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PAUL GAUGUIN (1848 – 1903)
1848 – born the son
of a liberal
newspaper editor and
a Mother of SpanishPeruvian
descendance
1848-53 – For
Political reasons,
Gauguin family lived
in Peru
1872-83 – successful
wealthy Stockbroker
and family man
1883 –concentrates
on painting. Starts to
live apart from wife
and family
1886 – starts painting
in Brittany with
Pont-Aven group,
Moves away from
Impressionist to
Synthetist style.
1887 – lives and
paints on French
colonial Island of
Martinique
1888 – lives and
works alongside Van
Gogh in Arles for a
turbulent 9 weeks
1891-93 – 1st trip to
Tahiti
1893 – returns to
Paris but has little
commercial success
or critical acclaim
1895 – Back to Tahiti
1897 – with little
money, limited
success, suffering
from Syphilis and
following the death of
2 of his children, tries
and fails to commit
suicide
1901- financial
security at last –
contract from
Parisian Art Dealer
- Leaves Tahiti for
more remote
Marquesas Islands
1903 – Dies of
natural causes
While working as a Stockbroker, Gauguin’s interest in Art
developed into a passion which was to see him leave his job
and his family. Inspired by the Impressionists, most
influentially Camille Pissaro, Gauguin’s paintings of the
late 70s and early 80s are very much Impressionist in style.
He regularly exhibited his work with the Impressionists
between 1877 and 1886.
Gauguin Quotes
“I am a great artist and know it. It is
because I am that I have endured such
suffering.”
“Civilization makes you sick”
“I shut my eyes in order to see”
“It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a
fixed and unchangeable colour to every
object”
Four Breton Women Dancing (1886) shows an increased flattening of forms and a lack of spatial depth
that shows the influence of Japanese prints. The choice of peasant women as subject matter also makes a
stark contrast with the wealthy boating parties of Monet and Renoir.
While in Brittany, and working with the Pont-Aven Group, Gauguin’s style moved away from
Impressionism. Gauguin described his new style as Synthetism, by which he meant a style of art in which
the form (colour planes and lines) is synthesized with the major idea or feeling of the subject. Breaking
away from the Impressionist preoccupation with the study of light effects in nature, Gauguin sought to
develop a new decorative style in art based on areas of pure colour (e.g., without shaded areas or
modeling), a few strong lines, and an almost two-dimensional arrangement of parts.
In Vision After the Sermon (1888) Gauguin attempts to combine in one setting two levels of reality, the
everyday world and the dream world. The lower figures are reduced to areas of flat patterns, without
modeling or perspective. The large areas of colour are intense and without shadows. The design is so strong
that the two realities fuse into one visual experience.
Gauguin shared a close and tempestuous friendship with Vincent Van Gogh. They were equally devoted to
a life absorbed in painting, and the time they worked together in Arles in the South of France in 1888 was
highly productive for both artists.
Gauguin boasted of the “great rustic and superstitious simplicity” of the figures in his paintings. Gauguin
saw in peasant and “primitive” people an honesty and a connection to spirituality which lent itself
perfectly to his particular brand of Symbolist painting.
Proud of his Peruvian heritage, Gauguin saw himself as a modern day “primitive”; he drew heavily on
non-western art for influence and famously moved to live and work in Tahiti. In Tahiti he found a richness
of colour and shapes in the landscapes which he had only imagined before. The Tahitian society was a
strange mingling of paganism and Christianity and many of Gauguin’s paintings displayed the fusing of
cultures both in their subject matter and in his use of modern western art ideas and ancient imagery. For
example, his Ia Orana Maria (1891) has the Madonna and Child as Tahitians, attended by Buddhist angels
derived from an ancient Buddhist temple frieze, so combining Christian, Buddhist and Oceanic religions. In
many ways, Gauguin’s paintings became less “primitive” in the South Seas. His colour palette remained
unnaturalistic but became more harmonious and sophisticated. He brought on his travels a stock of
photographs and reproductions, from ancient Egyptian and
Influence of Gauguin
Greek sculpture alongside examples from European
 The Nabis – group of French painters of
painting, and his later work shows the breadth of these
1890s (Denis, Bonnard, Vuillard) were
references.
Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) depicts Gauguin’s
teenage lover, Teha’amama, struggling to sleep for fear of
Tupapau (the Spirit of the dead) lurking in the shadows.
Gauguin’s version of Manet’s Olympia, makes use of a
number of symbolist devices, from unnaturalistic colour to
the presence of a supernatural being. Gauguin wrote that the
purple of the background was used to create a mood of
“terror” and the yellow cloth was designed to be
“unexpected”. The real and the imagined coexist, resulting
in a highly emotionally charged image.


highly influenced by Gauguin’s Sythetism
The Fauves – group of French painters of
1900s (Matisse, Derrain etc) influneced
by Gauguin’s bright, bold palette.
Primitivism – Gauguin was the first
western artist to allow tribal and folk art to
influence his work so much. “Primitive”
art was to have a huge influence on early
20th Century artists as diverse as Picasso,
Brancusi and the German Expressionists
of Die Brucke. Gauguin’s significance as
a pioneer of Primitivism cannot be
underestimated