2. Artists & stock
3. Paul Gauguin
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848. Certain conditions of his family life, his father, predispose Paul Gauguin to exoticism. The family was exiled in 1849 to Lima, Peru. His father died during the crossing, he is only 2 years old. He had a happy childhood in Lima, with his mother’s uncle and comes back to France, welcomed in Orleans by his father’s family. Paul Gauguin is an uncontrollable and rebellious child, who attends a Parisian boarding school. He is 17 years old when he enlists as a sailor in the French commercial marines.
From the quay of Havre where Manet embarked in 1848, as a sailor, Paul sees himself distanced from the French coast; Paul Gauguin will sail on long voyages from 1865 to 1871 in an interrupted fashion. He is called upon as a military sailor during the Franco-Prussian war.
His mother dies in 1867; Gauguin is 23 years old when he is placed under the tutorage of Gustave Arosa, as a stockbroker’s assistant in Paris. Arosa, a photographer, is an enlightened amateur of modern art; he allows Paul Gauguin to meet the impressionists who exhibit for the first time at the studio of Nadar, the famous photographer, and the young man buys the works of Jongkind, Cezanne, Guillaumin and Pissaro. In 1873, Gauguin marries Mette Gad, a young Dane of a good family with whom he will have 5 children.
He teaches himself to paint in 1874. A colleague of his branch trains at the Colarossi Academy. From 1879 Pissaro introduces him to impressionist techniques and he becomes acquainted with the group. In 1883, Paul Gauguin decides to dedicate himself entirely to painting. It is for him a new adventure where he can only triumph. In reality, this choice drives him quickly forward, and his family, living in precarious conditions, would not have survived. Paul Gauguin, lives for a while in Rouen, then in Copenhagen, and on returning to Paris decides to flee.
Brittany, a land where he can live in a state of primitive purity, attracts him; he paints and starts to ceramics. Attracted by the ‘elsewhere’, Gauguin leaves for Panama in 1887, then from there, for Martinique. He contracts malaria, and is seduced by the exotic countryside. Paul Gauguin returns to France, works with Emile Bernard, elaborating the concepts of ‘cloissonism’ and of ‘syntheses’, gives the young painter Sérusier lessons in historic painting and compromises on a small panel ‘The Talisman’, key of the future Nabis movement. The artist goes to Arles where he rests for 2 months, 2 months of conflict and drama, similar to Van Gogh.
Gauguin returns to Paris, paints, tries engraving on zinc, creates ceramics and becomes friends with Daniel de Montfreid who will have great importance in his life. He travels in France, identifies himself with the symbolist writers (Mallarmé). Gauguin leaves for Papeete in 1891 and stays 2 years in Tahiti before returning to France; he paints, sculpts, familiarises himself with his new themes. He returns to Paris, starts wood engraving, using the realization of text and the illustrations of Noa Noa.
The wounds he receives from a brawl, when he is in Brittany, will allow for the repercussions that contribute to the progressive degradation of his health. In 1895, Paul Gauguin leaves again for Tahiti, and is never to return. His health degrades, obliging him to spend time at the hospital in Papeete. He produces his great composition ‘D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?’ (Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?). In 1898, he attempts suicide, in vain.
In September 1901, the last escape, he leave of Hiva Oa, in the far away archipelago of the Marquises Islands. Far from everything, he constructs his home, ‘La Maison du Jouir’ (the House of Love). On the island, he comes into conflict with the administrative and religious authorities. Gauguin takes the defence of the despoiled native people and advises them to not pay their tax; the administration condemns him to several months in prison that averts his death.
Paul Gauguin was found dead on May 8, 1903. His estate and his works were dispersed at an auction; the majority of his drawing and his sculpture where thrown ‘in the garbage’.

“Art is an abstraction ... think more of the creation that ensues, it is the only way to get closer to God.” - Paul Gauguin

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