Paul Gauguin, ポール・ゴーギャン

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Above is just a small part of our gift-packed souvenir stamp-collection; inquire by email if the picture or subject of your interest is not here: we will be obliged to accomodate your wishes.
ここに掲載の写真は一部のみです。ご希望のジャンル、絵柄などございましたらお問い合わせください。

ポール・ゴーギャン（Euge`ne Henri Paul Gauguin, 1848年6月7日 - 1903年5月9日）は、フランスのポスト印象派の最も重要かつ独創的な画家の一人。「ゴーガン」とも表記・発音される。
1848年、二月革命の年にパリに生まれた。父は共和系のジャーナリストであった。ポールが生まれてまもなく、一家は革命後の新政府による弾圧を恐れて南米ペルーのリマに亡命した。しかし父はポールが1歳になる前に急死。残された妻子はペルーにて数年を過ごした後、1855年、フランスに帰国した。こうした生い立ちは、後のゴーギャンの人生に少なからぬ影響を与えたものと想像される。
フランスに帰国後、ゴーギャンはオルレアンの神学学校に通った後、1865年、17歳の時には航海士となり、南米やインドを訪れている。1868年から1871年までは海軍に在籍し、普仏戦争にも参加した。その後ゴーギャンは株式仲買人となり、デンマーク出身の女性メットと結婚。ごく普通の勤め人として、趣味で絵を描いていた。印象派展には1880年の第5回展から出品しているものの、この頃のゴーギャンはまだ一介の日曜画家にすぎなかった。勤めを辞め、画業に専心するのは1883年のことである。
1886年以来、ブルターニュ地方のポン＝タヴェンを拠点として制作した。この頃ポン＝タヴェンで制作していたベルナール、ドニ、ラヴァルらの画家のグループをポン＝タヴェン派というが、ゴーギャンはその中心人物と見なされている。ポン＝タヴェン派の特徴的な様式はクロワソニズム（フランス語で「区切る」という意味）と呼ばれ、単純な輪郭線で区切られた色面によって画面を構成するのが特色である。
1888年には南仏アルルでゴッホと共同生活を試みる。が、2人の強烈な個性は衝突を繰り返し、ゴッホの「耳切り事件」をもって共同生活は完全に破綻した。

タヒチの女（浜辺にて）（1891年）オルセー美術館 蔵
西洋文明に絶望したゴーギャンが楽園を求め、南太平洋（ポリネシア）にあるフランス領の島・タヒチに渡ったのは1891年4月のことであった。しかし、タヒチさえも彼が夢に見ていた楽園ではすでになかった。タヒチで貧困や病気に悩まされたゴーギャンは帰国を決意し、1893年フランスに戻る。叔父の遺産を受け継いだゴーギャンは、パリにアトリエを構えるが、絵は売れなかった。（この時期にはマラルメのもとに出入りしたこともある。） 一度捨てた妻子にふたたび受け入れられるはずもなく、同棲していた女性にも逃げられ、パリに居場所を失ったゴーギャンは、1895年にはふたたびタヒチに渡航した。

『われわれはどこから来たのか　われわれは何者か　われわれはどこへ行くのか』1897-1898年(ボストン美術館)

3人のタヒチ人（1899年）
タヒチに戻っては来たものの、相変わらずの貧困と病苦に加え、妻との文通も途絶えたゴーギャンは希望を失い、死を決意した。こうして1897年、貧困と絶望のなかで、遺書代わりに畢生の大作『われわれはどこから来たのか　われわれは何者か　われわれはどこへ行くのか』を仕上げた。しかし自殺は未遂に終わる。最晩年の1901年にはさらに辺鄙なマルキーズ諸島に渡り、地域の政治論争に関わったりもしていたが、1903年に死去した。
死後、西洋と西洋絵画に深い問いを投げかける彼の孤高の作品群は、次第に名声と尊敬を獲得するようになる。

Born in Paris, he was descended from Spanish settlers in South America and the viceroy of Peru, and spent his early childhood in Lima. He was the grandson of Flora Tristan, a founder of modern feminism. After his education in Orleans, France, Gauguin spent six years sailing around the world in the merchant marines and then in the French navy. Upon his return to France in 1870, he took a job as a broker's assistant. His guardian Gustave Arosa, a successful businessman and art collector, introduced Gauguin to Camille Pissarro in 1875.
Where Do We Come From... What Are We... Where Are We Going...
1897, oil on canvas
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA
A successful stockbroker during week-days, Gauguin spent holidays painting with Pisarro and Cezanne. Although his first efforts were clumsy, he made visible progress. By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife (Mette Sophie Gadd) and their children returned to her family. Gauguin outlived two of his children.
Like his friend Vincent Van Gogh, with whom he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan (Japonisme).
The Yellow Christ (Le Christ jaune)
1889, oil on canvas. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA
Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style the critic Edouard Dujardin had baptized Emile Bernard's cloisonne enamelling style with. Gaugin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gaugin in his quest for the expression of the essence of the objects in his art stripped of unnecessary aesthetic. In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour he dispensed with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting. His painting later evolved towards "Synthetism" in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role.
In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional." (Before this he had made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could 'live on fish and fruit' and paint in his increasingly primitive style, including short stays in Martinique and as a worker on the Panama Canal). He remained in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands for most of the rest of his life, returning to France only once. His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia. In Polynesia he clashed often with the colonial authorities and with the Catholic Church.
He died in 1903 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.
Quotations
Quotations by Gauguin
- In order to do something new we must go back to the source, to humanity in its infancy.
- I have tried to make everything breathe in this painting: belief, passive suffering, religious and primitive style, and the great nature with its scream.
- How do you see this tree... Is it really green... Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue... Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.
- To me, barbarism is a rejuvenation.
- Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
- I shut my eyes in order to see.
Quotations about Gauguin
- He put so much mystery in so much brightness. (Mallarme)
- Gauguin's paintings always seemed to me cruel, metallic and lacking in general emotion. He is always absent from his own work. Everything is there except the painter himself. (Vlaminck)
- For Europeans the romantic strangeness and eroticism of his paintings of the islanders, the festivities with their unknown symbolism, are inherently attractive, and this has tended to obscure Gauguin's real contribution. The quality of his art does not reside in revelations of another culture but in the aesthetic position he arrived at. (Trewin Copplestone)
- Portentous allegories about the destiny of mankind. (John Russell)
- The popular fancy that Gauguin 'discovered himself' as a painter in Tahiti is quite wrong. All the components of his work - the flat patterns of colour, the wreathing outlines, the desire to make symbolic statements about fate and emotion, the interest in 'primitive' art, and the thought that colour could function as a language - were assembled in France before 1891. (Robert Hughes)
We Shall Not Go to the Market Today (Ta Matete)
1892, oil on canvas
Legacy
The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as $39.2 million US Dollars.
Gaugin influenced many other painters, but one especially notable connection is his imparting to Arthur Frank Mathews the use of an intense color palette. Mathews met Gaugin in the late 1890s while both were at the Academie Julian. Mathews took this influence in his founding of the California Arts and Crafts or California Decorative movement.


The above explanation comes from 出典: フリー百科事典"ウィキペディア"