,,paul ,,gauguin ,his ,life and ,art ,,by ,,john ,,gould ,,fletcher ,,with ,,ten ,,illustrations ,,nicholas ,l4 ,,brown ,,new ,,york ,,mcmxxi ,illustration3 ,self-portrait of ,gauguin4 ,,to ,m4,t4,h4,s4 ,,who ,,helped ,,me ,,with ,,advice ,,and ,,criticism ,improvement makes straight roads2 but the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius4 ,,william ,,blake4 ,,contents ,,part ,i3 ,,the ,,formation #ahdi-ahhe ,,part ,,ii3 ,,the ,,struggle ,,with ,,impressionism #ahhe-ahhi ,,part ,,iii3 ,,the ,,school ,,of ,,pont-,,aven #ahhi-ahia ,,part ,,iv3 ,,the ,,return ,,to ,,savagery #ahia-ahie ,,part ,v3 ,,the ,,fight ,,against ,,civilization #ahie-aijc ,,list ,,of ,,illustrations ,,self-,,portrait ,,of ,,gauguin1 ,frontispiece ,,portrait ,,of ,,gauguin',s ,,mother ,,the ,,painter ,,schuffenecker ,,and ,,his ,,family ,,struggle ,,of ,,jacob ,,with ,,the ,,angel ,,the ,,idol ,,tahitian ,,women ,,hina ,,maruru 7,,feast ,,to ,,hina7 ,,the ,,old ,,spirit ,,calvary ,,matamua 7,,olden ,,days7 ,,paul ,,gauguin ,,part ,i3 ,,the ,,formation #ahdi-ahhe ,about the middle of the last century1 there occurred in ,paris a series of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future history1 secondary only to the days of the ,french ,revolution4 ,you will seek ,paris in vain for any public monument to these events1 known as the ,revolution of #ahdh4 ,only the name of the hideously utilitarian ,boulevard ,raspail may perhaps remind you1 that in this year ,france achieved another one of those political failures which have been so curiously common in her history since #aghi4 ,in ,february of that year1 ,king ,louis ,philippe and his ministers had fled before the rising storm of popular feeling4 ,it seemed at last that the great popular revolution of the working classes1 dreamed of by every artist since #aghi1 proclaimed in the ,rabelaisian caricatures of ,daumier1 latent in the troubled ,romanticism of the epoch1 was at hand4 ,a provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the ,national ,assembly4 ,but the provinces showed that it mattered little to them whether the form of ,government was changed or not4 ,so long as the peasant had his farm1 his cow1 his money safely stowed away in a stocking1 a hard-working wife1 a pipe and a glass of wine1 he was content with things as they were4 ,if the industrial classes of ,paris were starving1 that was not his affair4 ,he shared none of their fanatic ,socialism1 none of their dreams of the millennium4 ,he wanted to be left alone4 ,the ,national ,assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate1 and the leaders of the ,provisional ,government discovered that they preferred to stand with the majority rather than to fall with the ,parisian extremists4 ,but the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle4 ,on the fifteenth of ,may1 a mob attempted to take the ,assembly by storm1 and failed4 ,on the eighteenth1 ,lamartine1 the former idol of the ,revolutionaries1 was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech4 ,the ,government found that it must either provide work and wages for the ,parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force4 ,a scheme was started1 but it proved to be costly1 and on the twenty-first of ,june the ,government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no further with its project4 ,three days later the storm broke4 ,two hundred and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets1 crowned with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men4 ,for three days the mob kept up a desperate resistance2 then the last barricade fell1 the blood was washed off the pavements1 the cause of moderation and good sense was restored4 ,there is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events4 ,on the seventh of ,june a son1 ,paul1 was born to ,m4 and ,madame ,gauguin1 residing in ,paris4 ,this infant1 brought obscurely into the world to the sound of cannon1 was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of ,nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching and as important in its effects as the great attempt of #ahdh4 ,his life was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization1 the middle-class morality1 of the late nineteenth century2 his art was to speak the promise of a renewed world1 a world where man could again walk naked1 unashamed and free1 as in ,eden4 ,he was destined to break beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities1 as the revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the government3 but his ideas were to point the way to1 new conceptions of art and of life1 which only the future can realize4 ,clovis ,paul ,gauguin1 to give the father his full name1 was a petty journalist from ,orleans4 ,he had a post as collaborator on one of the obscure newspapers of ,liberal opinion1 that so greatly flourished about this time4 ,his influence upon his son was slight1 as is the case with the fathers of most artists4 ,it is to ,madame ,gauguin that we must turn for an explanation of the character of her famous son4 ,illustration3 ,portrait of ,gauguin's mother4 ,aline ,marie ,gauguin was the daughter of a certain ,chazal1 of whom we know nothing1 and of the then celebrated ,socialist pamphleteer and agitator1 ,flora ,tristan4 ,flora ,tristan was born in #ahjc at ,lima1 ,peru4 ,her father was a ,spaniard of noble descent1 ,mariano ,tristan y ,moscoso4 ,he served as an officer in the ,peruvian ,army1 and probably took part in the wars of independence which severed ,peru from ,spain1 since we find him and his family later occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the ,republic4 ,in #ahah he sent his daughter to school in ,paris4 ,she eloped the next year with ,chazal and was disowned by her parents4 ,after the birth of her child she separated from her husband and returned to ,peru1 seeking a reconciliation with her family4 ,but the family had determined to do nothing for the self-willed1 impulsive daughter1 and she drifted back to ,paris1 where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of strongly ,socialistic tendencies4 ,she became a pioneer of woman's suffrage1 of humanitarianism1 of the trade-union movement4 ,she toured ,france making speeches4 ,in #ahcf she had the misfortune to meet ,chazal again in ,paris1 who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense4 ,a few years later she died in ,bordeaux1 and the trade-unions1 remembering her zeal for their cause and her personal beauty--which had moved them perhaps more than the fervor of her speeches--subscribed the sum necessary to put up a monument4 ,such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just been born into the world4 ,the tragic and violent union of ,chazal and ,flora ,tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became4 ,in ,chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong irritability2 in ,flora ,tristan we see whence he drew his love of personal and individual liberty1 his hatred of moral restraint1 his scorn of the bourgeoisie1 his ,spanish hauteur and stoicism4 ,half-savage ,spanish blood flowed in his veins1 a mixture of ,arab1 ,celt and ,african4 ,perhaps in his ,peruvian descent there were even other currents--currents of that ,inca race which the ,spaniards had subdued but not conquered4 ,whatever else destiny held in store for him1 it was certain from the beginning that ,paul ,gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of ,paris4 ,,ii ,the earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar strands of tragedy1 romance and savagery which were to recur so often in his later life4 ,in ,december1 #ahea1 the makeshift ,republic came to an end and ,louis ,napoleon1 by an easy coup d'tat1 restored the ,empire4 ,clovis ,gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the ,liberal paper for which he wrote4 ,there was only one hope remaining3 that ,flora ,tristan's relations in ,lima might do something for ,paul and his sister ,marie4 ,so the family set out for ,peru4 ,on the way1 during the terrible passage through the ,straits of ,magellan1 ,clovis ,gauguin was seized with heart failure and died4 ,his body was taken ashore and buried at ,port ,famine1 or ,punta ,arenas1 the southernmost town in the world1 in ,chile4 ,the mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by the head of the family1 ,flora ,tristan's uncle1 ,don ,pio ,tristan y ,moscoso4 ,concerning this personage ,gauguin himself told many anecdotes in later years4 ,probably most of these were inexact to the point of being fable pure and simple4 ,we must remember that ,gauguin at this time was scarcely four years of age4 ,we know that the family were wealthy nobles1 of high social standing1 who lived in the old ,castillian manner of luxury and indolence4 ,from such surroundings ,gauguin doubtless derived much of the hidalgo manner that distinguished him throughout life--a blend of haughtiness1 reserve and egoism1 masking often a real shyness before people4 ,and here he saw1 also for the first time1 works of art produced by a non-,european civilization3 ceramics1 jewelry1 fabrics of ,inca origin4 ,the remembrance of these specimens of savage1 primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years4 ,gauguin's stay in ,lima did not last long4 ,four years later his paternal grandfather died in ,france1 and his mother returned to that country in order to obtain her share of his estate1 which proved to be only a small sum4 ,in later years1 the painter believed1 or affected to believe1 that if his mother had remained in ,peru and had neglected her relations in ,france she would have been left heiress to ,don ,pio ,tristan's property4 ,it is probable that ,gauguin was here merely romancing1 as he often did1 when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life4 ,it is an enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the influence of ,peruvian life4 ,peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the tropics1 for exotic1 out-of-the-way1 old-fashioned places1 unspoiled by the nineteenth century4 ,unconsciously many of the traits that made his character so little comprehensible to the ,frenchmen of his day were planted in him during these years4 ,france was now to give him something different4 ,he was to be educated1 or rather to receive what passed for an education4 ,he remained at a seminary at ,orleans till the age of seventeen1 hating his studies1 becoming more and more intractable and unteachable4 ,this seminary1 as all such institutions in ,france at the time1 was conducted by ,jesuit priests4 ,in later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy1 false virtue and spying4 ,and with malicious irony he said3 ,and ,i also learnt there a little of that spirit of ,jesuit casuistry1 which is a force not to be despised in the struggle with other people4 ,his sole ambition was to escape1 to get to sea again1 to make voyages to the tropics4 ,his mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy1 but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination4 ,he was therefore placed in the merchant marine4 ,this decision of his mother he regretted bitterly to the end of his life4 ,in #ahfe he embarked aboard the ,luzitano1 a cargo boat1 on a voyage from ,havre to ,rio de ,janeiro4 ,his grade aboard this ship was that of a pilot's apprentice4 ,of this voyage1 which enabled him to see again the tropics1 ,gauguin retained in later years important memories4 ,in the fragmentary note-books he kept in ,tahiti he declared that it was during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the ,society ,islands in the ,pacific4 ,the remembrance of that story may have influenced him later in his choice of ,tahiti as an ideal residence4 ,at least the appearance of ,rio de ,janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind fresh enthusiasm for the tropics4 ,the stay at ,rio was further signalized by a liaison with an actress1 of that eminently casual kind which ,gauguin was to experience so often later on4 ,finally the return voyage brought about another liaison1 this time with a ,prussian woman1 and in defiance of ship's discipline4 ,it was certain that his character--was not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer4 ,at all events1 the next thing we hear is that ,gauguin quitted the merchant service and enlisted in the ,french ,navy as a common sailor1 in ,february1 #ahfh4 ,probably by this time his mother had refused to support him1 and he was forced into this position through necessity4 ,the cruiser ,jerome ,napoleon1 on which he found himself1 was1 to his chagrin1 ordered to cruise in northern waters4 ,so instead of seeing the tropics again1 ,gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound ,greenland coast and the barren ,north ,cape4 ,this was bad1 but still worse was to follow4 ,the vessel was on its way to ,spitzbergen when news was brought to its captain that ,france had declared war upon ,prussia4 ,where are you going8 said the second officer1 seeing the ,captain put the helm about4 ,to ,charenton1 replied the indignant first officer2 ,charenton being the great lunatic asylum near ,paris6 ,the vessel got no nearer to ,france than ,copenhagen1 when the melancholy news of ,sedan came4 ,the name ,jerome ,napoleon was painted out1 that of ,desaix substituted1 and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain in the waters off ,copenhagen till the close of the war in #ahga1 contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize4 ,,iii ,in #ahga1 after the cessation of hostilities1 ,gauguin obtained leave1 renewable at the end of eighteen months1 to quit the navy4 ,he was now heartily sick of the sea1 because of the enforced idleness and wearisome discipline that he had now endured aboard the ,desaix for three years4 ,besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he felt that he must seize it4 ,his mother had died in the interval since he had last seen ,france and1 in dying1 had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do ,paris banker1 ,gustave ,arosa4 ,this man immediately found for ,paul a place at ,bertin's1 a banking house with which he was connected4 ,and now there opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in retrospect the most amazing of his career4 ,though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an instinctive nomad1 a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan savage1 yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the ,bourse1 without troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future4 ,he had not been long at ,bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily4 ,possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do1 for the ,paris stock market had been utterly disorganized by the events of #ahgj-ga1 and1 now that peace was signed1 ,france was making one of those rapid recoveries that have been so common in her history4 ,stocks were going up and trade was booming4 ,gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances to such an extent that in one year1 we are told1 he made as much as forty thousand francs4 ,in #ahgc he married1 thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was never wholly to shake off4 ,his wife1 ,mette ,sophia ,gad1 was the daughter of a ,protestant clergyman of ,copenhagen4 ,the family was a good one and enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the ,danish capital4 ,the daughters had been educated at ,paris1 and one of them had married a member of the ,norwegian ,parliament1 while another had become the first wife of the painter1 ,fritz ,thaulow4 ,when or where ,gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain1 but it was probably during the stay of the ,desaix at ,copenhagen4 ,at any rate it seems that he was eager to marry1 as the ceremony 7a purely civil one1 owing to his wife being a ,protestant7 was delayed owing to the loss of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of ,st4 ,cloud4 ,at this time1 through his wife's friends and connections1 through ,gustave ,arosa1 through ,emile ,schuffenecker--a fellow employee at ,bertin's--and through others1 a new interest came into his life4 ,he began to paint1 although pressure of work did not permit him to regard this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first4 ,arosa was1 in his way1 an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by ,french artists of the day--among them ,delacroix and ,courbet4 ,these works he engraved in photogravure--an art then in its infancy--and sent copies of the engravings to his personal friends4 ,through ,schuffenecker ,gauguin was brought closely into touch with the ,impressionists1 who were then making a sensation in ,paris4 ,gauguin bought brushes and colors and began by painting on ,sundays and holidays4 ,it was only slowly that he began to look upon painting as anything but a distraction4 ,his first essays in art were purely academic4 ,he painted in the prevailing style of the ,salons and even sent one picture to the ,salon of #ahgf4 ,at the same time he began to attempt sculpture4 ,he worked at first in marble1 a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more coarsely-grained surface of wood1 clay or paste4 ,he liked a rough surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order to emphasize this roughness4 ,gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature4 ,his early years at sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity4 ,he had a tremendous interest in the technical processes of art4 ,during his life he was able to do almost equally well at painting1 lithography and sculpture4 ,he also attempted etching1 stained glass and pottery4 ,his writings1 particularly his share in ,noa ,noa1 show a considerable grasp of direct1 poetic narrative--a gift that might very possibly have made of him a good poet4 ,throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely as a painter of pictures2 his influence in opening new channels for art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work4 ,even in literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration4 ,the problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that occupied his ,english contemporary1 ,william ,morris1 almost as varied as those that occupied ,leonardo da ,vinci4 ,he acquired knowledge easily2 his problem was always how to weigh1 sift and make use of it4 ,but his growth to artistic maturity was slower than in the case of artists who limit their field of effort1 because he attacked many subjects at the same time4 ,it may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof1 not of a complex1 but of a primitive nature4 ,yet it is undoubtedly true that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost everything4 ,the interchangeability1 the essential unity of all the arts1 is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages4 ,as civilization and consequently technique become more advanced1 it grows more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch of art4 ,perhaps that is why1 in our modern industrialized states1 the arts tend to disappear1 to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly diminishing minority4 ,illustration3 ,the painter ,schuffenecker and his family4 ,all this was not suspected by ,gauguin at the time1 nor for years afterwards4 ,for the time he was content to paint and to follow the prevailing fashions in his painting4 ,and he soon found that the prevailing fashion of the day in ,paris was ,impressionism4 99 99 99 99 99 ,to define ,impressionism it is not necessary1 as many professional art-critics have done1 to enter into long dissertations as to the supremacy of pure colors1 nor to see in ,constable or ,turner the ancestry of the movement4 ,impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of ,realism--or to speak better1 ,naturalism--carried out in painting4 ,this cult had already possessed in painting one important precursor1 ,gustave ,courbet4 ,but it is to literature1 always the advance guard of the arts1 that we must turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed4 ,a little before #ahgj1 which year marks a turning point not only in ,france's political but also in her intellectual life1 there came a change over her literature4 ,romanticism1 which had startled the world in #ahcj with ,lamartine1 de ,musset1 de ,vigny1 ,hugo and ,balzac1 was now dead4 ,the heroic1 the ,napoleonic1 the ,byronic attitude had somehow gone out of life4 ,under the ,second ,empire1 the bourgeois triumphed over the ,tuileries4 ,a few years before the crash of #ahgj1 ,charles ,baudelaire gave to the world his ,fleurs du ,mal--the exasperated cry against life of a soul tortured with too great a sensibility4 ,almost at the same time ,gustave ,flaubert1 in ,madame ,bovary1 erected his monument of infamy to the memory of the bourgeois4 ,these two books opened the path to ,naturalism1 to the human document1 to the de ,goncourts1 to de ,maupassant1 and to ,zola4 ,impressionism was the logical outgrowth1 in another sphere1 of the work of these ,naturalist writers4 ,it abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural sunlight4 ,it abolished the classical subject and left the painter free to paint1 as ,manet said1 ,n'importe quoi4 ,thus1 on the one side1 it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric vibration1 foreshadowed by ,constable and ,turner1 but not by them elevated to the rank of a science2 and on the other side1 it led with equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon ,nature1 and the consequent atrophy of his imagination4 ,it was1 as ,manet said again1 ,nature seen through a temperament4 ,against ,impressionism1 as against ,romanticism1 only one artist had dared to continue the tradition of classical1 decorative painting descending from ,giotto1 through ,raphael and ,poussin1 to ,prud'hon and to ,ingres4 ,this was the ,norman1 ,puvis de ,chavannes4 ,but ,puvis1 though nearly fifty1 was still unknown1 still dreaming of walls to conquer1 still buried away from the eyes of the young men in the slumbrous depths of the official salons1 while ,impressionism was the succs de scandale of the day4 ,gauguin heard of ,impressionism and became a devout follower of its theories4 ,he painted pictures in the manner of ,camille ,pissarro1 who was a compatriot of ,madame ,gauguin1 having been born in the ,island of ,st4 ,thomas in the ,antilles1 then ,danish territory4 ,gauguin took part in the exhibitions of the ,impressionist group in #ahhj and #ahha4 ,huysmans1 then as later the disciple of ,naturalism pushed to its extreme limit1 praised a nude of his because it was ugly4 ,gauguin began to be talked about1 not only as a well-to-do amateur1 but as a coming artist4 ,but his work at the ,bourse was exhausting his strength and his time4 ,although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him1 ,gauguin in ,january1 #ahhc1 took the rash step of quitting the financial world and devoting himself solely to art4 ,this decision was1 as ,dr4 ,segalen says in his valuable ,preface to the letters ,gauguin wrote from ,tahiti1 the true turning-point in his career4 ,when ,paul ,gauguin said to himself1 ,henceforward ,i will paint every day1 he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition and aptitude1 he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great impersonal duty3 he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not only of his own nature but of modern art4 ,,iv ,it is important to note that ,gauguin was thirty-five years of age when he came to this decision4 ,this proves that the decision was no hasty one1 of which he was liable to repent later4 ,at such an age a man has arrived at his intellectual maturity2 and1 when this man is a ,paul ,gauguin1 we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of living from a mere desire for change4 ,gauguin had something to express and knew it4 ,he had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and shares4 ,and to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all opposition4 ,but had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage1 with the desire for freedom1 for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts1 this decision might never have been taken4 ,as a husband and father he now had others dependent upon him4 ,that he set aside their claims to follow the deeper call proves that1 as he later said1 he believed himself to have the right to dare everything4 ,and he was probably at first confident of success1 thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as that of a speculator4 ,madame ,gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision4 ,she was naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful man1 and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his success4 ,in any case1 she was soon destined to sad disillusionment4 ,gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the sums he had saved4 ,as for his pictures1 they were not sufficiently well known to sell4 ,it was necessary1 above all things1 to gain time4 ,so he decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought with the proceeds of his career on the ,bourse1 in order to support himself4 ,the list of these pictures is interesting1 as it shows clearly the direction of his tastes at this period4 ,it included a ,manet1 several ,renoirs1 some ,claude ,monets1 two ,czannes 7still life and landscape71 an early ,pissarro1 together with examples of ,guillamin1 ,sisley1 ,jongkind1 ,lewis ,brown and1 most significant of all1 two designs by ,daumier4 ,whether it was that ,gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a style above his present means and was therefore now in debt1 we do not know4 ,nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an appreciable sum or not4 ,probably the amount was small1 for the ,impressionists1 though talked about1 had not achieved that purely commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame4 ,in any case1 the painter soon found himself again without resources4 ,he had ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in ,paris4 ,he found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the place of ,bertin's4 ,so it was ,madame ,gauguin's turn to act4 ,she decided on a removal to ,copenhagen1 where she hoped her family would use their influence in obtaining a position for her husband4 ,once in the ,danish city1 however1 the basic difference between husband and wife showed itself in violent form4 ,the atmosphere of rigid ,protestant piety1 in which his wife's family lived1 jarred on the passionate southern temperament of the painter4 ,he discovered that he hated everything in ,denmark1 the scenery1 the climate1 the prudery and provinciality of the inhabitants1 the lack of ,parisian ,bohemianism--everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law6 ,and he took no pains to conceal his hatred4 ,he defiantly persisted in maintaining his ,parisian freedom of speech and manners4 ,one day1 walking on the road that overlooks the bay of the ,sund1 he chanced to look down4 ,each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin for bathing4 ,it is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately and entirely naked4 ,gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment when the wife of a ,protestant minister was stepping into the water4 ,instead of going on1 he decided to indulge his sthetic interest in the nude4 ,the daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her mother to return4 ,the lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin4 ,but ,gauguin continued his inspection4 ,next day there was the inevitable scandal4 ,such a state of affairs could clearly not continue4 ,gauguin would yield nothing to the prejudices of the ,danes1 nor would his wife's family change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions4 ,a separation between husband and wife was inevitable4 ,in #ahhe it came about with1 one may imagine1 no great regrets on either side4 ,to the painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience4 ,we shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that ,gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into which he entered with various women4 ,he was probably more affectionate with his children1 particularly with his daughter ,aline1 than ever with his wife4 ,it was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with her relations1 where she would at least have a roof over her head1 than accompany him to ,paris1 whither he was determined to return4 ,madame ,gauguin agreed with this arrangement1 hoping to see her husband1 now disembarrassed of his family1 make a rapid conquest of the ,parisian art-world4 ,and so in #ahhe ,paul ,gauguin returned to ,france once more to try his fortune4 ,v ,he was now thirty-seven years old4 ,hitherto the events of his life had been largely controlled by chance2 from now on he began to strive more consciously to be the master of his own destiny4 ,it is therefore necessary1 before going further with this story1 to take stock of the man1 both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual equipment4 ,gauguin was of not more than middle height1 but stockily built and of strong physical development4 ,his hair1 which later grew thinner and lost much of its coloring1 was chestnut inclining towards red1 and fell in large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead4 ,the eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes1 which were heavy-lidded1 small and gray-green in color--the eyes of one who has spent many years at sea4 ,the nose was large1 thick and aquiline4 ,a thin drooping mustache1 lighter in color than the hair1 hung over the mouth1 with its large1 coarse lips drooping at the corners4 ,the chin was pointed and retreating and1 in later life1 furnished with a short tufted beard similar in color to the mustache4 ,after ,gauguin's return from the ,antilles in #ahhg it is the testimony of all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an ,indian's1 and that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor4 ,even his excessive devotion to tobacco1 a habit that later was seriously to injure his health1 had something sailor-like in it4 ,gauguin rolled his own cigarettes in the ,spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe4 ,his hands1 too1 were not those of an artist but of a seaman--coarse1 square and red4 ,altogether he was in appearance curiously ,creole2 he did not resemble a ,frenchman of ,france4 ,the dark tint of his skin and the formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and hair4 ,his personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those with whom he came in contact4 ,it must be remembered1 however1 that he was by nature reserved and even suspicious1 as are many people of fundamental genius4 ,he differed from those about him in that he worked by instinct1 while they worked according to some conscious method4 ,he therefore obtained out of himself1 by means of slow thinking and laborious effort1 the knowledge which many have at the beginning4 ,further1 the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world4 ,finally1 ,gauguin was shy1 actually and by nature shy4 ,people took this shyness for rudeness and this reserve for disdain4 ,and ,gauguin was not always unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding4 ,he carefully cultivated his rudeness1 both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance4 ,as regards his work1 he was on the way to find his path1 although he never entirely found it1 even to the end of his career4 ,his versatility prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead1 like that of many popular and highly successful painters4 ,mention has already been made of his appearance in #ahhj among the ,impressionists and of the praise bestowed by ,huysmans on one of his pictures for its frank realism4 ,this very nude1 however1 shows ,gauguin massing his shadows1 making them heavy and dark1 which was the direct contrary to ,impressionist practice4 ,a year later we find ,huysmans complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures2 another proof that the painter was already trying to mass tones1 to escape from the division of tones employed by the ,impressionist group4 ,we are safe in assuming also that ,gauguin felt already an inward desire to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics4 ,his early years had shown him the tropics2 and the art of the greatest masters1 as well as of the worst daubers1 is based on the instinctive knowledge they have obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later years4 ,pissarro1 too1 had seen the tropics2 but they had not in any way influenced his color sense1 which1 indeed1 grew colder and grayer as his years advanced4 ,but he may have had something to do with ,gauguin's inclination towards tropical subjects1 though the feeling of kinship with ,nature which ,gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own4 ,if ,gauguin had but known it1 there waited for him not the future of fame and fortune of which he dreamed1 but seventeen years of life-and-death struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means of living nor the slightest encouragement1 but only hampered him in every way1 so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls4 ,he was to quit his own country1 and to go to the ends of the earth1 only to find that the system of civilization possessed by his country1 whatever its other advantages1 did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the fruits of his labor4 ,he was finally to sink into an unmarked grave1 to be almost forgotten1 and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when no longer able to profit by it4 ,even if ,gauguin could have realized this1 it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind4 ,ready to dare everything1 he strode forward into the future4 ,,part ,,ii3 ,,the ,,struggle ,,with ,,impressionism #ahhe-ahhi ,i ,with the return of ,gauguin to ,paris there opened for him the second stage of his career1 the struggle to maintain himself on the productions of his brush and chisel4 ,during the first stage his character had been formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor1 during which he found time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the latest ,french tradition4 ,he had not only met and talked with men like ,manet1 ,pissarro1 and ,czanne1 he also visited the museums of ,paris1 and did not confine himself to the ,louvre1 but made a special study of the ,muse ,guimet with its collection of art works from the far ,east1 and later of the ,trocadero1 with its casts of ,cambodian sculpture4 ,his stay at ,bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment1 the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic independence4 ,yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these important years of development than in the case of most of his contemporaries4 ,he was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in art that was going on1 says one who knew him in this period1 but not to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody4 ,what he absorbed was by instinct2 and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge with people who might fail to make good use of it4 ,amid the noisy chatter of ,parisian art-circles he passed silent and unnoted4 ,he rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of experimental projects1 particularly with sculpture4 ,but very shortly his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience of hunger4 ,for a time he suffered extreme privation4 ,he was forced at last to accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting advertisements on the walls of the ,gare du ,nord in order to save himself from starvation4 ,i have known1 he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter ,aline1 extreme misery1 that is to say hunger and everything that follows upon hunger4 ,it is nothing1 or almost nothing4 ,one grows accustomed to it and1 with will-power1 one can end by laughing at it4 ,but what is terrible is to be prevented from working1 from developing one's intellectual faculties4 ,it is true that suffering sharpens one's ability4 ,but it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will kill you4 ,with a great deal of pride ,i have ended by having a great deal of energy1 and ,i have forced myself to be full of will-power4 ,is pride a fault1 or must one develop one's pride8 ,i believe pride must be developed4 ,it is the best weapon we have against the human animal that is in us4 ,this quotation gives us the man entirely4 ,he was one of those who are not to be beaten1 one of those who do not turn back4 ,he was to go forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path4 ,in #ahhf he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition of the ,impressionist group1 together with a relief in wood1 which seems to foreshadow the later creator of ,la ,guerre et la ,paix4 ,most of these early works of ,gauguin seem to have disappeared4 ,very few can recall seeing one4 ,it is therefore interesting to read the following appreciation by ,felix ,fenon1 which shows that ,gauguin was already traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other impressionists3-- ,the tones of ,m4 ,paul ,gauguin's pictures are very little separated from each other2 because of this1 there is in his work a dull harmony4 ,dense trees rise from the fertile soil1 abundant and humid1 invade the frame1 pursue the sky4 ,the air is heavy4 ,bricks seen between the trunks indicate a nearby house2 things are lying about1 muzzles are scattered in the thicket--cows4 ,these reds of roofs and of cattle the artist constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters1 encumbered with long grasses1 which run between the tree-trunks4 ,this shows clearly that ,gauguin was treating landscape at this period already as a synthesis1 a decorative whole and not1 like ,manet1 ,pissarro or the ,divisionists1 as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric vibration4 ,as for the relief on wood1 ,fenon writes3 ,on the pear-tree wood1 which we regret to see left in monochrome1 a naked woman stands out in half relief1 her hand to her hair1 seated rectangularly in a landscape4 ,this is the only number of sculpture4 ,nothing in painted wood1 in glass-paste1 in wax4 ,paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach ,gauguin4 ,he must find his own way1 create his own tradition4 ,aloof alike from the theories of the ,impressionists and from those of their successors1 the ,pointillists--theories of the disassociation of tones and of the analytic disintegration of light1 based on the scientific treatises of ,chevreuil and ,helmholtz--he was painfully tending back to the old decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit1 the harmonious expression of a single emotion4 ,hunger proved again the best friend of the independent artist4 ,he fled from ,paris and sought refuge in the country4 ,,ii ,the place of refuge which ,gauguin found was the village of ,pont-,aven in the district of ,finistre in ,brittany4 ,there is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by ,tahiti4 ,indeed the charm of ,tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence4 ,the ,celtic fringe of ,europe--,cornwall1 the ,highlands of ,scotland1 ,ireland1 ,wales1 ,brittany1 ,galicia--presents everywhere a great similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants4 ,the ,celt is an outcast4 ,driven backward by successive waves of civilization and conquest1 he has finally occupied those lands which were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in them undisturbed4 ,long residence in these desolate places has made of him a natural mystic1 a conservative4 ,perhaps he might never have been anything else had not the nineteenth century--with its railroads and the life-weariness of its cultivated classes--made of him a curiosity4 ,the hordes of tourists1 of bad artists1 of dealers in journalese1 who rave about ,brittany1 ,cornwall1 or ,ireland as picturesque summer-resorts1 show that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to remain a savage4 ,paul ,gauguin did not assuredly go to ,brittany to discover the picturesque4 ,had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher than the painting of ,charles ,cottet or of ,lucien ,simon4 ,his real home as an artist1 as he was later to discover1 lay elsewhere--under less troubled skies1 in the midst of more tropical vegetation4 ,but the gloom1 the melancholy inertia1 the mystic faith1 the simplicity of this land of wind-mills1 small trees1 granite coasts and menhirs1 worked strongly on the yet untamed primitive in him4 ,stronger still perhaps was the appeal of the sea1 the most restless and yet the most changeless element in nature4 ,gauguin was in appearance1 as in manners1 a sailor--the eye1 the direct curt speech1 the reserved disdain1 the freedom of manners1 all these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences4 ,in ,brittany he found the sea2 he found an unspoiled people2 he found1 above all1 repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that1 like the bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne1 frothed eternally in the cafs of ,paris4 ,brittany gave him greater faith in himself2 ,brittany began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly stifling him4 ,illustration3 ,struggle of ,jacob with the ,angel4 ,his first stay in ,pont-,aven was destined to be short4 ,it is chiefly remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by ,emile ,bernard1 then only about seventeen years of age1 whose relations with ,gauguin and other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be examined in detail4 ,bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up1 mushroom-like1 in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary controversy4 ,at the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic and extremely bad poetry4 ,he next went in for painting1 raced off to ,brittany to see ,gauguin1 was received with coolness1 ran back to ,paris4 ,here he found ,van ,gogh fresh from ,holland and1 when ,van ,gogh in turn went to ,arles1 became his most industrious correspondent4 ,later he heard that the crazy old hermit1 ,paul ,czanne1 was living at ,aix--so off to ,aix went ,bernard4 ,more letters were the outcome of the visit4 ,meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of ,gauguin's ,breton style1 then to a combination of ,czanne and ,gauguin1 to conclude with painting of ,oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from that of ,gerome4 ,he imitated everyone in turn1 only to end by becoming that drab eclectic thing--what the ,french call a pompier or we an ,academician4 ,thus he justified ,gauguin's sardonic prophecy that ,bernard would end up something like ,benjamin ,constant6 ,we owe ,bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful letters which ,van ,gogh wrote to him1 and--more precious debt--that he has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic ,czanne revealed a glimpse of his agony4 ,but we owe ,bernard nothing in that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose style he was the first to copy--,paul ,gauguin4 ,but of this more later4 ,,iii ,the winter of #ahhf found ,gauguin again in ,paris4 ,here he met another artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite different from that of ,emile ,bernard4 ,this was ,vincent ,van ,gogh1 newly arrived from ,holland4 ,gauguin has left on record in a piece of prose called ,les ,crevettes ,roses his first impression of ,van ,gogh1 which proves beyond dispute that ,gauguin loved ,van ,gogh and admired him1 despite his habitual reserve and the haughty disdain with which he was already looking upon all things ,european4 ,at this time ,gauguin was still painfully seeking1 still patiently and laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization4 ,van ,gogh1 although five years younger1 had fully realized himself in essence--was1 in fact1 realized from the beginning4 ,the difference between them was that ,van ,gogh was an humble ,dutch peasant1 with the mystic blend of religion and animality which is common to ,flemish and ,dutch artists 7for example1 ,breughel1 ,rubens or ,verhaeren71 while ,gauguin was a ,spaniard1 hard and aristocratic1 but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the strain of ,french blood4 ,for ,van ,gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of the sun1 which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it4 ,for ,gauguin the future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left him half-an-,european to the end1 his work only a broken fragment of what he had dreamed4 ,it is a pity1 in a way1 that these men ever met4 ,but their meeting and the drama which was played out later between them1 had in it the inevitable quality of ,greek tragedy4 ,for the moment their meeting was without result1 except that perhaps it woke ,gauguin to a realization that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art4 ,in short1 one must be religious4 ,but where was ,gauguin to find his religion8 ,certainly not in ,paris1 the capital of intellectual skepticism4 ,nor1 for the moment1 in sleepy and mournful ,brittany4 ,the memories of his early initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he undertook1 in #ahhg1 a voyage to the ,martinique in company with a young painter1 ,charles ,laval4 ,there is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to ,gauguin his own primitivism1 although it left him for the time an invalid1 threatened with dysentery1 suffering from constant intestinal pains1 and although it brought ,laval to the brink of the grave4 ,if the reader wishes to know something of what ,martinique was at this time1 he should turn to ,lafcadio ,hearn's ,two ,years in the ,french ,west ,indies4 ,hearn1 like ,gauguin1 was a disillusionized cosmopolite1 disgusted with the banal artifice1 the blatant commercialism1 the pedantic and ,puritanic hypocrisy of our ,occidental civilization4 ,like ,gauguin1 ,hearn found in the ,west ,indies a revelation of a world which had not lost touch with ,nature--a world of men who were content to remain1 in ,nature's eyes1 something as ephemeral and as harmonious as the trees1 the flowers1 the beasts among which they lived4 ,like ,gauguin again1 ,hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision1 but yet kept faith with it to the last4 ,illustration3 ,the ,idol4 ,in the pictures which ,gauguin produced during his stay in ,martinique1 we find the first rude indications of his later manner--the manner of a mystic poet who sees all life1 the life of man1 of vegetation1 of the earth and the sea1 as being parallel1 harmonious manifestations of the same ,divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other4 ,if ,gauguin did not realize himself in ,martinique1 he at least found himself on the road to realization4 ,but the unchecked power of the sun1 steadily sapping not only the white race1 but also the race of mixed blood1 with which he1 like ,hearn1 felt so much sympathy1 banished him from this ,eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future4 ,his health demanded a return to ,france4 ,he came back1 bringing with him pictures--experimental1 tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and gloom of the tropics with ,pissarro's analysis of paler northern sunlight4 ,he brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures which he1 as yet1 could not paint4 ,he brought back with him an idea4 ,,iv ,after seeing the ,antilles and returning to ,paris1 ,gauguin was again brought face to face with the problem against which he had already struggled--the problem of his poverty4 ,he had obtained at ,martinique the vision of a new world of art1 which he knew he was some day destined to realize4 ,but for the present he had neither lodging and studio1 nor resources of any kind4 ,he was forced to live on charity4 ,charity came to him in the shape of ,emile ,schuffenecker1 who had also given up finance for a career as artist4 ,schuffenecker was not a genius1 but he knew ability when he saw it1 and opened his doors freely to this needy colleague4 ,it is a pity that ,gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting ,schuffenecker as an artist4 ,gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful episodes of his life4 ,one is almost inclined to think with ,emile ,bernard that the basis of ,gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism1 or1 with ,meier-,graefe1 that ,gauguin was nothing but a great child4 ,neither of these views is1 however1 wholly correct4 ,gauguin was the son1 be it remembered1 of a radical journalist and the grandson of a ,socialist pamphleteer4 ,journalism in ,france is not