Faces by Gauguin

Self-portrait of Gauguin as a young man

Je ne montre que ce que je veux bien montrer, said Paul Gauguin, speaking of his art in 1903. So his images keep us guessing.

His mother was of Inca descent. Born in 1848, he spent his childhood in Peru. When he grew up he went into the French navy and also worked as a stockbroker. He was a full time artist from the 1880s onwards, living in Brittany, Martinique, Polynesia (in self imposed exile), and finally Tahiti.

This restless soul, according to the notes on the wall of the National Gallery of Canada's exhibition this summer, was "cut off and shrouded in gloom". Although they had five children together, his marriage to a Danish woman fell apart and the (very young) Tahitian girls with whom he lived abandoned him as well. A self portrait of 1891 is entitled Jésus abandonné, ses disciples le quittant. Presumably he was implying that he knew how Jesus felt.

The Auto portrait au Christ jaune is another meaningful painting, first exhibited in 1892, with a Polynesian idol in the background as well as the crucified figure; the Christ jaune was a canvas he had worked on three years previously.

Meijer de Haan is the "thinker" in the background of several paintings: Gauguin's ginger-haired Dutch friend and fellow artist. A better known associate of Gauguin was Vincent van Gogh with whom he lived for a while in Arles, where colours were their obsession:

Dans ma chambre jaune, des fleurs de soleil aux yeux pourpres se détachent sur un fond jaune; elles se baignent les pieds dans un pot jaune, sur une table jaune. Dans un coin du tableau, le signature: Vincent. Et le soleil jaune qui passe a travers les rideaux jaunes de ma chambre, inonde d'or toute cette floraison, et le matin, de mon lit, quand je me réveille, je m'imagine que tout cela sent tres bon. [...] Quand nous étions tous deux a Arles, fous tous deux, en guerre continuelle pour les belles couleurs, moi j'adorais le rouge.

This all sounds very poetic, if more than a little manic. The co-habitation famously came to a sad end when Vincent got his razor out and lashed out at Paul and at his own ear, after which episode he (Vincent) was put out of harm's way by the doctors.

Jean Moréas was another friend who looked weird, a poet, one of the symbolistes. Mallarmé, poet of symbolism and synaesthesia, was the most famous of the symbolists' circle in France. Gauguin's cylindrical carving in native Polynesian style, L'Apres-midi d'un Faune, 1893, is a mysterious fantasy inspired by Mallarmé's poem of that title (published in 1876). Does it depict encounters with beautiful nymphs, or what? It is unclear what's happening in Gauguin's image, something sexual, certainly. In a variety of art forms, the poem inspired music by Debussy, was danced by Nijinsky and was translated into English by Aldous Huxley (among others).

Clovis

Annette Belfils (1890)

Having been to the exhibition twice, I felt that what I'd remember of this were the faces. The portrait of Annette Belfils (1890), in simple lines of crayon and chalk, was remarkably well done, as was the sympathetic and sincere painting of a two year old who had just died in Tahiti, lying as if asleep, done in 1892 for the child's parents who apparently hung onto this painting all their lives. Gauguin painted portraits of his own children, for example of his son Clovis in 1886, the boy's expression old beyond his years (his parents separated when he was six; he died at the age of 21). Gauguin's immortalisation of An Old Man with a Stick (1888) was beautifully observed, still touching those who look at it. Then there were portraits of an Arlésienne and of a young Breton woman, thin and depressed. It seemed to me that Gauguin became less crazy whenever he was focusing on someone other than himself.

La Boudeuse, a likewise depressed Tahitian girl in a long, red, western (missionary) dress, is perhaps one of the ones he made pregnant; I'd guess she was sickened by the loss of her innocence or the loss of her cultural heritage, and that the artist knew it. By contrast, La Femme au Mango, in purple, looks more cheerful and self-assured.

Les Ancetres de Tehamama portrays another mysterious Tahitian girl, Teha'amana, who was only 13 when handed to Gauguin as a "bride". He paints this naked girl lying face down on a bed with "the spirits of the dead watching", 1894. Perhaps those dead ones disapproved of how he was using her. Perhaps he created this picture in order to confront his own shame. We shall never know.

"Je ne montre que ce que je veux bien montrer."