Paul Gauguin two women. Paul Gauguin: an unusual biography of an unusual man

On May 8, 1903, on the island of Hiva Oa in French Polynesia, Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin died of syphilis at the age of 54. A father who was forgotten by his own children, a writer who became the laughing stock of Parisian journalists, an artist ridiculed by his contemporaries, he could not even imagine that after his death his paintings would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Our review contains 10 paintings by the great artist, which depict Tahitian women who gave Gauguin love, joy and inspiration.

1. Tahitian Women on the Coast (1891)

Tahitian women on the coast. 1891 Paris. Museum D'Orsay.

In Tahiti, Paul Gauguin painted more than 50 paintings, his best paintings. Women were a special theme for the temperamental painter. And the women in Tahiti were special in comparison with prim Europe. The French writer Desfontaines wrote: “ It is impossible to please them, they always lack money, no matter how generous you are... Thinking about tomorrow and feeling gratitude - both are equally alien to Tahitians. They live only in the present, do not think about the future, do not remember the past. The most tender, most devoted lover is forgotten, as soon as he steps outside the threshold, forgotten literally the very next day. The main thing for them is to intoxicate themselves with songs, dances, alcohol and love».

2. Parau Parau - Conversation (1891)

In this painting, an inscription was made by Gauguin himself, which is translated from the language of the islanders as “gossip”. The women sit in a circle and are busy talking, but the everyday nature of the plot of the picture does not deprive it of its mystery. This picture is not so much a somewhat concrete reality as an image of the eternal world, and the exotic nature of Tahiti is just an organic part of this world.

Gauguin himself became an organic part of this world - he did not worry about women, did not fall in love and did not demand from local ladies what they could not give him in the first place. After parting with his beloved wife, who remained in Europe, he consoled himself with physical love. Fortunately, Tahitian women gave love to any unmarried man; all they had to do was point their finger at the young lady they liked and pay her “guardian.”

3. Her name is Vairaumati (1892)

And yet Gauguin was happy in Tahiti. He was especially inspired to work when 16-year-old Tehura moved into his hut. For a dark-skinned girl with wavy hair, her parents took very little from Gauguin. Now at night the night light smoldered in Gauguin’s hut - Tehura was afraid of ghosts waiting in the wings. Every morning Paul brought water from the well, watered the garden and stood at the easel. Gauguin was ready to live like this forever.

Once Tehura told the artist about the secret society of Areoi, which enjoyed special influence on the islands and considered itself adherents of the god Oro. When Gauguin found out about them, he got the idea to paint a picture about the god Oro. The artist titled the painting “Her name is Vairaumati.”

In the painting, Vairaumati herself is depicted seated on a bed of love, with fresh fruits for her lover at her feet. Behind Vairaumati in a red loincloth is the god Oro himself. Two idols are visible in the depths of the canvas. The entire Tahitian landscape invented by Gauguin is intended to personify love.

4. Manao Tupapau – The spirit of the dead is awake (1892)

The title of the painting "Manao Tupapau" has two meanings - "she is thinking about the ghost" and "the ghost is thinking about her." The reason for Gauguin to paint the picture was given by a domestic situation. He was away on business in Papeete and did not return home until late at night. The house was shrouded in darkness because the oil in the lamp had run out. When Paul lit a match, he saw that Tehura was shaking in horror, clutching the bed. All the natives were afraid of ghosts, and therefore they did not turn off the lights in the huts at night.

Gauguin entered this story into his notebook and ended prosaically: “In general, this is just a nude from Polynesia.”

5. The King's Wife (1896)

Gauguin painted The King's Wife during his second stay in Tahiti. The Tahitian beauty with a red fan behind her head, which is a sign of royalty, brings to mind Edouard Manet's Olympia and Titian's Venus of Urbino. The beast creeping along the slope symbolizes feminine mystique. But the most important thing, in the opinion of the artist himself, is the color of the painting. “...It seems to me that in terms of color I have never created a single thing with such a strong solemn sonority,” Gauguin wrote to one of his friends.

6. Ea haere ia oe - Where are you going? (Woman holding a fruit). (1893)

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Ea haere ia oe - Where are you going? (Woman holding a fruit). 1893.
Saint Petersburg. State Hermitage Museum.

Gauguin was brought to Polynesia by a romantic dream of complete harmony - to a world mysterious, exotic and not completely different from Europe. He saw the eternal rhythm of life embodied in the vibrant colors of Oceania, and the islanders themselves were a source of inspiration for him.

