Eve that I have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked +before one's eyes. Yours in that simple state could not walk without +shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil +and a sorrow." + +In February, 1895, the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand +francs. And shortly after the artist shook the dust of Europe from his +feet and departed for his final voyage to Tahiti. As Morice says, he +left Paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back. + + +V + +It was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted Europe finally, +that Gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in +Tahiti. This story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled +"Noa Noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best +commentary on and the final analysis of his mind. + +We do not know when Gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the +book that is his. It may have been during his long hours of solitude on +his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in Paris; +perhaps it was after his return. The part of the book that is not his +refers in passing to events that took place as late as 1897. + +Gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery--the +conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with +civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet +realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while +civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying. + +To accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary +artifice as possible. His aim was to state what he had seen in Tahiti, +in the style of a folk-tale. He deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic +ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the +professional litterature. What he wanted, above all, was to make others +feel, in the incidents of a naive story, the essence of Tahiti--the soul +of the native. + +It is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to +savagery told by Gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether +it is largely allegory. It may be both or neither. It contains certain +undoubted facts: first, that Gauguin saw on his arrival at Papeete the +royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that +event; second, that he quitted Papeete and attempted to live as a +native, abandoning European dress and speech as far as possible; third, +that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations +with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, +owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial +triumph in France. + +These facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon +which the fascinating story of Gauguin's spiritual development is bit by +bit, built up. He made use of these facts in the same way as he made use +of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful +forms. All art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital +he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, +savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are +at liberty to believe or not as we choose. + +So we follow him from Papeete into the backwoods. We find him holding +aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple +hospitality. We see him making his first tentative attempts at +establishing a community of thought. He tries to persuade the natives to +sit for their portraits--with little success. He tries to find solace +in the companionship of the half-caste Titi, in vain. Then Jotefa comes +upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto +unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of +sex, and thereby rendered sex more dangerous, more artificial, more +unnatural. So he gets his first gleam of intelligence. The next comes, +when Jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is +not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others. +This further enlightens him. He contrasts this opinion on art as +something useful to man with art as the European sees it, a mere +freakish amusement. Finally, he hazards everything. He takes a young +native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. All goes +well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the +natives. They laugh at his luck. He asks them why. Because his line has +caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife +being unfaithful to him. He returns home, half-believing the +superstition. The native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. He cannot +beat her. He can only forgive and understand. So the story closes. + +From such a story, we should naturally receive the impression that +Gauguin's life in Tahiti was ideally happy. But his letters reveal that +he was even more unhappy there than in France. So whatever elements of +fact may be in his story, it is evident that they cannot be disentangled +from the fictional details. It is better to take "Noa Noa" altogether as +a series of fictitious adventures, designed to bring out the fact that +Gauguin became, despite himself, as nearly one with the natives as it is +possible for any European to be. Thus we see, bit by bit, the Tahitians +claiming him as one of their own, from the day that he is forced by +necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused, +to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even +their easy tolerance of marital infidelity. If we look at the story in +this light, it becomes an allegory easily readable, an allegory of +civilization going down before primitive nature, expressed in a series +of parables. + +Unfortunately, Gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and +devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked +Charles Morice to collaborate. Morice thereupon wrote a series of highly +florid descriptions and poems, inspired by Gauguin's pictures, in a +style strongly tinged with the influence of Stephane Mallarme. These +poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of Gauguin's +recital.