the same thing as in ,england4 ,there is scarcely any polite journalism in ,france4 ,gauguin himself was always talking1 according to ,bernard1 of art and life needing the blow of the fist4 ,paul ,droulde1 ,edmond ,drumont1 ,henri ,rochefort1 ,octave ,mirbeau1 ,zola1 ,clemenceau1 and other celebrated journalists of the ,dreyfus period 7the heyday of ,french journalism7 knew quite well what this blow of the fist meant1 and practiced it upon every opportunity4 ,moreover1 ,gauguin was nearly forty1 had knocked about the world a great deal1 banging himself against many sharp corners in the process1 and was face to face with want4 ,it is also possible that he felt bound1 for the sake of his wife and children1 to make as much money as possible4 ,finally1 he believed in himself as an artist1 if no one else did4 ,the world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt4 ,as he put it himself1 ,is it necessary to be modest1 or1 in other words1 an imbecile8 ,so he accepted the use of ,schuffenecker's studio1 sold as many of his own pictures as he could1 and sneered loudly at ,schuffenecker's attempt to paint4 ,later on we find him accepting similarly ,van ,gogh's hospitality1 irritating ,van ,gogh to the pitch of madness1 and--after ,van ,gogh's death--sending to ,bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed exhibition of ,van ,gogh's pictures on the ground that ,van ,gogh was only a madman4 ,and later still1 when ,van ,gogh's reputation began to rise in public esteem1 ,gauguin declared that ,van ,gogh had learned from him and had called him master4 ,such traits are deplorable1 if we consider ,gauguin as an ordinary man4 ,but if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it conforming in every particular to ordinary standards1 it is quite certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name4 ,gauguin sinned in good company1 with ,michaelangelo who thought ,raphael had plotted against him1 and with ,berlioz who has left on record his opinion of ,wagner's music4 ,to understand ,gauguin one must share to some extent the opinion of ,flaubert--which1 incidentally1 ,browning almost endorses--that the man is nothing1 the work is all4 ,it is not easy to read between the lines of ,gauguin's self-imposed reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie4 ,if we attempt to do so1 we find a man so set upon his own path that he was almost without friends4 ,van ,gogh he loved without understanding4 ,daniel de ,monfreid he perhaps loved and understood4 ,the shadowy figure of ,tehura1 a figure perhaps idealized1 was to be the only woman who greatly moved him4 ,puvis de ,chavannes1 an artist to whom ,gauguin owed much1 similarly held himself aloof from all4 ,so did ,degas and ,ingres1 two other artists of ,gauguin's stamp4 ,so in ancient ,greece did ,sophocles4 ,the truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on the surface of things4 ,one can only sympathize with them1 share their imaginings through long and patient study4 ,gauguin was not altogether strong2 on some sides he was weak1 as he himself admitted4 ,but his work increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear4 ,schuffenecker's studio was useful to him2 he stayed in ,paris just long enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy ,manet's ,olympia1 a picture he greatly admired4 ,then once more he took the road to ,brittany4 ,v ,despite the fact that ,gauguin had1 before leaving ,paris1 held his first one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures1 his general situation was not improved4 ,he was now heavily in debt1 and his health1 undermined at ,martinique1 remained bad4 ,he was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock of the past and to calculate their chances for the future4 ,in ,gauguin's case the chances were very small4 ,he was crushed by his own impotence to realize the art he had dreamed4 ,it was at this juncture that ,vincent ,van ,gogh1 now at ,aries1 came forward and offered him a lodging1 despite the fact that he himself could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the self-sacrificing efforts of his brother ,theodore4 ,for a time ,gauguin did not respond to ,van ,gogh's generous offer to share their fortunes in common4 ,but he sent his own portrait to ,vincent1 a gloomy1 powerful piece of painting which1 in the opinion of some1 so startlingly resembles ,robert ,louis ,stevenson--like ,gauguin a wanderer1 but with what a difference6 ,to ,vincent this portrait suggested a prisoner1 with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows4 ,he was more than ever determined to draw ,gauguin out of the slough of despond into which he was falling1 and to work together with him for the better establishment of both their reputations4 ,one can only admire ,van ,gogh for this decision4 ,an artist of a childlike simplicity of soul1 a combination of ,don ,quixote1 the ,good ,samaritan and that ,jesus of ,nazareth whom he loved1 ,van ,gogh was even greater as a man than as an artist4 ,but ,gauguin was1 as he knew himself later1 greater as an artist than as a man4 ,it was natural for him to accept the invitation of a man whom he knew1 after all1 very slightly1 because he saw in this acceptance possible advantages to himself4 ,van ,gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed1 as was ,gauguin's1 by a strong reserve of nervous strength4 ,his was one of those souls whose longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced by ,william ,blake3-- ,i will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death ,lest the ,last ,judgment come and find me unannihilate1 ,and ,i be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood4 ,gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen by ,whitman3-- ,o1 to struggle against odds1 to meet enemies undaunted6 ,to be entirely alone with them1 to find how much one can stand ,to look strife1 torture1 prison1 popular odium face to face1 ,to mount the scaffold1 to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance1 ,to be indeed a ,god6 ,van ,gogh was a lyric painter4 ,his desire was to lose himself in the ecstacy of the divine4 ,gauguin was a narrative1 an epic painter4 ,his aim was to grow to divine stature through self-realization4 ,what could there be in common between the fervent admirer of ,rembrandt1 ,delacroix1 ,monticelli1 ,ziem1 and the brooding1 patient workman who was building up his art on the classic tradition of ,ingres1 ,czanne and ,degas8 ,surely even less than between ,michaelangelo and ,tintoretto4 ,a drama between these men was inevitable4 ,it was not slow in declaring itself4#a ,of what actually occurred we have only ,gauguin's account1 of how ,van ,gogh first attacked him1 and then strove to take his own life4 ,van ,gogh1 upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent itself1 went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at ,arles1 where1 as his grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that devoured him1 he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun4 ,gauguin returned to ,brittany1 as he said1 armed against all suffering4 ,but he had seen something4 ,in striving to paint ,van ,gogh's portrait he had seen a vision1 once again to quote his own words1 of ,jesus preaching goodness and humility4 ,and perhaps1 in ,vincent's hour of agony1 while he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he had loved and had painted so lovingly1 ,gauguin had another vision--of the sombre ,garden of ,gethsemane4 ,thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul1 between nature and ,god1 between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth1 which he was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize1 despite the baseness of that other part in him1 the civilized1 unprimitive part1 which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of baseness4 ,footnote #a3 ,gauguin and ,van ,gogh were actually together from the #bjth ,october to the #bc;d ,december1 #ahhh4 ,,part ,,iii3 ,,the ,,school ,,of ,,pont-,,aven #ahhi-ahia ,i ,in #ahhi there opened in ,paris on the ,champ-de-,mars the ,universal ,exposition1 to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the ,bastile4 ,of this exhibition and of the palace built to house it1 nothing now remains except the melancholy ,eiffel ,tower4 ,the pictures admitted to the exhibition were1 rather naturally1 of a kind sanctioned by academic officialdom4 ,wherefore visitors who happened to patronize the ,caf ,volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock all their susceptibilities in art matters4 ,their perplexity cannot have been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title3 ,catalogue of the ,exposition of ,pictures of the ,impressionist and ,syntheticist ,group1 held on the ,premises of ,m4 ,volpini1 at the ,champ-de-,mars1 #ahhi4 ,the exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the ,caf ,volpini had for the most part never heard4 ,their names were3--,e4 ,schuffenecker1 ,emile ,bernard1 ,charles ,laval1 ,louis ,anquetin1 ,louis ,roy1 ,lon ,fauch1 ,georges ,daniel1 ,ludovic ,nemo 7a pseudonym of ,bernard's7 and lastly1 ,paul ,gauguin4 ,lithographs1 printed in black upon yellow paper and not less extraordinary than the pictures1 were also visible upon request4 ,these were by ,bernard and ,gauguin4 ,the result of this exhibition was that the public laughed1 the papers protested1 the young students of art in the various ateliers of ,paris were stimulated to furious discussion4 ,but a few spirits1 more venturesome or more prophetic1 took the trouble to test the new ideas4 ,a few1 chief among them ,srusier of the ,acadmie ,julian1 even set out to visit the birthplace of the new movement1 a lonely inn kept by a family of the name of ,gloanec at ,le ,poldu1 a short distance from ,pont-,aven4 ,a brief survey of the history of ,syntheticism is necessary to an understanding of the theories of the new school4 ,here we enter upon debatable ground4 ,it has already been said that the chief opponents of the academicism of ,cabanel and ,bougereau were the ,impressionists4 ,their movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its third4 ,the earliest of the ,impressionists1 led by ,manet1 insisted that a picture was only nature seen through a temperament2 in other words1 that a picture must be naturalistic4 ,this doctrine found parallel literary expression in the writings of the de ,goncourts1 de ,maupassant and ,zola4 ,the first phase in ,impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained a belief in form4 ,it was succeeded by an analytical phase1 based upon the application to color of the scientific theories of light1 of ,rood1 ,chevreuil and ,helmholtz4 ,to ,claude ,monet1 the founder of this new school of ,impressionism1 nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere4 ,form was abandoned4 ,after ,monet1 ,renoir1 ,pissarro1 ,sisley1 ,guillamin1 a new group1 of whom the chief were ,seurat and ,signac1 attempted to combine the tenets of their two sets of predecessors4 ,they retained formal composition but broke up color into minute points or dots4 ,this third generation of ,impressionists were originally termed ,neo-,impressionists but now1 more frequently1 ,pointillists4 ,three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory4 ,puvis de ,chavannes had1 within the very precincts of the official salon1 created an art based on something wholly distinct1 alike from the photographic and frigid eclecticism of ,cabanel and ,bougereau and from the work of both ,manet and ,monet4 ,puvis was a decorator who could think and paint only in terms of walls4 ,he had achieved1 after a long struggle1 a decorative synthesis of his own1 based upon the ruthless simplification of masses1 contours and coloring4 ,reserved1 cold1 solitary1 he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of ,giotto1 that father of all ,european painting4 ,paul ,czanne1 the hermit of ,aix1 had faced the problem of painting with the ,impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his true spiritual ancestors--the ,venetians and ,el ,greco4 ,as a result he was thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth1 for he lived far from ,paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited4 ,finally1 ,degas1 associating himself with the ,impressionists at the outset1 had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of ,ingres1 who might be called the last of ,florentines4 ,degas was considered an artist of small importance because1 unlike ,manet1 he scorned to give himself airs4 ,he lived a retired life in ,paris1 and did not exhibit4 ,these three men--,puvis de ,chavannes1 ,czanne and ,degas--had1 through their own inner necessity1 become syntheticists4 ,but no one of them preached ,syntheticism1 because their adherence to the creed was unconscious4 ,the doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with ,paul ,gauguin at the ,caf ,volpini in #ahhi1 who lived and worked with him at the ,gloanec inn1 near ,pont-,aven4 ,it was from these men that the reaction against ,impressionism started1 a reaction which1 in its turn1 was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of mathematical and analytical abstraction of line1 color and form1 which we know as ,cubism1 ,futurism and ,vorticism4 ,it was these men surrounding ,gauguin1 who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition which goes back through ,giotto and ,cimabue to the ,byzantine mosaics1 and1 through these1 to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages4 ,with ,cubism1 ,futurism and ,vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning of a new tradition4 ,with ,gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance of an old one4 ,,ii ,as early as #ahhf1 in an article in the ,revue ,indpendante1 the well-known critic ,eduard ,dujardin had spoken of a group calling themselves the ,cloissonists1 who painted in flat patches of tone1 divided from each other by black lines4 ,cloissonism1 as the name indicates1 was borrowed from the ,japanese4 ,but as a method of painting1 it had been derived less from cloisonn enamel than from the technique of the ,japanese color-print artists4 ,the artistic gods of the ,cloissonists were ,hokusai1 ,hiroshige1 ,utamaro4 ,it may be remembered that since #ahfe men like ,zola1 ,manet1 ,monet1 ,whistler1 the de ,goncourts--in short the entire generation of the naturalists--had collected these color prints1 written about them1 talked about them4 ,gauguin himself1 when he returned to ,paris at the close of this year #ahhi1 pinned a frieze of ,hokusai and ,utamaro prints round the walls of his studio4 ,but the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of ,cloissonism1 of which the leader was ,anquetin 7later ranked with the ,syntheticists71 does not fully explain the use of ,syntheticism with its greater insistence upon decorative unity1 and its clearer affinities to the work of the ,italian primitives4 ,as to the origin of ,syntheticism we have divergent statements from contemporary witnesses4 ,the ,english artist1 ,a4,s4 ,hartrick1 who was studying in ,paris from #ahhf to #ahhi and who knew personally both ,gauguin and ,van ,gogh1 ascribes the ,synthetic theory to ,gauguin in these terms3-- ,from a study of thirteenth century glass he 7,gauguin7 got an idea of design and color which exactly suited his state of development1 and he then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own1 using oil paint as a vehicle4#a ,of similar opinion is the well known ,french artist and writer1 ,maurice ,denis1 whose work has done so much to popularise ,gauguin4 ,he declares in his book ,theories1#b that ,gauguin was the incontestable originator and master of the new movement1 to which he gives two names3 ,neo-,traditionism and ,symbolism4 ,in the first account which he wrote of the movement in #ahij1 an account obtained from the lips of ,paul ,srusier1 one of the earliest of ,gauguin's disciples after #ahhi1 ,denis includes the following interesting paragraph3 ,did not ,paul ,gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history of modeling8 ,at the beginning there was the pure arabesque1 as little deceptive of the eye as possible2 a wall is empty2 cover it with symmetrical spots of form1 harmonious in color3--stained