style="font-size:15px;"> Others, on the contrary, think that Gauguin continued the European artistic tradition. Some contemporaries reacted to his departure from Europe with mistrust and suspicion, for they believed that a true artist could and must work only on his native soil and not derive inspiration from an alien culture. Pissarro, Cézanne and Renoir shared this opinion, for example. They considered Gauguin’s borrowings from the stylistics of Polynesian culture to be a kind of plunder.
Young Bretons at Bath
1886
Oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm
Museum of Art, Hiroshima
Such controversial opinions of Gauguin’s art are by no means accidental. His life and work present many contradictions, though often only outward ones. His life was naturally integrated with his creative activity, while the latter in its turn embodied his ideals and views on life. But this organic unity of life and work was maintained through a never-ending dramatic struggle.
The Four Breton Girls
1886
Oil on canvas, 72 × 91 cm
Neue Pinakothek, Munich
It was the struggle for the right to become an artist, the struggle for existence, the struggle against public opinion, against his family and friends who failed to understand him, and finally, it was his inner struggle for the preservation of his identity, his own creative and human self. Gauguin could hardly have become an artist who “reinvented painting” (Maurice Malingue) and who “initiated the art of modern times” (René Huyghe).
Seated Breton
1886
Charcoal and pastel, 32.8 × 48 cm
Art Institute, Chicago
Gauguin began his career as a grown man. Nothing in his childhood or youth betrayed any hint of his future as an artist. He was born in Paris on 7 June 1848, in the midst of the revolutionary events when barricade fighting was going on in the streets of the city. This fact was to have repercussions for Gauguin’s later life.
Young Breton Seated
1886
Charcoal and watercolour, 30.5 × 42.2 cm
Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens, Paris
It is difficult to say whether Clovis Gauguin played an active role in the events, but it is a fact that following the failure of Marrast (who was a member of General Cavaignac’s government) in the election to the National Assembly, the Gauguins left France. In the autumn of 1849, the family sailed for Peru, where they could count on the support of Mine Gauguin’s distant but influential relatives.
The Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Fighting with the Angel)
1888
73 × 92 cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
On 30 October 1849, he died at sea and his wife, with two children, had to continue the journey on her own. Childhood in Peru was forever engraved on Paul Gauguin’s memory. The recollections of simple, natural relations among people with different-coloured skins, who lacked racial or social prejudice, the relations, which might have been largely idealised in the child’s memory, merged with the recollections of luxuriant tropical nature with its rich colours under the dazzling sun.
Blue Trees
1888
Oil on canvas, 92 × 73 cm
Ordrupgaardsamlingen, Copenhagen
It is very likely that these early impressions determined the subsequent development of Gauguin’s artistic tastes and ideals. His return to France put an end to Paul’s happy and carefree life. At school in Orleans and later at a Lycée in Paris the dream of tropical countries and the sea never left Gauguin.
Bretons and Calf
1888
Oil on canvas, 91 × 72 cm
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
At fifteen he found employment as a cabin-boy on a merchant ship and sailed to the South American coast, almost retracing the route of his first voyage overseas. But this romantic start was followed by an abrupt and unwelcome change: the Franco-Prussian war broke out, the merchant ship on which Gauguin served was requisitioned, and instead of the tropics he found himself in the north, near the Norwegian and Danish coasts.
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