The title of the painting is translated from the Maori language as the greeting “Where are you going?” The most seemingly simple motive acquired an almost ritual solemnity. The pumpkin (this is how the islanders carried water) in the painting became a symbol of the Tahitian paradise. The peculiarity of this picture is the feeling of sunlight, which materializes in the dark body of the Tahitian woman, who is depicted in a red-fiery pareo.

7. Te awae no Maria - Month of Mary (1899)

The painting, the main theme of which was the blossoming of spring nature, was painted by Gauguin in the last years of his life, which he spent in Tahiti. The name of the painting - Month of Mary - is due to the fact that in the Catholic Church all May services were associated with the cult of the Virgin Mary.

The whole picture is imbued with the artist’s impressions of the exotic world into which he immersed himself. The pose of the woman in the painting is reminiscent of a sculpture from a temple on the island of Java. She is wearing a white robe, considered a symbol of purity by both Tahitians and Christians. The artist in this painting combined different religions, creating an image of primordial nature.

8. Women on the Seashore (Motherhood) (1899)

The painting, created by Gauguin in the last years of his life, testifies to the artist’s complete departure from European civilization. This painting is inspired by real events - Pakhura, the artist's Tahitian lover, gave birth to a son in 1899.

9. Three Tahitian women on a yellow background. (1899)

Another of the artist’s latest works is “Three Tahitian Women on a Yellow Background.” It is full of mysterious symbols that cannot always be deciphered. It is possible that the artist put some symbolic background into this work. But at the same time, the canvas is decorative: complete harmony of rhythmic lines and color spots, plasticity and grace in the poses of women. In this painting, the artist depicted the world with that natural harmony that civilized Europe had lost.

10. “Nafea Faa Ipoipo” (“When will you get married?”) (1892)

At the beginning of 2015, Paul Gauguin's painting “Nafea Faa Ipoipo” (“When will you get married?”) became the most expensive work of art - it was auctioned for $300 million. The painting, which belonged to the Swiss collector Rudolf Staehelin, dates back to 1892. He confirmed the fact of the sale of the masterpiece, but did not disclose the amount of the transaction. The media managed to find out that the painting was bought by the Qatar Museums organization, which buys works of art for museums in Qatar.

Especially for connoisseurs of painting and for those who are just getting acquainted with world masterpieces.

Gauguin was not a professional artist; he began painting as an amateur. However, he later became the largest representative of post-impressionism.

P. Gauguin “Van Gogh and Sunflowers” ​​(1888)
His childhood in Peru gave Gauguin a craving for exotic places. The artist considered civilization to be a disease. He wanted to merge with nature, so in 1891 he left for Tahiti (French Polynesia) and wrote a lot here. Short-term, for 2 years, return to France, and again departure (forever) to Oceania: first to Tahiti, and from 1901 to the island of Hiva Oa (Marquesas Islands). Here he marries a young Tahitian woman and works: he writes his best paintings, stories, and works as a journalist. He interweaves observations of the real life and way of life of the peoples of Oceania with local myths.
This is where Paul Gauguin died in 1903.

Works of Paul Gauguin

Fame came to Gauguin after his death. Let's look at some of his works.

P. Gauguin “Breton Calvary” (“Green Christ”) (1889). Canvas, oil. 73.5 x 92 cm. Royal Museum of Fine Arts (Brussels)
In the vicinity of Pont-Aven, Gauguin often saw ancient stone crucifixes. They were covered with moss. The painting was created by him under the impression of these ancient idols.

P. Gauguin “Woman with a Flower” (1891). Canvas, oil. 70.5 x 46.5 cm. New Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen)
This painting was created by an artist in Tahiti - the first of the paintings of the Tahitian cycle. He himself described the history of its creation. The woman is Gauguin’s neighbor, she came to him, interested in the paintings on the wall (reproductions from paintings by Manet and other artists). He took advantage of this visit to sketch a portrait of a Tahitian woman, but she ran away. An hour later she returned dressed in an elegant dress and with a flower in her hair. She did not meet European standards, but in her features Gauguin saw Raphaelian harmony.
The yellow and red background of the portrait is decorated with stylized flowers. The flower in the woman's hair is a Tahitian gardenia. This flower is also used to make perfume.