glass1 ,egyptian pictures1 ,byzantine mosaics4 ,from this comes the painted bas-relief3--metopes of the ,greek temple1 the church of the ,middle ,ages4 ,then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye practised in ,antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the ,italian primitives1 who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings modeled to imitate bas-relief1 but in other respects preserve the first idea of decorative unity4 ,recall also under what conditions ,michaelangelo1 a sculptor1 decorated the ,sistine ceiling4 ,perfection of this modeling2 modeling in high-relief4 ,this leads from the first academy of the ,caracchi to our decadence4 ,emile ,bernard holds a contrary opinion4 ,his view was originally published in the ,mercure de ,france and reasserted in his preface to the letters written to him by ,van ,gogh4#c ,bernard1 who revolted from the ,atelier ,cormon with ,anquetin1 had1 as we have seen1 been repulsed by ,gauguin in in #ahhf4 ,after a brief return to ,paris he went off to ,saint-,briac1 where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and painted the windows1 in imitation of stained-glass1 employing essence of turpentine as a medium4 ,in #ahhh1 before ,gauguin came to ,arles1 ,bernard was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of ,theodore ,van ,gogh and1 although young enough to be ,gauguin's son 7being about twenty at this time71 shared with him the honors of the ,volpini exhibition4 ,bernard claims that he1 and he alone1 invented ,syntheticism1 and bases his claim on the evidence of the pictures 7all dated7 which ,gauguin painted previous to #ahhh1 and in which ,gauguin was still definitely ,impressionist in technique4 ,he maintains that ,gauguin abruptly changed his style after the second meeting in #ahhh1 when he first saw what his younger rival had been doing4 ,furthermore1 ,bernard contends that this style was solely based upon the application of ,czanne's discoveries in technique4 ,against these contentions there are three objections to be made4 ,in the first place it is known that ,gauguin1 during his stay in ,martinique in #ahhg1 painted pictures that are undeniably essays in syntheticism4 ,martinique showed ,gauguin the impossibility of painting tropic sunlight by means of the ,impressionistic division of tones4 ,always purely intuitive as an artist1 ,gauguin began to realize at ,martinique1 however vaguely1 that one cannot reproduce the natural decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color attempted by ,pissarro and the other ,impressionists4 ,he therefore sought to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the contrast of colors4 ,in the second place1 ,bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was not he1 but ,gauguin1 who after #ahhh painted those magnificent pictures ,le ,christ ,jaune1 ,le ,christ ,vert and ,la ,vision aprs le ,sermon#d and carved the two superb bas-reliefs ,soyez ,amoureuses et vous serez ,heureuses and ,soyez ,mystrieuses4 ,moreover1 the careful reader of ,van ,gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout '#hh and '#hi ,bernard stood in relation to ,gauguin as a pupil to a master4 ,finally1 even if ,bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did induce ,gauguin to reject the last vestiges of ,impressionism1 his story fails to account for the masterly grasp of ,synthetic ,symbolism shown by ,gauguin immediately after their second meeting4 ,it is quite impossible to trace to ,czanne's essays in ,synthetic ,impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either ,bernard or ,gauguin4 ,czanne1 later on1 even went so far as to assert that ,gauguin had misunderstood him4 ,therefore it is clear that the opinions of ,a4,s4 ,hartrick and of ,maurice ,denis better fit the facts4 ,gauguin was the sole originator of the ,synthetic style4 ,that style was derived1 perhaps mainly1 from the careful study of thirteenth century glass1 which does perfectly what ,gauguin wished to do3 translate the effect of sunlight into luminous color4 ,but it was also derived from ,egyptian painting1 ,byzantine mosaics and the ,kakemonos of the ,japanese4 ,in short1 it was as complete a rejection of ,impressionism as possible and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved1 in the nineteenth century1 in the works of artists whom ,gauguin admired3 ,ingres1 ,puvis de ,chavannes1 ,czanne and ,degas4 ,footnote #a3 ,post-,impressionism1 by ,a4,s4 ,hartrick4 ,imprint1 ,may1 #aiac4 ,footnote #b3 ,paris1 l',occident1 #aiab4 ,footnote #c3 ,paris1 ,vollard1 #aiaa4 ,footnote #d3 ,now known as ,la ,lutte de ,jacob avec l',ange4 ,,iii ,the exhibition at the ,caf ,volpini brought notoriety to ,gauguin4 ,various young artists1 wearying of the academic receipt for art--the phrase is ,gauguin's--which they were being taught in the ateliers of ,paris1 took the road for ,pont-,aven4 ,among these were ,paul ,srusier1 ,chamaillard1 and the ,dutchman1 ,de ,haahn4 ,acting under the influence of these1 and especially under that of ,srusier1 whose mind was metaphysical and filled with ,neo-,platonic mysticism1 ,gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite doctrine4 ,hitherto he had been an artist of the type of ,ingres1 working purely intuitively1 with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature4 ,but his new pupils were eager for a theory1 a formula1 and a formula this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create4 ,artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves4 ,whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy4 ,the public always takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods4 ,all art is a synthesis1 and no artist can be at the same time synthetic and analytical4 ,gauguin was no exception to this rule4 ,take for example1 his often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors3-- ,always use colors of the same origin4 ,indigo is the best basis4 ,it becomes yellow in saltpeter1 red in vinegar4 ,you can obtain it at any chemist's4 ,keep to these three colors4 ,gauguin himself did not follow this precept4 ,an examination of his palette shows that it was arranged thus1 from left to right3 --ultramarine1 silver white1 emerald green1 veronese green1 yellow ochre1 burnt sienna1 yellow chrome1 vermilion1 and crimson lake4 ,no artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously fugitive1 whether used pure or in mixture4 ,so with another celebrated saying3 ,seek harmony and not contrast1 the agreement and not--the clash of color4 ,this saying not only goes contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors1 but is opposed to those equally famous dicta3 ,does that trunk of a tree seem to you blue8 ,paint it as blue as possible1 and1 ,a mile of green1 is more green than half a mile4 ,it is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of ,gauguin's teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark4 ,gauguin was not a man holding a high-school debate on theory1 but a creator4 ,he refused even to be called a decorator1 he preferred the title of artisan4 ,he declared outright that he had no technique4 ,or perhaps ,i have one1 but very vagabond1 very elastic1 according to the way ,i feel when ,i awaken in the morning1 a technique which ,i apply to my own liking in order to express my thought1 without taking account of the truth of ,nature1 externally apparent4 ,people think nowadays that all the technical means of painting are exhausted4 ,i do not believe it1 if ,i am to judge by the numerous observations which ,i have made and put into practice4444 ,painters have still much to discover4 ,gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them this remark3 ,do what you please1 so long as it is intelligent4 ,this did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition4 ,he knew that tradition is not a recipe for making art1 but the sum-total of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same problems that face the artists of to-day4 ,he realized that the essential substance of art is always the same4 ,art is an eternal renewal of this substance4 ,the artist is not born of a single unity4 ,if he adds a new link to the chain already begun1 it is much4 ,the artist is known by the quality of his transposition4 ,the transposition that he himself strove for may be clearly read in his pictures4 ,he strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art of the great ,venetians1 by blending the ,venetian glow of color with the calm line of ,primitive and especially of ,egyptian ,primitive design4 ,his problem was essentially the same as that of ,puvis de ,chavannes1 the problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to leave it still essentially a wall and not1 as ,veronese and ,tiepolo left it1 an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery4 ,puvis had solved the problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by simplifying his drawing4 ,gauguin solved his by the elimination of modeling1 and of graduations of tone1 and by reducing his drawing to the strongest possible arabesque of outline4 ,in everything he sought for the essential form1 the form that contains all the other inessential forms4 ,as ,srusier puts it3 ,the synthetic theory of art consists in reducing all form to the smallest possible number of component forms3--straight lines1 arcs of a circle1 a few angles1 arcs of an ellipse4 ,and to express this form he sought for the most harmonious balance of color4 ,maurice ,denis says3--,recall that a picture1 before being a war-horse1 a nude or some anecdote1 is essentially a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order4 ,illustration3 ,tahitian ,women4 ,therefore and above all1 ,gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the model1 but from memory4 ,he admitted that it was useful for young painters to have a model1 as all knowledge of facts could only be obtained from the study of models4 ,but he added that it was better to draw a curtain before the model while painting it4 ,one of his pupils declared3 ,we went into the country to paint seascapes and to the seashore to do landscapes4 ,gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods practiced for centuries by the great ,chinese and ,japanese painters4 ,he would have enjoyed that story of a ,chinese painter1 who was sent out by the ,emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the ,empire1 and who returned without having painted anything4 ,when the ,emperor asked him3 ,but where are your pictures8 he replied3 ,i have them here--and pointed to his forehead4 ,gauguin1 with his hatred of copying either from nature or from the masters of the past1 would also have appreciated the ,chinese idea of a copy--a free rearrangement of old material according to one's temperament4 ,lastly1 he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose4 ,let everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul4 ,avoid all animated attitudes4 ,each of your figures should be perfectly static4 ,give everything a clear outline4 ,this counsel sounds strange to ears deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of ,cubists1 ,futurists and ,vorticists4 ,but to ,gauguin it was the basis of his own mystical religion4 ,he gave it to the world1 however1 not for this reason1 but because he realized that painting to be decorative must be architectural4 ,he himself was a builder1 an artisan4 ,in ,brittany he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived2 he made furniture1 carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself1 worked at bas-reliefs1 decorated pottery4 ,movement1 restlessness1 would have but troubled the lines of that ideal building1 which1 even then1 he was erecting in his dreams4 ,such was the doctrine of ,paul ,gauguin4 ,it may seem strange that such ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary4 ,in the ,far ,east at all events1 they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries4 ,revolutionary or not1 ,gauguin went on his way undisturbed4 ,from an examination of his letters1 and of the statements of those who knew him1 the fact emerged that this anarchist preserved throughout his life a great respect for artists of the past4 ,rembrandt especially1 in his mystical and visionary phase1 appealed to him and ,rembrandt's influence may be traced in more than one of ,gauguin's ,tahitian pictures4 ,velazquez1 ,rubens1 ,proudhon1 ,corot1 ,whistler--,gauguin was able to learn something from all these men as well as from ,memling and ,holbein4 ,as for his pupils1 the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following his precepts may be judged by the fact that ,gauguin remarked about one of them3 ,his faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be considered a master1 and by the fact that the first synthetic picture of another was1 according to ,maurice ,denis1 painted on the lid of a cigar box6 ,,iv ,it is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of ,gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that went on in his soul3 a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at ,tahiti4 ,gauguin1 as has been seen1 was not naturally but only deliberately a teacher of others4 ,especially in his intimate and personal concerns1 he commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve4 ,in the matter of views on art1 he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and paradoxical opinions which1 if disputed1 were merely affirmed with greater violence4 ,it is related of him that1 if any one persisted in holding an opinion contrary to his own1 ,gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an embarrassed silence4 ,nevertheless1 we owe to the fortunate preservation of various fragmentary notes1 made in the solitude of his last desperate years1 indications of what ,gauguin's religious and political opinions were4 ,here are some of them3-- ,if ,i gaze before me into space1 ,i have a vague sense of the ,infinite2 nevertheless ,i am the conclusion of something that has been begun4 ,i understand then1 that there has been a beginning and that there will be no end4 ,in this ,i do not possess the explanation of a mystery1 but merely the mysterious sense of this mystery--and this sensation is intimately linked to the belief in an eternal life1 promised by ,jesus4 ,but then1 if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into the world1 it is necessary to believe1 with the ,buddhists1 that we have always existed4 ,a change of skin4 ,all this is very strange4 ,the unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it is1 unfathomable4 ,god does not belong to the scholar1 the logician4 ,he belongs to the poets1 to their dreams4 ,he is the symbol of ,beauty1 ,beauty itself4 ,from these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in ,gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures3 ,le ,christ ,jaune and ,le ,christ au ,jardin d',oliviers2 when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs3 ,soyez ,amoureuses and ,soyez ,mystrieuses2 when he drew the lithographs3 ,la ,cigale et les ,fourmis1 and ,lda which bears the defiant inscription ,honi soit qui mal y pense4 ,gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious illumination1 not in the systems of philosophers and theologians1 but in nature and in man4 ,among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a false system of morality1 politics and religion1 which elevated the wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the thinker1 the artist1 the independent workman1 the very right to live4 ,against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century1 he recognized in ,jesus ,christ a revolt and a protest2 but a revolt and a protest that had failed4 ,humanity had not yet produced1 save by exception1 the higher type of man1 the man capable of selling all and giving to the poor1 the man chosen to enter the ,kingdom of ,heaven4 ,a terrible epoch1 he foresaw1 was coming in ,europe for the next generation3 an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind4 ,therefore1 in contemplating ,christ1 he was moved by a sense of despair1 of the futility of this sacrifice4 ,his attitude to ,christianity became purely ,protestant4 ,across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of