[1] The result is that "Noa Noa" contains two books; the first +Gauguin's, the second, Morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused +unless he remembers that the sections by Gauguin are all headed "Le +Conteur Parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous +story. Morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded. + +It is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions +add anything to Gauguin's recital. Some people may even prefer the glow +of Morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of Gauguin's poetry. Gauguin +himself philosophically remarked that he wished Morice's work to stand +beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a +civilized decadent and a naive and brutal savage. + + +[Footnote 1: They have been wisely omitted from the English +translation.] + + + + +PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 + + +I + +With Gauguin's last return to Tahiti there opened for him the final and +most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against +encroaching civilization. The letters that he sent to de Monfreid during +this period are painful reading. They breathe the weary cry of a man who +knows that Fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a +warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but +to fight on. For Gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had +carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. The wound +in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under +the climate of Tahiti, it reopened. Owing to the rash exposure of his +skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by +eczema. Night after night was spent in sleepless pain. To add to his +troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on +him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the +white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. It seemed +to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies. + +Before leaving France, a number of friends had agreed to buy his +pictures, and assure him a steady income. These now withdrew their +support. He had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of +sculptured wood which he dreamed of; the construction of the house +carried away his remaining capital. He was everywhere fleeced, not only +by the French colonists, but also by the natives, who were growing more +and more corrupt every day, thanks to the happy influence of +civilization. Even after his house was built, he was not allowed to +keep it in peace. The owner of the ground died, leaving his affairs in a +tangle; Gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the +house, or see it destroyed. This last he refused to do, so he was +forced, finally, to borrow money, a thing he had never done in his life +before. + +Towards the end of 1897, his situation grew even worse. His eyes, now +permanently inflamed, were so painful that he could not even touch a +brush. The tragic portrait of himself in profile, which he sent about +this time to de Monfreid, clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight. +De Monfreid had sent him colors, but these were useless--he could not +even exchange them for bread. And to add to all he was in debt, more and +more heavily, month after month. De Monfreid wrote him encouragingly, +tried to sell his pictures, spoke of articles, of a press campaign on +his behalf. The answer was--"I only desire silence, silence and again +silence. Let me die in peace, forgotten, or if I ought to live, let me +live in peace, forgotten.... What matter if I am the pupil of Bernard or +Serusier? If I have painted daubs, why set out to gild them, to deceive +people as to their quality?" + +Early in 1898 his resolution was taken. Weary, exhausted, at the end of +his tether, he decided to meet death half-way. He finished a large +picture, a sort of strange allegory of despair, entitled _D'ou venons +nous? Que sommes nous? Ou allons nous?_ and then took arsenic. The dose +was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea, which recurred +for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food. Meanwhile +his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had +taken him so much trouble to build. + +In order to obtain food, he shortly afterwards returned to Papeete and, +at the age of fifty, took up a position as a shipping clerk at the Board +of Public Works, with a salary of six francs a day. To such straits was +he reduced, and yet he continued the fight. Can one help admiring his +tenacity? + +Meanwhile, the devoted de Monfreid had been busy. He had enlisted the +interest of Degas, of Vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling +some of the artist's pictures. Gauguin might now have counted upon a +steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. But with him, +there was to be no compromise. Because Bernard, Serusier, Maurice Denis +had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some +influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them +or to exhibit in their company. Of course he merely made himself more +unpopular in Paris by such conduct. But Gauguin's personality was of a +kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. He admired +genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as Degas, Poe, +Balzac, and Mallarme. For ordinary society, he preferred either natives +or children. Nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de Monfreid's +efforts, he found himself out of debt in 1899 and able to return to his +house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. Things seemed to +improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease +of his legs. He set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower +seeds which de Monfreid had sent, at his request, from France. Ill, +ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his +goal. + +[Illustration: Matamua (Olden Days).] + + +II + +It is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in Gauguin's career, +unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical +ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from +the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the +time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. He had +been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown +power was now pursuing him with its hatred. In his next stage, we find +him turning even against the natives. + +On his return to Tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged +thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. She had served him +devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed +him in his illness. After his return to the house from Papeete, she had +resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. Now, for +some reason or no reason, Gauguin suddenly took it into his head that +she had robbed him, and drove her out. The poor soul, however, returned +and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to +call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a +violation of his domicile. Of course, the law did nothing. + +This only further enraged Gauguin. He decided to attack the entire +colonial administration. Since his return, he had been everywhere +treated by the Europeans at Tahiti as a madman or fool. Now he would get +his revenge. + +With the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several +numbers of a paper called, first _Les Guepes_, and later _Le Sourire_. +The contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff +that Gauguin ever wrote. But these crude gibes at the governor and at +the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude +caricatures that Gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to +have produced a stir. People began to fear him at last; it was, for a +moment, a triumph. + +But Tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. A railway +had been built into the interior; the Protestant missionaries grew every +day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the +natives. Gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to +de Monfreid for medicines. But shortly he found his own need of medicine +as great as that of any of the wretched natives. An epidemic of +influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the +hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. To add to his griefs, +the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an +impossible figure. + +Hearing that life in the Marquesas Islands was cheaper, that the natives +there were physically more unspoilt, also that Europeans were few and +far between, he decided to quit Tahiti and install himself in the +island of Hiva-Hoa or Dominica. He hoped to find there elements of a +purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. This hope was destined +to be realized only in part. + +Gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, +Martinique, Brittany and Tahiti. He might have done better work at other +places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. In the +case of his removal to the Marquesas it was the strength that was +lacking. + +Traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his +eyes are to be found even in his latest Tahitian pictures. Owing to his +habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. +The first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, +superior to the productions of 1891-93. The _Te Arii Vahine_ or +Reclining Woman, of 1896 is finer in design even than the _L'Esprit +Veille_ of 1892-3. The _Youth Between Two Girls, La Case_ (1897), the +beautiful _Nave Nave Mahana_ (Delightful Days) of 1896, with its feeling +of a terrestrial paradise--these are masterpieces of their kind. But the +portrait of himself (1897) already shows signs of inability to finish +and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. And with many of the +succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater +carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. The more +savage Gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. +One is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the Irish dramatist, +Synge. + +The Gauguin who sought solitude of far-off Hiva-Hoa was not the Gauguin +of ten years before. He was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. And +he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. Nevertheless, +before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. +Pictures like the _Jeune Fille a l'Eventail_ (1902) or the magnificent +_Contes Barbares_ (also 1902) in which the Marquesas type appears, are +the last word of Gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new +heaven and earth. The flame burned clear in him just before the +close--then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness. + + +III + +The Marquesas Islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and +basaltic formation of Tahiti, of volcanic origin. They lie about a +thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more +humid and less supportable to white men. Owing to this fact, and to the +fact that they are out of the track of steamers between San Francisco +and Sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character. + +The natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any Polynesian +peoples. In distinction to the Tahitians, who are either red or olive +brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. In this they +resemble the Maories of New Zealand, as in the practice of +face-tattooing common among the males. They were formerly great +fighters and ferocious cannibals, as Herman Melville's "Omoo" tells us. +The first white settlers amongst them were French Roman Catholic +missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by +discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial +abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. The +Marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is +Tahiti. + +It was on the chief island of this group that Gauguin installed himself. +His capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start +constructing another house. This, like his house in Tahiti, was +ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. In +the garden, stood a rude clay statue--a sort of combination of a Buddha +and a Maori idol--under a canopy. Gauguin called this statue Te +Atua--the God, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. On +the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from Morice's +verses in "Noa Noa": + + "The Gods are dead and Tahiti dies of their death, + The sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps, + A sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings: + Now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of Eve, + Who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast, + Sterile gold, sealed by some divine design." + +Altogether in the Marquesas, Gauguin found a great charm and repose. He +seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives +and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king. But his health +was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one Chinese +boy, he lived alone. He even dreamed of abandoning the Marquesas (not +because he was weary of the place, but because he knew his strength was +small) and seeking a more favorable climate in Spain, where he thought +he might be able to paint. + +Except for the constant trouble with his health, his only difficulty was +with the missionaries. With the exception of a few settlers, they were +the only whites on the islands. Gauguin had advanced in savagery to +such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people. He +refused to see that the Catholic Missionaries had at least attempted to +save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the +Protestant Missionaries in Tahiti. The insistence of the Catholics upon +monogamy, upon European dress, upon mission schools and religious +observances infuriated him. He made a statue of a nude woman and set it +up in his garden. The Bishop protested. Gauguin promptly made a +caricature in clay of the bishop, with horns on his head like the Devil, +and set it up facing the statue. Something of the old Gothic love of the +grotesque, something, too, of the typically Parisian desire to "_epater +de bourgeois_" remained in him to the last. + +But this was not all. Gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in +peace. Although de Monfreid had worked devotedly, his position in France +was still insecure; Vollard might at any moment refuse to take more +pictures to sell. The wound he had received by his failure to impress +Paris in 1893 still smarted. He determined to write two articles +containing his opinions on art, technique, painting, life and morality, +in order to confound the Parisian critics. These articles, entitled +"Anecdotes of an Apprentice" and "Before and After," are little more +than a series of feverishly jotted notes. Later, with other notes of a +similar nature, they were embodied in a large album entitled "Avant et +Apres," which remains the fullest body of information about Gauguin's +life and art we possess. The _Mercure de France_ judged, perhaps +rightly, that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print +them. + +The other old score that he had to wipe out was with the French colonial +administration. In Tahiti, he had fought the governor, the law courts, +and the gendarmes. Here it was the customs officials who roused his +wrath. Two American ships had recently visited the island and a certain +amount of goods had been sold to the natives, through the connivance of +the gendarmes, without paying tax. Gauguin immediately wrote a letter on +the subject to the Administration, stating the facts as he understood +them and protesting, on behalf of the natives, against the bribery and +corruption of the Customs in this instance. The only reply made was a +notice from the law courts that the Administration intended to take +steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement. Gauguin +appeared in court, where he was promptly condemned to prison for three +months and to a fine of a thousand francs. + +It was ruin, but Gauguin determined to appeal. The tribunal was +irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part, at +least, true. He was sure of winning his case, but an appeal necessitated +a return to Tahiti and the costs of an attorney, and his capital was +again running low. He wrote to de Montfreid, begging him to find a buyer +for three pictures, at the price of fifteen hundred francs; he sent off +ten more pictures to Vollard. Then he prepared to make his appeal. + +Death surprised him suddenly and Paul Gauguin's appeal will never be +heard in this world. + +A letter from the only white man, the Protestant minister Vernier, who +knew him, leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of Gauguin's +death. It was not the eczema of the legs, nor leprosy, as some have +hinted, nor another dose of arsenic, nor syphilis, that ended his life; +it was a simple syncope of the heart. His energy, with which he had kept +up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had +drawn so many beautiful pictures, was worn out. The machine slackened +and stopped. + +Paul Gauguin died on the 6th of May, 1903. + +A few days before his death he had written his last letter to Charles +Morice, the words of which stir one like a trumpet. + +"I am on the ground but I am not beaten. The Indian, who smiles while he +is being tortured, is not conquered. You are mistaken if you meant that +I am wrong in calling myself a savage. I _am_ a savage, and the +civilized feel this, for there is nothing in my work which could produce +bewilderment save this savage strain in me, for which I am not myself +responsible. It is therefore inimitable. Every human work is a +revelation of the individual. Hence there are two kinds of beauty; one +comes from instinct, the other from labor. The union of the two, with +the modifications resulting therefrom, produces great and very +complicated richness. Art-criticism has yet to discover the fact.... +Raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from +discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in +him. Raphael was born with beauty. All the rest in him is modification. + +"Physics, chemistry, and above all the study of Nature, have produced an +epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists robbed +of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of +the productive element they no longer possess. They now act only in +disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone. +Solitude is not to be recommended to every one, for a man must have +strength to bear it and to act alone. All I have learnt from others has +been an impediment to me. It is true I know little, but what I do know +is my own." + +Yet civilization, after all, had the last word. The very bishop, whom +Gauguin in life had hated and caricatured, intervened when he lay cold +and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full Catholic +rites in the cemetery of the Church at Atuana. And, by a concluding +stroke of irony, the grave was left unmarked. Thus one of the greatest +painters of the later nineteenth century, and one of the bravest men the +world has ever seen, mingled his dust with that of the humblest +natives, in the same way as Blake, one of the greatest painters of the +early nineteenth century, had been buried before him in an unmarked +grave among the paupers, at Bunhill Fields. + + +IV + +The immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth +century took place so rapidly and universally, that no one was able to +estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects. At +the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded Europe and +America was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man, born in +the fires of the French Revolution. After 1848 this idea gradually +vanished, and another took its place; the purely material idea of +progress. The perfected application of steam and the consequent +development of machinery; the immense tapping of the world's resources +of coal, metals, agricultural products; the equally immense, universal +exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to +their maximum; the creation of an international finance, resting upon +vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few, whose world-wide +interests were linked together by railways, steamship lines, telegraphs, +telephones; the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist +class, invisibly controlling the old, decayed aristocracy, the official +church, the machinery of the law; a larger middle class, dependent upon +and subservient to the capitalists; and an immense laboring class, +exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes: all these were +virtually the creation of a single century. + +Against this overwhelming flood of change, a few exceptionally gifted +men vaguely protested, affirming the greater value of human life over +mechanical invention; maintaining the antique dignity of man. Their +protest was incoherent, individualistic. These men were like broken and +scattered fragments of dykes, still unsubmerged and striving to hold +back the waters of a flood. Among them must be ranked the artist whose +life-story I have written. + +All that is vital and valuable in French painting of the nineteenth +century, since Ingres, springs directly from the enthusiasm and +spiritual energy of the French Revolution. The somber fury of Delacroix, +the colossal caricature of Daumier; the peasant art of Millet; the sane +realism of Courbet; the mordant irony of Degas and Forain; even the +feeling for nature and the open air which the Impressionists gave us, +all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for +personal freedom, for human liberty and development. When Gauguin +arrived on the scene, the reaction was already taking place. The +official, academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock +of outworn formulas. On the other hand, the Impressionists were striving +to render nature scientifically, unemotionally. Nature was becoming to +them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical +formulas for soil, air, sunlight. Only Puvis de Chavannes remained, +aloof and misunderstood, painting great decorations that seemed but the +remembrance of some golden age of the past, and easel pictures of a +profound, hopeless pessimism. + +Gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against +materialism, against unemotional vision began. At the outset he +attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the Impressionists. But, +by the purest instinct he discovered, as Cezanne had already discovered, +that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered +in color. And he also discovered (this time the discovery came from +Puvis de Chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted +either--that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by +nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that +even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to +suit the harmony of the composition. Thus unconsciously, almost without +volition on his part, he was led to understand that the Primitives +everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great +human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their +vision was or was not exact. And so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for +the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of +natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized +efficiency. + +Unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his +art or to his life. Gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only +a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished +world. And he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and +disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to +harmony with himself. At least the caricature of himself in _Contes +Barbares_ is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled +child that some imagine him to be. Having both the world and himself to +struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should +represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved +only to be, as he said in his last letter to de Montfreid, "a downfall +followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." And so in +his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by Van Gogh after +the disaster that parted them: "Gauguin made one feel that a good +picture should be the equivalent of a good action." + +And indeed it is so. Every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound +moral responsibility. This responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty +of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of Christian +ethics, by which we are ruled. It is not the duty of upholding a system +of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very +roots of life. It is a far nobler, far more difficult task. The duty of +the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, +despite the morbid prejudices of Puritanism, the timid conventionality +of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of +suffering, decay and death. This duty Gauguin in his art strove to +accomplish. He affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's +labor, the earth. Cezanne, perhaps a more accomplished painter, endowed +perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great +painters of the past, shrank from making Gauguin's affirmation. He +accepted in his own life a compromise; in his art he ruthlessly +eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination. And +then, towards the end of his life, Cezanne complained that Gauguin had +vulgarized him. + +"Gauguin has not understood me; never will I accept the lack of +gradation and of tone; it's nonsense." + +It would have been better for Cezanne to have said that he could not, +dared not understand Gauguin. + +Nor is this all that Gauguin accomplished. He restored painting to its +proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts. He showed us that its +place is between architecture and music, and that sculpture is its twin +sister. He was the first man to suspect that the progress of the +scientific spirit among the Greeks had produced the same effects in +disassociating and destroying the arts, as has the progress of the +scientific spirit in the present day. He believed, and constantly +affirmed, that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he +built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies, as well as +upon the chosen architectural proportions of form, which, whether given +by perspective or not, seemed to him necessary. Thus he reconciled the +Venetians and the Primitives, and showed that the goal of both form and +color is decoration. + +William Blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan, who painted +his dream of a golden age in his own way, who steadfastly strove to +grasp the essential truth in every tradition: Egyptian, Cambodian, +Persian, Chinese, Gothic, Greek and Renaissance. But Gauguin could +never, had he known of Blake, have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic +negation, the contemptuous denial of earthliness, of "the delusions of +the goddess Nature." In Gauguin, the spirit never conquered the flesh, +and he remained to the end, a man. Blake was possibly the greater +visionary: Gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build. + + +V + +After Gauguin's death, his art rapidly became almost forgotten in +France. He remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were +not fifty of his pictures in that country. Even the few there are, hang +in scattered private collections, each containing one or at most three +or four. The great bulk of his work is in Germany, Scandinavia and +Russia. It proved impossible even in 1911 to raise sufficient money to +buy _L'Esprit Veille_ for the Louvre. + +It is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able +to assemble a considerable quantity of his work. Gauguin was, above all +things, a decorator, and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater +effect than one. One does not judge Puvis de Chavannes, another +decorator, solely by his easel pictures, but by the great decorative +schemes in Paris, at Amiens and in Boston. This remark applies equally +to other decorators, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and +Veronese. A room hung with twenty Gauguins would produce an immense +effect of monumental power. That such a room exists in Moscow can be +small consolation to Western Europeans at present. + +His pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively, like +Serusier, or drifted off into academicism, like Bernard, or watered down +their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume +decoration of Maurice Denis. None of them seized Gauguin's secret of +remaining simple, direct and savage. Aristide Maillol is an honorable +exception. A sculptor and tapestry designer, he was able to work upon +the indications that Gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches +and to show us, in part at least, how they might be realized. + +The main stream of French art simply ignored Gauguin. Instead of making +with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition, it went +forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting. The +Neo-Impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were +followed by disciples of Cezanne, who sought to reduce all forms to +certain geometrical primaries, basing their doctrine on certain words +which the master of Aix had let fall concerning the simplification of +form. Out of these emerged Matisse, whose art became, through a more and +more ruthless elimination of modeling, through a more and more arbitrary +placing of colors, an abstraction, an utterly unemotional series of +hieroglyphs. Then Picasso came upon the scene, eliminated color +altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form. The Cubists +followed Picasso. The Futurists in their turn started another kind of +abstract painting, the painting of mechanical energy, the dynamism +latent in form. + +The Expressionists, meanwhile, held to Van Gogh's and Gauguin's idea +that the picture must represent some emotion, but they denied Gauguin's +corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose +this emotion into its pictorial equivalent. Consequently they eliminated +form and strove to paint abstract emotion. Finally, the Vorticists +combined Futurism and Expressionism into a single whole and painted the +abstraction of an abstraction--the emotion of dynamic energy, thus +declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself, an art utterly +innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever. + +The motives of all these confused art movements, perplexing and +apparently in-congruous, were identical. They were all actuated by a +mania for scientific discovery, a desire to analyze phenomena until the +reality behind phenomena could be found. The physicists, chemists, +philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real +world--that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and +electrons, of radiant or non-radiant energy, or perhaps of elasticity +and inelasticity. These young art revolutionaries, who gave themselves +so many queer labels, were not, as many supposed, either insincere or +insane. They were merely smitten with the desire to make painting--and +not only painting, but even other arts as well--a branch of abstract +science. The world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion, +making some abstract concept. Therefore they strove to paint, not what +seemed to them unreal, but their absolute conceptions. This new +metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development +of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the +rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries +by the Byzantine monks of Mount Athos, was rapidly conquering the whole +field of aft when the past war broke out. Nor has the war altogether +suppressed its manifestations. + +The enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past +war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results +achieved by either side. However true it may be to hold the Germans as +primarily responsible for this destruction, in the first instance, yet +it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape +responsibility for the later developments of the struggle. Apart from +Germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war, civilization as a whole +must answer for the horror of its method. A piece of heavy artillery is +equally destructive, whether it be cast at Essen or at Le Creusot; a +Caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a Gotha; the submarine was +first employed in war by the Americans; the machine gun is an English +invention. For all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth +century, with our belief in purely material progress, stand guilty +to-day; and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over +four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come. + +The past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest +between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an +inhuman, scientific, organized machine. And the machine was victorious. +Just as the scientific spirit, conquering art before the war, led to the +extravagances of Cubism and Vorticism so, since the war, it has attacked +life itself; and made of national existence, no longer a problem of +human bravery, resource and intelligence, but merely a problem of +relative man-power and munitions. We have learned to speak of +"man-power" as our books on physics speak of "horse-power." The task we, +in the war, set ourselves was a grisly paradox; we proposed to save +civilization, to undo a great wrong, by destroying the very basis of +human life on which all civilization stands. + +It is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a +few artists who, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, foresaw +that material progress would end in annihilating humanity, that nature +and humanity, hand in hand, are more sacred than all the shells that +could ever be produced, the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws +that could ever be written. With a sense of spiritual release we revert +to those who dreamed of the great return to nature--to Rousseau, +Whitman, Gauguin, as well as to others who, although perhaps lesser men +than they, followed in their path--David Thoreau, Richard Jefferies. +They were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail--the +gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above +aesthetic negation. Their vision was of something not in themselves but +of something higher and nobler, as Gauguin knew when he deliberately +caricatured himself in _Contes Barbares_. As he knew also, the vision +was of something stated only fragmentarily, inscribed as a promise, a +foretaste, an indication of what might be. In Rousseau's prose, in +Whitman's poetry and in Gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope +for self-tortured humanity, and the promise of a land where nature and +man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED + + +WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY: + +1. Paul Gauguin par Jean de Rotonchamp, Imprime a Weimar par les Soins +du Comte de Kessler et se Trouve a Paris, chez Edouard Druet, Rue de +Faubourg Saint Honore, No. 114. 1906. Edition limited to 250 copies. + +2. Gauguin, by Charles Morice. Floury, Paris, 1919. This and the +preceding work are the standard sources of Gauguin's life. + +3. Lettres de Paul Gauguin a Charles Daniel de Monfreid. Paris, Cres, +1919. + +4. White Shadows in the South Seas, by Frederick O'Brien. New York, The +Century Co., 1920. A travel book, with a few new sidelights on Gauguin's +final period. + +5. Avant et Apres. Paul Gauguin aux Marquises. 1903. 100 copies only +published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript. A +translation into German has also appeared. Kurt Wolf Verlag, Berlin, +1920. + + + +WORKS OF ART CRITICISM IN ENGLISH: + +1. Modern Painting, by Willard Huntingdon Wright. New York, The John +Lane Company. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, by +John Gould Fletcher + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL GAUGUIN, HIS LIFE AND ART *** + +***** This file should be named 38848.txt or 38848.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/4/38848/ + +Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org +(From images generously made available by the Intenet +Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/38848.zip b/old/38848.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9db55e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/38848.zip |