P. Gauguin “The spirit of the dead does not sleep” (1892). Canvas, oil. 72.4 x 92.4 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York)
The painting is also from the Tahitian cycle. Mixing fiction with reality was characteristic of the Tahitian culture. The Young Girl is based on Tehura, Gauguin's young Tahitian wife. The spirit is depicted as an ordinary woman. The gloomy purple background of the painting creates a mystical atmosphere.
The canvas was created as a result of a real event: Gauguin was delayed on his way until dark. Tehura was waiting for him, but the oil in the lamp ran out, and she lay in the dark. Entering the house, he struck a match, which greatly frightened her: she mistook him for a ghost. Tahitians were very afraid of ghosts. Gauguin depicted the ghost in the form of an ordinary woman, because... Tahitians who had not read books or been to the theater could only take their idea of ​​them from real life.

P. Gauguin “Oh, are you jealous?” (1892). Canvas, oil. 66 x 89 cm. State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin (Moscow)
The painting was painted during the Polynesian period of Gauguin's work. It is based on a scene from life, which he later described in the book “Noa Noa”: “There are two sisters on the shore. They have just swam, and now their bodies are stretched out on the sand in casual, voluptuous poses - talking about the love of yesterday and the one that will come tomorrow. One memory causes discord: “How? Are you jealous!"

P. Gauguin “Woman Holding a Fruit” (1893). Canvas, oil. 92.5 x 73.5 cm. State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg)
The painting depicts a Tahitian village. Two simple grass-roofed huts are visible. In the foreground of the painting is a young Tahitian woman holding a lemon-green mango in her hands. Her face is serious and expressive, her gaze is attentive. It is believed that Gauguin’s young wife, Tahitian Tehura, served as her model.
The Tahitian landscape is shown in a general way: in the picture there are no sun rays or air vibrations, but the heat of the tropical sun is felt in the color of the woman’s skin, and in the blue of the sky, and in the stillness of the branches. Woman seems to be an integral part of nature.

P. Gauguin “Never Again” (1897). Canvas, oil. Courtauld Institute of Art (London)
The painting is one of the most famous paintings by Paul Gauguin, painted in Tahiti.
A naked Tahitian girl lies on a rich bed. She seems to be listening intently to something. In the background you can see a doorway, and in it are two people talking. Nearby is a black bird that looks like a raven.
The color scheme of the picture is gloomy, so the picture is alarming. And the woman lying on the bed looks alarmed: she is looking either at the raven or at those talking in the next room. Thick brushstrokes, bright, expressive colors anticipate expressionism.

P. Gauguin “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?" (1897-1898). Canvas, oil. 131.1 x 374.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA)
This is one of the most famous paintings by Paul Gauguin. The artist considered this work to be the sublime culmination of his thoughts.
After completing this painting, Gauguin decided to commit suicide. Gauguin arrived in Tahiti in 1891 in the hope of finding a paradise on earth, untouched by civilization, where he could turn to the basics of primitive art. But reality disappointed him.
He indicated that the painting should be read from right to left: three main groups of figures illustrate the questions posed in the title. Three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the middle group symbolizes the daily existence of maturity; in the final group, according to the artist’s plan, “the old woman, approaching death, seems reconciled and given over to her thoughts,” at her feet “a strange white bird ... represents the uselessness of words.” The blue idol in the background represents the "other world". About the completeness of the painting, he said the following: “I believe that this painting not only surpasses all my previous ones, and that I will never create something better or even similar.”
The painting was made in a post-impressionist style. The clear use of paints and thick strokes still illustrates the principles of impressionism, but the emotionality and power of expressionism is also already evident.

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on June 7, 1848. His father, Clovis Gauguin (1814-1849), was a journalist in the political chronicle department of Thiers and Armand Mar's magazine National, obsessed with radical republican ideas; mother, Alina Maria (1825-1867), was from a wealthy family from Peru. Her mother was the famous Flora Tristan (1803-1844), who shared the ideas of utopian socialism and published the autobiographical book “The Wanderings of a Pariah” in 1838.

At the beginning of his biography, Paul Gauguin was a sailor, later a successful stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he began to paint, initially on weekends.

Struggling with the “disease” of civilization, Gauguin decided to live according to the principles of primitive man. However, physical illness forced him to return to France. Paul Gauguin spent the following years in his biography in Paris, Brittany, making a short but tragic stop in Arles with van Gogh.

Gauguin's work

By the age of 35, with the support of Camille Pissarro, Gauguin devoted himself entirely to art, abandoning his lifestyle, moving away from his wife and five children.

Having established a connection with the Impressionists, Gauguin exhibited his work with them from 1879 to 1886.

The next year he left for Panama and Maritinique.

In 1888, Gauguin and Emile Bernard put forward a synthetic theory of art (symbolism), emphasizing planes and the reflection of light, non-natural colors in combination with symbolic or primitive objects. Gauguin's painting "The Yellow Christ" (Albright Gallery, Buffalo) is a characteristic work of the period.

In 1891, Gauguin sold 30 paintings, and then went to Tahiti with the proceeds. There he spent two years living in poverty, painted some of his last works, and also wrote Noa Noa, an autobiographical novella.

In 1893, Gauguin's biography included a return to France. He presented several of his works. With this, the artist renewed public interest, but earned very little money. Broken in spirit, sick with syphilis, which had been causing him pain for many years, Gauguin again moved to the southern seas, to Oceania. Gauguin spent the last years of his life there, where he suffered hopelessly and physically.

In 1897, Gauguin tried to commit suicide, but failed. Then he spent another five years drawing. He died on the island of Hiva Oa (Marquesas Islands).

Today Gauguin is considered an artist who has had an extremely great influence on modern art. He rejected traditional Western naturalism, using nature as a starting point for abstract figures and symbols. He emphasized linear patterns and striking color harmonies that imbued his paintings with a strong sense of mystery.

Over the course of his life, Gauguin revitalized the art of woodblock printing, performing free, daring knife work, as well as expressive, non-standard forms, strong contrasts. In addition, Gauguin created several beautiful lithographs and pottery works.

The artist was born in Paris, but spent his childhood in Peru. Hence his love for exotic and tropical countries. N

and many of the artist’s best Tahitian paintings depict 13-year-old Tehura, whom her parents willingly gave as a wife to Gauguin. Frequent and promiscuous relationships with local girls led to Gauguin falling ill with syphilis. While waiting for Gauguin, Tehura often remained lying on the bed all day, sometimes in the dark. The reasons for her depression were prosaic - she was tormented by suspicions that Gauguin decided to visit prostitutes.

Much lesser known are the ceramics made by Gauguin. His ceramic technique is unusual. He did not use a potter's wheel, he sculpted exclusively with his hands. As a result, the sculpture looks rougher and more primitive. He valued ceramic works no less than his paintings.

Gauguin easily changed techniques and materials. He was also interested in wood carving. Often experiencing financial difficulties, he was unable to buy paints. Then he took up the knife and wood. He decorated the doors of his house in the Marquesas Islands with carved panels.

In 1889, having thoroughly studied the Bible, he painted four canvases in which he depicted himself in the image of Christ. He did not consider this blasphemy, although he admitted that their interpretation was controversial.

Regarding the particularly scandalous painting “Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane,” he wrote: “This painting is doomed to be misunderstood, so I am forced to hide it for a long time.

In his interest in the primitive, Gauguin was ahead of his time. The fashion for the art of ancient peoples came to Europe only at the beginning of the 20th century (Picasso, Matisse)

Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin - French painter, sculptor, ceramist and graphic artist. Along with Cezanne and Van Gogh was the largest representative post-impressionism. Early 1870s years began to paint as an amateur. The early period of creativity is associated with impressionism. Since 1880 participated in impressionist exhibitions. WITH 1883 professional artist.

Both in Gauguin’s life and work, everything is blatantly unusual, everything is confusing, contradictory, everything is bright, colorful, everything is permeated with the spirit of protest against the usual, established norms, against a smooth, serene existence.

Gauguin's life, full of vicissitudes, proved that he deeply believed in everything he preached. Therefore, every event in his life, every word spoken by the artist on one occasion or another takes on a special meaning.

To understand the artist and his paintings, let’s return to his biography.

Gauguin. Paris. Winter 1891

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Paul Gauguin was born in 1848. His father was a journalist, and his mother came from a wealthy Peruvian family. Until the age of seven, Paul lived with his mother’s family in Peru.

In 1855, when Paul was 7 years old, he and his mother returned to France and settled in Orleans with his grandfather. Gauguin quickly learns French and begins to excel in education. At the age of 20, he goes to serve in the navy for 2 years. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris, where he received the position of stock broker.

Mette and Paul Gauguin. Copenhagen, 1885

At the beginning of 1873, Gauguin met a young Danish woman, Matt-Sophie Gad, who came to France on vacation, and married her. The wife regards her husband's entertainment as the most harmless pastime.The couple had five children

Over the next ten years, Gauguin's position in society strengthened. He got a comfortable house in the suburbs of Paris, and his beloved wife bore him five children. In his free time, Gauguin devotes a lot of time to his hobby - painting. It all started with collecting paintings, and then Gauguin began to try to paint himself.

Gauguin had been interested in drawing since childhood, but it was only after meeting the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who in turn introduced Gauguin to other artists, that he began to paint regularly and eventually exhibited at the Impressionist exhibitions in 1881 and 1882.

In 1884, Gauguin moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he continued to work as a broker. However, having started painting full time, Paul left his wife and five children in Denmark and returned to Paris in 1885.

Gauguin and his children Emil and Alina.

Gauguin's wife Mette with children.

The feeling of complete loss, the inability to overcome the hostile environment around him is further aggravated by the attitude of his wife and relatives.

“...It’s been six months now that I haven’t spoken,” he writes, “the isolation is the most complete, it’s natural that for the family I’m a monster who doesn’t earn money... and I’m subject to reproaches, Naturally, in connection with painting, because of which I am not a famous financier."

But Matt could not understand her husband when he decided to devote himself entirely to art. The marriage between them actually broke up by 1885, which did not prevent Matt from helping Paul exhibit for a long time (at least until 1892) and actually being his agent in Denmark

From this time on, his wanderings around the world began.

Since childhood, spent in Peru (in his mother’s homeland), he has been craving for exotic places and considering civilization a “disease.” Gauguin, eager to “merge with nature,” left for Tahiti in 1891, where he lived in Papeete and where in 1892 paints as many as 80 canvases.

Here he painted not only paintings, but also books, and created his unique sculptures. Gauguin wrote: “I place sculptures everywhere on the grass. This is clay covered with wax. First, a naked female figure, then a magnificent fantastic lion playing with his lion cub. The natives, who have never seen predators, are completely stunned.”

He saw that the inhabitants of the islands still had many not entirely pleasant, barbaric habits, he saw how many new vices the Europeans who sailed here instilled in these naive people. But again and again he himself recreated the paradise that had once captivated him, he himself built his own house of pleasure.

His official wahina (beloved) was now fourteen-year-old Marie-Rose Waeoho, but besides her, many local girls came to his house.

Self-portrait with "Yellow Christ". 1890

After a short (1893-1895) return to France, due to illness and lack of funds, he left for Oceania forever - first to Tahiti, and from 1901 to the island of Hiva Oa (Marquesas Islands), where he took a young Tahitian woman as his wife and working at full capacity.

Gauguin's house

On the second floor there was a small bedroom on the left, and a spacious workshop on the right. The door was surrounded by painted carved wooden panels. From the window of the workshop, Gauguin used a fishing rod to retrieve a jug of water from the well.

Gauguin's house in Punaauia and a statue of a naked woman. Photo

Gauguin's favorite model was not Waeoho, with whom he lived, but the red-haired Tohotaua from the neighboring island of Tahuata. It is curious that, due to ancient mixing of races, not only in the Marquesas Islands, but also in other parts of Polynesia, at the time of their discovery by Europeans, there were many red-haired natives. And as long as people remembered, there were always red-haired people in the Tohotahua clan. She posed, in particular, for Gauguin’s interesting painting “Barbarian Tales”

Here Gauguin will spend the last year and a half of his life. He is engaged in painting and sculpture, continues to work as a journalist, writes stories, enters into continuous conflicts with the authorities and representatives of the Catholic mission - and gradually loses strength.

Despite illness, poverty and depression, which led him to attempt suicide, Gauguin wrote his best works there. Observations of the real life and way of life of the peoples of Oceania are intertwined with local myths.

On large flat canvases he creates compositions that are static and contrasting in color, deeply emotional and at the same time decorative.

Depicting the lush full-blooded beauty of tropical nature, natural people unspoiled by civilization, the artist sought to embody the utopian dream of an earthly paradise, of human life in harmony with nature.

In one of his last letters to a friend, he said: “I am defeated, but not yet defeated. Is an Indian defeated who smiles under torture? Really, savages are better than us. You were wrong when you once told me that I was mistaken and I am not a savage No, this is so: I am a savage. Civilized people feel this, because in my works it is precisely this “involuntary savagery” that surprises and puzzles me.

On May 8, 1903, after several days of physical and moral suffering, Paul Gauguin died. The natives who came to the artist’s house wailed over his body: “Gauguin is dead, we are lost.”

Paul Gauguin summed up his life and his work better than anyone else: “I am a great artist and I know it because it is so. I have endured a lot. My creative center is in the brain, and not anywhere else.” “I am strong because no one anywhere has led me astray from the path I have chosen, and I remain true to what is in me.”

Self-portrait with glasses. 1903

Fame came to the artist after his death, when 227 of his works were exhibited in Paris in 1906.

Gauguin's technical achievements, a new understanding of color, special attention to drawing that highlights contours, the relationship between color and design, color and line, the desire to maximize and at the same time simplify these elements, the decorative effects of a planar image, and, most importantly, the complete subordination of the pictorial language the meaning of what is depicted - all this has become firmly established in the art of the 20th century.

Bouquet and Tahitian children.

Aren't you jealous?

Portrait of Marie Derien

Landscape of Tahiti.

Two girls.

Two Tahitians.

Saints' Day.

The spirit of the dead does not sleep.

Gauguin wrote “The Spirit of the Dead Never Sleeps” in 1892, in a remote village on the island of Tahiti. This picture shows the artist’s characteristic mixture of fiction and reality, when ancient legends are closely intertwined with the life of the Tahitians.

The young girl is based on Tehura, Gauguin’s young Tahitian wife. The spirit is depicted as an ordinary little woman. The gloomy purple background of the picture creates the appropriate atmosphere.

Woman holding a fruit.

Tahitian with mango.

Tahiti women on the beach.

Interest in Gauguin increased year by year. Articles and studies were dedicated to him. Museums and large collections acquired his paintings, and the “market price” for him kept growing.

This price jumped especially sharply in December 1942, when Gauguin’s painting “Two Figures on a Rock,” painted in 1889, was sold for 1,100 thousand francs, and in 1956, “Peasant with a Dog” was valued at 18,500 thousand francs.

Still life with apples Paul Gauguin

Until this time, not a single painting sold at auction had reached the one hundred million francs mark. But on June 14, 1957, Gauguin’s “Still Life with Apples” crossed this line - the Greek shipowner Vasilis Goulandris purchased it for 104 million francs.

Subsequently, on November 25, 1959, the Tahitian painting "Are You Waiting for a Letter?" was valued in London at 130 thousand pounds sterling, which is about one hundred and eighty million francs.

Thus, Gauguin, along with Cézanne and Van Gogh, was one of the three most “highly rated” artists in the world. Any sketch of it is torn from each other’s hands. In June 1957, at the Hotel Drouot, one of his letters was sold for 600 thousand francs. What was written in this letter? And here’s what: “Now I am defeated, defeated by poverty...”

Picture. When is the wedding?

The painting “When is the wedding?” was painted in 1892, when Gauguin took his Tahitian wife, Tehaamana,he called her Tehura - she was 13 years old then. The traditional wedding was organized by Tehaamana's relatives, for whom marriage to a white man was a great honor. Tehaamana was the model for many of Gauguin's paintings from his first Tahitian period.The painting was quite typical of the image of Tahiti in the West; such paintings, however, allowed Gauguin to receive money from his friends

Painting by Paul Gauguin , written by the artist on Tahiti in 1892. Belonged to the family for half a century Rudolf Stechlin, exhibited inKunstmuseum Basel. In 2015 the painting was soldmuseum department Qatar for a record $300 million.

Daughter of Gauguin and Tehura

Paul Gauguin always got carried away easily and parted ways without regret. The two main women in his life were complete opposites of each other. A plump, rude Danish woman and a dark, flexible Tahitian. Gauguin was connected with the first by 12 years of living together and five children, with the second by a passionate but fleeting “tourist” marriage. However, despite everything, both of these women left the most noticeable mark on both the artist’s soul and his work.

Painted Hearth

Paul Gauguin met a young Danish woman, Mette Sophie Gad, in Paris in 1872. The future artist had only recently gotten a job in a stockbroker's office, and the girl worked as a governess for the children of the Prime Minister of Denmark. They got engaged in January of the following year and got married in November. Soon the couple had their first child, and their business took off. Gauguin got a well-paid job at a bank; there was more than enough money for a decent life for his family and for Paul’s main hobby - painting. For quite a long time, Gauguin remained only a connoisseur and collector of other people's works, but eventually he began to write himself.

Gauguin's earliest works:

In the forest of Saint-Cloud
Paul Gauguin 1873, 24 × 34 cm