the beneficent ,virgin1 sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of maternity4 ,in ,le ,christ ,jaune he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved impotent to elevate mankind to its level4 ,le ,christ au ,jardin d',oliviers echoes the awful cry1 ,my ,god1 my ,god1 why hast thou forsaken me8 ,the terrible little picture1 ,les ,misres ,humaines sums up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted civilization4 ,even the later ,tahitian ,birth of ,christ renders nothing but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity4 ,in the ,ia ,orana ,maria1 or the ,salutation to ,mary1 the ,virgin is represented merely as a happy human mother4 ,nature1 on the other hand1 seen by him luxuriant and unfettered1 as at ,martinique1 taught him the uselessness of revolt1 struggle and effort1 the need of fatalism1 of resignation4 ,he grew to believe that man was better1 more rational1 more harmonious when no longer struggling against the inexorable laws of birth1 begetting1 and death4 ,thus in his art he aimed at repose1 the quietism of the ,buddhists4 ,his knowledge of ,buddhism was not deep--indeed in his eyes1 ,buddhism1 too1 was a vain revolt against nature--but his respect for ,buddhistic doctrine remained greater than his respect for ,christianity4 ,at the bottom of his soul there dwelt an old1 old thought1 the essence of all paganism3 ,eat1 drink and be merry1 for to-morrow we may die4 ,as he put it later in the pages of his ,tahitian recital3-- ,to the eyes of ,tagatha 7the ,god7 the most splendid glories of kings and their ministers are but dust and spittle3 ,to his eyes1 purity and impurity are like the dance of the six serpents3 ,to his eyes1 the search for the ,way of ,buddha is like the coming of flowers4 ,it is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man who was never more than half an ,european1 that we are able to understand how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the bas-relief1 ,soyez ,amoureuses et vous serez ,heureuses and the somber despair of ,le ,christ au ,jardin d',oliviers4 ,that mind1 as we have seen1 was neither wholly ,christian or ,pagan--though the untamed ,pagan element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined ,christian side4 ,therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether ,gauguin as an artist1 displayed more of the ,classic tradition than of the ,gothic4 ,gothic as well as ,classical strains remained mingled in him up to the last4 ,throughout his work there runs a longing--obscure1 tormented1 and ultimately foiled--for a natural religion3 a religion that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony1 a religion1 which1 like the rest of his striving1 would be a synthesis4 ,v ,by the end of the year #ahhi1 ,gauguin's name had acquired a certain renown1 and he naturally gravitated back to ,paris4 ,being however still without resources1 he took residence once more with ,emile ,schuffenecker4 ,at that period1 the literary and artistic school which had produced naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned4 ,paris was on the verge of her sthetic nineties4 ,a small group of writers1 chief of whom were ,verlaine1 ,mallarm1 and ,huysmans1 had proclaimed a sort of revolt against the nineteenth century1 and had been1 in consequence of their love for the remote past1 at first labelled ,decadents4 ,this title was soon abandoned for the better designation of ,symbolists4 ,gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of ,symbolism as a sort of hero4 ,here was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious4 ,he had definitely broken away from his own commercial surroundings4 ,he had defiantly ruptured his own family ties4 ,he had abolished ,impressionist science and had sought to restore art to its primitive condition1 revealing in the process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular art4 ,his appearance amongst them1 in a sailor's jersey1 a sailor cap1 sailor's trousers1 and carved wooden shoes1 excited a sensation4 ,he became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on1 a sort of symbol4 ,some critics have stated that ,gauguin's head was turned by this adulation1 but in reality1 under a new veneer of affectation1 he remained what he had always been4 ,no man was less fitted for living in the midst of cultivated society than he4 ,for a time1 during that strange epoch of his financial career1 he had indeed become1 to outward seeming1 largely an ,european2 but this was merely on the surface and had completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage4 ,an invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in him1 masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy4 ,this shyness disappeared when he was with children1 peasants1 or natives4 ,but to every one else ,gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible1 in order to keep them at a distance4 ,and1 generally1 he succeeded4 ,it is small wonder then that ,schuffenecker shortly found his guest again intolerable1 and that ,gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging4 ,schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied4 ,he seems never to have realized that ,gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love and understand4 ,in losing ,gauguin1 he lost the one thing that was ever likely to bring him fame1 the reputation which his studio had already acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs1 as housing ,gauguin's collection of pictures and sculptures by himself1 by ,cezanne1 ,van ,gogh1 and ,odilon ,redon4 ,gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he ever had--who was willing to give him the use of a studio4 ,this was ,daniel de ,monfreid1 who had1 incidentally1 under the name ,george ,daniel taken part in the ,volpini exhibition4 ,it is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community of taste in matters of art1 but a common love of the sea4 ,de ,monfreid1 like ,gauguin1 had been a sailor4 ,he was a man enjoying a certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement4 ,every summer1 he dropped his palette and brushes1 put on his master mariner's cap1 which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel1 and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the ,mediterranean4 ,this went on for years until de ,monfreid1 weary of dodging quarantine restrictions1 and getting entangled in the complications of maritime law1 retired from the sea1 generously offering his schooner to the ,naval ,school at ,cette1 where she ultimately met her end4 ,at this period he was known to his artistic friends in ,paris as the captain1 and had been introduced to ,gauguin by ,schuffenecker1 on the former's return from ,martinique in #ahhg4 ,to this man all lovers of ,gauguin's art owe an immense debt4 ,whether it was due to the independent and roving disposition1 shared by both1 or to their common love and experience of the sea1 or to the fact that both were painters 7de ,monfreid's experiences in the ,mediterranean had made of him a good colorist71 or to a certain bond of savage frankness and nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were due1 is unknown4 ,the fact remains that the friendship between them was of that ideal kind that is never broken3 the friendship between the creator and helper1 which all artists long for and to which so few attain4 ,in finding de ,monfreid1 ,gauguin experienced almost the last stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life4 ,the last stroke of all came a little afterwards when1 in the year after accepting de ,monfreid's hospitality1 he suddenly decided to leave ,europe for ,tahiti4 ,illustration3 ,hina ,maruru 7,feast to ,hina74 ,the happy discovery of a letter which ,gauguin wrote at this time to a ,danish painter1 ,willemsen by name1 clears up the long-vexed point of what induced him to take this decision4#a ,he chanced to attend1 or to read the report of1 a lecture on ,tahiti1 given by a certain ,van der ,veere4 ,van der ,veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to suit the tastes of a fashionable audience4 ,he pictured ,tahiti as a terrestrial paradise where money was unknown4 ,under a sky without winter1 upon an earth of a marvelous fertility1 the ,tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather in his food2 so he never works4 ,for him life means singing and making love4 ,it is easy to picture the effect of such phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like ,gauguin4 ,tahiti held out the hope that ,martinique had failed to realize2 the hope that he might be the first painter of the tropics4 ,gauguin's imagination was fired by the idea4 ,he declared that he intended to quit ,europe and live in ,tahiti henceforward4 ,there he could perhaps forget all the hardships of the past1 and die forgotten by ,paris1 happy and free to paint sans gloire aucune pour les autres4 ,and if his children could join him there1 all the better--his isolation would then be complete4#b ,the young ,symbolists of course shouted ,bravo6 at the news of the proposed voyage4 ,tahiti6 ,another symbol6 ,they had already spoilt ,gauguin sufficiently for serious art1 by persuading him to embark on various symbolistic enterprises1 such as the production of a masterpiece entitled ,loss ,of ,maidenhood1 which has fortunately vanished1 and an etching representing ,mallarm with ,poe's ,raven in the background4 ,perhaps their eagerness to see ,gauguin safely embarked for ,tahiti only concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday4 ,at all events ,gauguin was fted1 wined1 dined4 ,thirty of his works were auctioned off at the ,htel ,drouot1 producing the small sum of nine thousand six hundred and eighty francs4 ,the ,government consented to make his voyage to ,oceania an official artistic mission1 on condition that this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses4 ,a banquet was held at the ,caf ,voltaire1 where all the ,symbolists were assembled4 ,gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a similar banquet1 which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony4 ,finally a benefit performance was given by the ,thtre d',art for the departing artist and also for ,verlaine1 then rapidly sinking into the squalor of his last years4#c ,the most interesting fact about the performance was that1 included in the program by a strange stroke of irony1 ,maurice ,maeterlinck's play ,l',intruse made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage4 ,death walked the stage before ,gauguin's eyes1 as if to show him what to expect4 ,and yet he did not draw back4 ,on the fourth of ,april #ahia1 ,gauguin1 abandoning ,paris1 started on his voyage of discovery to ,tahiti4 ,morice1 in his interesting book on ,gauguin1 declares that when the decision was irrevocably made1 and the mission to ,tahiti had been stamped with official approval1 ,gauguin's self-possession momentarily abandoned him1 and he broke down1 and wept4 ,and when ,morice asked the reason1 he replied in these strange1 tragic1 touching words3-- ,listen to me4444 ,i have never known how to keep alive both my family and my thought4 ,i have not even been able1 up to now1 to keep alive my thought alone4 ,and now that ,i can hope for the future1 ,i feel more terribly than ,i have ever felt1 the horror of the sacrifice ,i have made1 which is utterly irreparable4 ,with this knowledge in his heart1 ,gauguin abandoned civilization4 ,footnote #a3 ,les ,marges1 ,paris1 ,may #ae1 #aiah4 ,footnote #b3 ,gauguin had also undoubtedly read ,loti's book4 ,his letters show that before deciding upon ,tahiti he had considered the possibility of going to ,tonkin or ,madagascar4 ,footnote #c3 ,it may be noticed that ,gauguin received no financial profit whatever from this performance1 and ,verlaine very little4 ,,part ,,iv3 ,,the ,,return ,,to ,,savagery #ahia-ahie ,i ,tahiti1 the largest of the ,french ,society ,islands1 lies in the ,south ,pacific ,ocean4 ,that is about the limit of the average person's knowledge4 ,many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical but modified by sea breezes1 the scenery wonderful1 the people famous for beauty and licentiousness4 ,nevertheless1 a more thorough knowledge of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest4 ,tahiti1 ,samoa 7known to us through ,stevenson71 ,hawaii1 ,new ,zealand and the ,marquesas 7familiar to readers of ,melville's ,omoo71 which are the chief links in that story1 were all1 at the time the islands were discovered1 inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different in appearance from the woolly-haired ,papuans of ,new ,guinea and ,fiji1 or from the straight-haired ,malays of the peninsula1 made familiar to us through the stories of ,joseph ,conrad4 ,these island people1 the ,polynesians1 were found speaking all the same tongue1 though in different dialects2 they had1 for the most part1 the same social organization and their religion1 manners and customs were very similar2 they had1 in many cases1 traditions pointing to a common place of origin in the island of ,samoa4 ,and yet from ,samoa they lived separated by thousands of miles of intervening ocean1 still imperfectly known1 abounding in coral reefs1 liable to dangerous storms1 full of shifting currents4 ,how then had they reached ,tahiti8 ,the anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of the ,caucasian or ,indo-,european4 ,though their skin is dark1 it is for the most part less dark than that of the natives of ,india4 ,set a ,maori soldier from ,new ,zealand beside an ,indian cavalryman and note the difference between the clear yellow skin of the former1 which seems to give out light and the swarthy1 somber brown of the latter4 ,in other characteristics too the ,polynesians are essentially ,caucasian4 ,they are a tall1 well built1 massive race1 contrasting favorably with the ,malay4 ,their hair is black--or in some cases copper brown--and wavy1 again contrasting with the straight hair of the ,malay or the fuzzy mop of the ,papuan4 ,finally1 the cast of face is purely ,caucasian and in many cases very beautiful4 ,only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat1 due to artificial flattening in infancy4 ,we must suppose then1 that at some period unknown1 but probably after the ,christian era 7the folk-lore of ,hawaii1 which must have been settled late1 goes back to the fifth century7 a seafaring race of ,indo-,european stock set sail from some part of the ,indian peninsula in decked ships1 capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a voyage of some weeks4 7,we know the ,polynesians were capable of building such ships47 ,from ,india they made their way to the ,malay peninsula1 where traces of their passing still exist1 and so gradually to ,samoa1 whence they spread northwards to ,hawaii1 southwards to ,new ,zealand1 eastwards to ,tahiti1 to the ,marquesas and to ,easter ,island4 ,in order to accomplish all this1 their seafaring enterprise1 warlike energy and astronomical knowledge must have been great4 ,later on1 under the influence of too luxuriant a climate1 the ,polynesians became indolent1 careless1 effeminate4 ,and1 as such1 they were discovered by the enterprising ,anglo-,saxon1 by the ,frenchman with his ,parisian vices1 by the thorough and scientific ,german4 ,the combined influences of missionaries1 drink1 disease and the labor market reduced the inhabitants from #aej1jjj in #aggd to #aj1jjj in #ahhi4 ,to these people came ,paul ,gauguin1 unwitting of the tragedy of their history4 ,it is true that he was weary of ,europe and had set out with the aim he had cherished since the ,martinique days--to be the first painter of the tropics4 ,but it is probable that he chose ,tahiti at hazard1 because he believed that here was a country where one could live for almost nothing4 ,it must always be remembered that ,gauguin had no private means and that his pictures1 like all works in advance of their time1 did not sell4 ,cezanne1 ,degas1 could afford not to sell their pictures because they had other resources4 ,but ,gauguin was forced to find some way of existing while producing pictures that1 as he knew well1 it would take the public some time to accept4 ,in a letter to de ,monfreid he stated his system3 ,from the beginning1 ,i knew that this would be a life from day to day2 so1 logically1 ,i habituated myself to it4 ,instead of losing my strength in work and worry for the moment1 ,i put all my strength into the day--like the wrestler who does not employ his body except in the moment of wrestling4 ,when ,i lie down in the evening ,i say to myself3 ,one more day is gained1 perhaps to-morrow ,i shall be dead4 ,in my work as a painter1 ditto--,i do not trouble about anything1 but each day for itself--at the end of a certain time1 this covers a considerable extent of surface4 ,if men would not waste their time in disconnected struggles and labors6 ,every day a link4 ,that is the great point4 ,such was the frame of mind in which ,gauguin went to ,tahiti4 ,what he found there was not the ,pays de ,cocaigne he probably expected4 ,the ,gods do not give their gifts in this fashion4 ,gauguin asked much from ,tahiti and much was given4 ,but he asked for material comfort and was offered instead spiritual salvation4 ,in ,tahiti1 ,paul ,gauguin found1 at last1 his soul2 and the work that he achieved there1 though it brought him in no material fortune1 was to stand and speak to later ages1 its own terrible parable to all men4 ,,ii ,on the night of the eighth of ,june #ahia1 after sixty-three days of voyaging1 ,gauguin at last arrived at ,papeete1 the capital of ,tahiti4 ,he was at the time suffering from bronchitis1 contracted during the last winter in ,paris1 and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to take to his bed4 ,he was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday4 ,although possessed of a normally strong constitution1 fortified by the open-air existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises1 such as boxing1 fencing and swimming1 of which he was very fond1 his health1 when he reached ,tahiti1 became immediately worse4 ,this was largely due to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for livelihood4 ,his prospects were not brilliant4 ,the governor1 ,lacascade1 an ignorant and brutal negro1 learning that he had an official mission1 at once took him for a spy sent out from ,paris1 and by every possible means attempted to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited native population4 ,the society of the pseudo-,european capital1 ,papeete1 disgusted him4 ,the natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to all whites4 ,a few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his interest4 ,it was the death of the last male representative of the old royal house of ,tahiti1 ,pomare ,v1 the son of the unfortunate ,queen ,pomare1 who had vainly struggled to enlist ,great ,britain's sympathy in her opposition to the ,french occupation4 ,pomare ,v had abdicated eleven years previously2 now he was dead and1 with his death1 the last dying gleams of ,tahitian hopes for independence became extinct4 ,pomare was buried in the uniform of a ,french ,admiral1 with full official ceremony and according to the rites of ,christianity2 but in the attitude of the natives to this event1 ,gauguin was able to see that the embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to revive at any favorable opportunity4 ,he decided to quit ,papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process which went far to exhaust his small capital4 ,there he attempted to live as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants4 ,this made still further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him from ,france4 ,the natives held aloof1 suspicious2 they were only ready to approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions1 liquor1 money4 ,his efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by enigmatic and evasive smiles4 ,nevertheless ,gauguin persisted4 ,though we must regard the account given by himself in the pages of ,noa ,noa as representing rather the dream than the reality1 he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the natives to accept him as one of their own kind4 ,but1 unfortunately1 the natives had seen thousands of ,europeans before him1 either voyagers of the ,pierre ,loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as dirty ,kanakas4 ,they now had their revenge in the only way possible to a conquered race4 ,they spent his money1 flattered his painting and his vanity1 and smiled behind his back4 ,before a year was out his capital had vanished4 ,there were no buyers for his pictures on the island and ,paris was far away4 ,gauguin found that he had suddenly aged--a common experience enough for white men coming suddenly into a tropic climate4 ,his heart began to give him trouble4 ,this savage ,eden1 which the white men had found and corrupted1 was taking its little revenge4 ,he attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage back to ,france4 ,in vain4 ,he hoped that buyers for his pictures would come forward in ,paris4 ,useless4 ,fortunately his fame was now spreading to neutral countries4 ,thanks to his wife's efforts he was invited to take part in an exhibition in ,denmark4 ,illustration3 ,the ,old ,spirit4 ,on the eighth of ,december1 #ahib1 he forwarded a packet of eight pictures to this exhibition1 among which was the superb canvas ,l',esprit ,veille4 ,the picture created an immense stir at ,copenhagen when exhibited the next year and brought him in some money4 ,but in ,paris his fame steadily declined and he was every day less talked about4 ,albert ,aurier1 a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to make his art known1 was dead4 ,theodore ,van ,gogh1 who had supported him and had attempted to find buyers for his work1 had followed his unfortunate brother into the grave4 ,meanwhile his pupils of yesterday1 ,bernard1 ,srusier and the rest1 were going about ,paris vaguely hinting that they had taught ,gauguin something and that ,czanne and ,van ,gogh were better artists4 ,the halo of victory which had crowned his departure from ,paris was rapidly fading4 ,he had painted already at ,tahiti1 as he knew1 magnificent pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before4 ,moreover1 he believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in ,paris as elsewhere4 ,what he had seen in ,tahiti had given him the necessary material upon which his imagination1 always synthetic and non-realistic1 could work4 ,his health and his future prospects could only suffer by a longer stay4 ,he believed that in returning to ,paris he could make himself once and for all an outstanding figure4 ,if he did not1 perhaps it would be better to give up painting altogether4 ,he was growing old4 ,on the thirtieth of ,august #ahic1 he arrived at ,marseilles with four francs in his pocket1 after a terrible voyage in the steerage1 in the height of summer1 during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat in the ,red ,sea4 ,it is almost incredible to think of1 that this man1 during the two years he had been away from ,france1 had painted1 despite failing health1 and financial miseries1 over forty canvases1 among them such masterpieces as ,l',esprit ,veille1 ,matamua1 and ,ia ,orana ,maria4 ,and yet this very same man arrived back in ,france a pauper6 ,truly1 he might well say of himself1 that he was born with the evil eye1 which brings to its owner1 as well as others1 only misfortune4 ,,iii ,paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the world4 ,since her spoiled darling ,napoleon fell1 there has been no one to whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day4 ,there are a few exceptions to this rule4 ,hugo1 because he lived in exile2 ,balzac1 because he1 too1 was a hermit1 continually pestered by his creditors2 and of recent years ,verlaine1 because he haunted the lowest cafs1 the vilest dens1 and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a prison4 ,such men may be the idols of ,paris4 ,for the rest1 ,paris is willing only to think of her children as sons for a day4 ,gauguin returned1 picturing a complete conquest of ,paris4 ,but he had already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his4 ,had he but managed his affairs more wisely1 he might1 on the strength of the sensation his pictures had created in ,denmark and subsequently in ,sweden1 ,norway1 and ,germany1 have now concluded with a picture-dealer an arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his work4 ,but ,gauguin demanded all or nothing6 ,and1 as was the case before with his mother and her ,peruvian relatives1 the result was nothing4 ,he decided to give a general exhibition of his entire ,tahitian work1 forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture4 ,durand-,ruel gave him a gallery and ,charles ,morice1 chief of the young symbolists whom ,gauguin had met after the ,volpini show1 wrote a preface to the catalog1 which probably only served to mystify the public still further4 ,for the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce frank bewilderment4 ,of the forty-four pictures exhibited1 thirty-three remained unsold4 ,what misled visitors more than anything else were the titles that ,gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures4 ,these titles were in the ,tahitian language4 ,every one immediately supposed that in order to understand the pictures1 it was necessary to be expert in the history1 the folk-lore1 the manners and customs of ,tahiti4 ,naturally therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archological and ethnological puzzles1 only to be read by those possessing the key4 ,gauguin1 of course1 had intended something else4 ,just as he had used ,brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of ,christ1 so he had used ,tahiti to suggest the primal innocence1 the enigmatic mystery of life as it was lived in ,eden and in the days of man's awakening--in that ,golden ,age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter4 ,but it was useless for him to try to explain that ,tahiti had merely given him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures4 ,morice pictures him standing at the exhibition1 day after day1 and listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of the crowd4 ,it was1 as he later said of himself1 the torture of the ,indian who smiles at the stake4 ,only ,degas came and understood4 ,to him on the last day of the exhibit1 ,gauguin said3 ,monsieur ,degas1 you have forgotten your cane1 and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured handed it to the astonished painter4 ,the bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his1 had not fortune1 with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save ,gauguin for better things1 sent him means of salvation4 ,a brother of his father died in ,orleans1 well-to-do and a bachelor4 ,from his estate1 ,gauguin inherited thirteen thousand francs4 ,the exhibition had been a mistake1 but his next move was sheer folly4 ,instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation1 he rented a studio and determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle ,paris4 ,morice admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends4 ,if this was the case ,gauguin would have done well had he uttered the well-known prayer1 ,deliver me from my friends6 ,for ,morice1 even1 admitted later that it was1 under the circumstances1 a mistake4 ,about ,gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have grown with the years4 ,it is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were colored pale yellow1 and his windows painted with ,tahitian subjects in imitation of stained glass 7these same windows were1 by the way1 on exhibition at a dealer's in ,paris a few years ago74 ,it is true that his rooms were decorated with trophies1 boomerangs1 wooden clubs1 spears4 ,it is true that he kept a monkey and a model1 a mulatto woman who is said to have come from ,java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than anything else4 ,it is true also that he wore a strange costume1 consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons1 a blue waistcoat embroidered yellow1 brown pantaloons1 and a gray slouch hat with a blue ribbon4 ,but the importance of these and of similar details is very slight4 ,gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the attention of heedless ,paris were dead also and forgotten4 ,despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity1 ,gauguin found himself ill-at-ease4 ,the facile adulation of the symbolists1 who frequented the tea-parties he gave at his studio1 could not hold him4 ,he wandered off to ,bruges1 where he remained rapt with admiration before ,memling and astounded1 half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of ,rubens4 ,he lost interest in the new pupils who offered themselves1 ,seguin and ,o',connor4 ,after a vain attempt to get a post from the ,government as a resident in ,oceania1 he again drifted back to ,pont-,aven4 ,there1 one day1 promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto model at his side1 he was jeered at by some sailors4 ,in a moment1 all his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him4 ,he was again a savage1 fighting for the right to exist in his own way4 ,he attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one1 slipping behind him1 launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin4 ,the mulatto fled1 took a train to ,paris1 entered the empty studio1 seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished4 ,as for ,gauguin1 he lay on a stretcher1 uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and smoking a cigarette4 ,,iv ,little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague understanding2 and now1 as he lay on his bed in the inn at ,pont-,aven1 this understanding became a conviction4 ,he saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to accomplish and why he had failed4 ,he knew now what his art had been2 a great protest1 an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had gone on in his soul4 ,what he had fought against was the cunning extortion1 the moral degradation1 the bargaining hypocrisy1 of nineteenth century ,europe4 ,and nineteenth century ,europe had risen against him1 was casting him out1 was destroying him4 ,he must either submit or declare war1 for the sake of his life1 his art1 his soul4 ,among the people of ,tahiti1 labeled contemptuously savages by the very folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity1 among these savages he knew that he had found honor1 courage1 moral dignity1 and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else4 ,among these oppressed and exploited savages1 there still survived vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the scheme of things1 as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists nor theologians could ever pierce4 ,among these savages he had found a dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization1 which they knew to be destroying them2 and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own soul4 ,on ,september #bj1 #ahid1 he wrote to ,daniel de ,monfreid3-- ,as you say1 ,i have not given any news of myself recently and every one is complaining4 ,the reason is1 you see1 that ,i have lost all my strength through suffering1 above all at night1 which ,i frequently pass without any sleep4 ,and into the bargain naturally ,i have done nothing this infernal month except spend money4 ,for the rest1 ,i have made a fixed resolve to go back and live always in ,oceania and shall return to ,paris in ,december in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my bazar at no matter what price4 ,if ,i succeed ,i shall leave as soon as possible in ,february4 ,i can then finish my days without care for the morrow and without the external struggle against fools--,farewell to painting1 except as a means of distraction4 ,my house will be in sculptured wood4 ,the resolve expressed by this letter was carried out4 ,gauguin returned to ,paris and threw the bazar1 as he called it1 upon the market4 ,an auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio4 ,on his return from ,tahiti1 ,gauguin had met ,august ,strindberg1 then living in ,paris4 ,strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a time the two men had lived together4 ,gauguin now applied to him for a preface to the sale catalog4 ,the following letter was ,strindberg's response and in its words we read intellectual ,europe's complaint against ,gauguin3 ,you insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which ,i wrote in remembrance of the winter #ahid-e1 when we were living here1 behind the ,institute1 not far from the ,pantheon1 more important still1 close to the ,cemetery of ,montparnasse6 ,i would have willingly given you this souvenir1 to take away with you to that isle of ,oceania1 where you wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature1 and a breathing space1 but ,i feel myself in an equivocal position from the outset1 and ,i respond immediately to your request by an ',i cannot' or1 more brutally1 by an ',i will not4' 444 ,i cannot grasp your art and ,i cannot love it--,i know that this avowal will neither astonish nor wound you1 because you seem to be only strengthened by the hatred of others2 your personality1 careful to remain intact1 is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses4 ,perhaps with reason1 for1 from the instant when1 approved and admired1 you obtain partisans1 either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate a super-annuated style of painting4 444 ,it was of ,puvis de ,chavannes that ,i thought last night1 when to the southern sounds of mandolin and guitar1 ,i saw on the walls of your studio an uproar of sunlit pictures1 which pursued me in my sleep4 ,i saw trees which no botanist will discover1 animals unsuspected by ,cuvier and men which only you can create4 ,a sea which pours forth from a volcano1 a sky in which no ,god can live--,sir1 said ,i in my dream1 you have created a new heaven and earth1 but ,i am not delighted in the midst of your creation4 ,it is too sunny for me2 ,i prefer more chiaroscuro4 ,and in your paradise there lives an ,eve who is not my ideal1 because truly ,i1 too1 have a feminine ideal or two6 ,this morning1 ,i went to the ,luxembourg gallery to look at ,chavannes1 who always comes back to my mind4 ,i contemplated with a profound sympathy his picture of the ,poor ,fisherman1 so attentively occupied in watching the boat1 which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse1 and slumbering child4 ,that is beautiful4 ,but it seemed to me this ,fisherman wore a crown of thorns1 and that shocked me4 ,for ,i hate ,christ and all crowns of thorns4 ,you understand that ,i hate them4 ,i do not desire this pitiful ,god who accepts blows4 ,my ,god is rather ,vitsliputsli1 who1 in the sun1 eats the hearts of men4 ,no1 ,gauguin is not formed from the work of ,chavannes1 nor from that of ,manet1 nor from that of ,bastien-,lepage4 ,who is he then8 ,he is ,gauguin1 the savage who hates a wearisome civilization2 something of a ,titan who1 jealous of his ,creator1 in his idle moments makes his own little creation2 a child who breaks up his toys to make others2 he who denies and defies the rabble1 preferring to see the sky red1 rather than blue1 as they do4 ,illustration3 ,calvary4 ,bon voyage1 ,master3 but come back here to me4 ,i shall by that time perhaps have learned to understand your art better1 which will permit me to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale1 since ,i am beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating a new world4 ,to this letter1 ,gauguin replied-with the following profession of faith3-- ,i have received to-day your letter2 your letter1 which is a preface for my catalog4 ,i had the idea of asking you for a preface1 when ,i saw you the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing1 your blue northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls4 ,i had then the presentiment of a revolt1 of a shock between your civilization and my barbarism4 ,you suffer from your civilization4 ,my barbarism is to me a renewal of youth4 ,before the ,eve of my choice1 which ,i have painted in forms and harmonies of another world1 your remembrances have perhaps evoked a sorrow of the past4 ,the ,eve of your civilized conception makes you and the rest of us almost always misogynists2 the old ,eve1 which in my studio frightens you1 will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day4 ,this world of mine1 which neither a ,cuvier nor a botanist can find1 will be a ,paradise1 which ,i shall have only sketched out4 ,and from the sketch to the realization of the dream is very far4 ,what matter8 ,to envisage happiness1 is that not a foretaste of ,nirvana8 ,the ,eve that ,i have painted1 she alone1 logically can remain naked before one's eyes4 ,yours in that simple state could not walk without shame1 and too beautiful 7perhaps71 would be the evocation of an evil and a sorrow4 ,in ,february1 #ahie1 the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand francs4 ,and shortly after the artist shook the dust of ,europe from his feet and departed for his final voyage to ,tahiti4 ,as ,morice says1 he left ,paris with a smile1 and without turning his head to look back4 ,v ,it was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted ,europe finally1 that ,gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in ,tahiti4 ,this story1 which appears in the pages of the book he entitled ,noa ,noa 7a native word meaning fragrant71 is at once the best commentary on and the final analysis of his mind4 ,we do not know when ,gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the book that is his4 ,it may have been during his long hours of solitude on his first visit to the island2 perhaps it was during his stay in ,paris2 perhaps it was after his return4 ,the part of the book that is not his refers in passing to events that took place as late as #ahig4 ,gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery--the conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with civilization1 incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage1 yet realizing utterly that savagery was naked1 healthy and sound1 while civilization was corrupt1 over-luxuriant and decaying4 ,to accomplish this task1 he sought for a style as free from literary artifice as possible4 ,his aim was to state what he had seen in ,tahiti1 in the style of a folk-tale4 ,he deliberately eschewed rhetoric1 exotic ornament1 all the devices of the tourist1 the journalist1 the professional litterature4 ,what he wanted1 above all1 was to make others feel1 in the incidents of a nave story1 the essence of ,tahiti--the soul of the native4 ,it is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to savagery told by ,gauguin in this book1 has any basis in fact or whether it is largely allegory4 ,it may be both or neither4 ,it contains certain undoubted facts3 first1 that ,gauguin saw on his arrival at ,papeete the royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that event2 second1 that he quitted ,papeete and attempted to live as a native1 abandoning ,european dress and speech as far as possible2 third1 that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations with one or more native women2 finally1 that he quitted the island1 owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial triumph in ,france4 ,these facts are not important1 and are merely the vague skeleton upon which the fascinating story of ,gauguin's spiritual development is bit by bit1 built up4 ,he made use of these facts in the same way as he made use of models in his pictures1 as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful forms4 ,all art to him was transposition1 and in the pages of his recital he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization1 savagery1 and life1 into a series of imaginary adventures1 which we are at liberty to believe or not as we choose4 ,so we follow him from ,papeete into the backwoods4 ,we find him holding aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple hospitality4 ,we see him making his first tentative attempts at establishing a community of thought4 ,he tries to persuade the natives to sit for their portraits--with little success4 ,he tries to find solace in the companionship of the half-caste ,titi1 in vain4 ,then ,jotefa comes upon the scene1 the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of sex1 and thereby rendered sex more dangerous1 more artificial1 more unnatural4 ,so he gets his first gleam of intelligence4 ,the next comes1 when ,jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel1 that an artist is not like other men1 but some one producing a thing useful to others4 ,this further enlightens him4 ,he contrasts this opinion on art as something useful to man with art as the ,european sees it1 a mere freakish amusement4 ,finally1 he hazards everything4 ,he takes a young native girl and makes her his wife1 not without qualms of fear4 ,all goes well until one day away from home1 when he is out fishing with the natives4 ,they laugh at his luck4 ,he asks them why4 ,because his line has caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife being unfaithful to him4 ,he returns home1 half-believing the superstition4 ,the native girl prays1 weeps1 asks to be beaten4 ,he cannot beat her4 ,he can only forgive and understand4 ,so the story closes4 ,from such a story1 we should naturally receive the impression that ,gauguin's life in ,tahiti was ideally happy4 ,but his letters reveal that he was even more unhappy there than in ,france4 ,so whatever elements of fact may be in his story1 it is evident that they cannot be disentangled from the fictional details4 ,it is better to take ,noa ,noa altogether as a series of fictitious adventures1 designed to bring out the fact that ,gauguin became1 despite himself1 as nearly one with the natives as it is possible for any ,european to be4 ,thus we see1 bit by bit1 the ,tahitians claiming him as one of their own1 from the day that he is forced by necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused1 to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even their easy tolerance of marital infidelity4 ,if we look at the story in this light1 it becomes an allegory easily readable1 an allegory of civilization going down before primitive nature1 expressed in a series of parables4 ,unfortunately1 ,gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood1 and he asked ,charles ,morice to collaborate4 ,morice thereupon wrote a series of highly florid descriptions and poems1 inspired by ,gauguin's pictures1 in a style strongly tinged with the influence of ,stphane ,mallarm4 ,these poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of ,gauguin's recital4#a ,the result is that ,noa ,noa contains two books2 the first ,gauguin's1 the second1 ,morice's1 and the reader is liable to be confused unless he remembers that the sections by ,gauguin are all headed ,le ,conteur ,parle1 and that these sections form by themselves a continuous story4 ,morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded4 ,it is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions add anything to ,gauguin's recital4 ,some people may even prefer the glow of ,morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of ,gauguin's poetry4 ,gauguin himself philosophically remarked that he wished ,morice's work to stand beside his1 in order that people might observe the difference between a civilized decadent and a nave and brutal savage4 ,footnote #a3 ,they have been wisely omitted from the ,english translation4 ,,part ,v3 ,,the ,,fight ,,against ,,civilization #ahie-aijc ,i ,with ,gauguin's last return to ,tahiti there opened for him the final and most important phase of his life1 the last stand of the savage against encroaching civilization4 ,the letters that he sent to de ,monfreid during this period are painful reading4 ,they breathe the weary cry of a man who knows that ,fate's dice are loaded against him1 the complaint of a warrior who realizes that fighting is useless1 but who has no choice but to fight on4 ,for ,gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself4 ,the wound in his leg1 given him by the sailors1 had never properly healed2 under the climate of ,tahiti1 it reopened4 ,owing to the rash exposure of his skin to the effects of tropical light1 both legs were attacked by eczema4 ,night after night was spent in sleepless pain4 ,to add to his troubles1 his eyesight began to fail2 nature was taking her revenge on him1 was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives4 ,it seemed to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies4 ,before leaving ,france1 a number of friends had agreed to buy his pictures1 and assure him a steady income4 ,these now withdrew their support4 ,he had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of sculptured wood which he dreamed of2 the construction of the house carried away his remaining capital4 ,he was everywhere fleeced1 not only by the ,french colonists1 but also by the natives1 who were growing more and more corrupt every day1 thanks to the happy influence of civilization4 ,even after his house was built1 he was not allowed to keep it in peace4 ,the owner of the ground died1 leaving his affairs in a tangle2 ,gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the house1 or see it destroyed4 ,this last he refused to do1 so he was forced1 finally1 to borrow money1 a thing he had never done in his life before4 ,towards the end of #ahig1 his situation grew even worse4 ,his eyes1 now permanently inflamed1 were so painful that he could not even touch a brush4 ,the tragic portrait of himself in profile1 which he sent about this time to de ,monfreid1 clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight4 ,de ,monfreid had sent him colors1 but these were useless--he could not even exchange them for bread4 ,and to add to all he was in debt1 more and more heavily1 month after month4 ,de ,monfreid wrote him encouragingly1 tried to sell his pictures1 spoke of articles1 of a press campaign on his behalf4 ,the answer was--,i only desire silence1 silence and again silence4 ,let me die in peace1 forgotten1 or if ,i ought to live1 let me live in peace1 forgotten4444 ,what matter if ,i am the pupil of ,bernard or ,srusier8 ,if ,i have painted daubs1 why set out to gild them1 to deceive people as to their quality8 ,early in #ahih his resolution was taken4 ,weary1 exhausted1 at the end of his tether1 he decided to meet death half-way4 ,he finished a large picture1 a sort of strange allegory of despair1 entitled ,d'o venons nous8 ,que sommes nous8 ,o allons nous8 and then took arsenic4 ,the dose was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea1 which recurred for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food4 ,meanwhile his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had taken him so much trouble to build4 ,in order to obtain food1 he shortly afterwards returned to ,papeete and1 at the age of fifty1 took up a position as a shipping clerk at the ,board of ,public ,works1 with a salary of six francs a day4 ,to such straits was he reduced1 and yet he continued the fight4 ,can one help admiring his tenacity8 ,meanwhile1 the devoted de ,monfreid had been busy4 ,he had enlisted the interest of ,degas1 of ,vollard and others1 and had succeeded in selling some of the artist's pictures4 ,gauguin might now have counted upon a steady income1 had he chosen to forget past injuries4 ,but with him1 there was to be no compromise4 ,because ,bernard1 ,srusier1 ,maurice ,denis had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some influence on his development1 he refused either to be ranked with them or to exhibit in their company4 ,of course he merely made himself more unpopular in ,paris by such conduct4 ,but ,gauguin's personality was of a kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people4 ,he admired genius where he found it1 in a few solitaries such as ,degas1 ,poe1 ,balzac1 and ,mallarm4 ,for ordinary society1 he preferred either natives or children4 ,nevertheless his pictures were sold and1 by de ,monfreid's efforts1 he found himself out of debt in #ahii and able to return to his house1 now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay4 ,things seemed to improve a little1 though he was now permanently crippled by the disease of his legs4 ,he set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower seeds which de ,monfreid had sent1 at his request1 from ,france4 ,ill1 ruined in health and physique1 a victim to drugs1 he went onward to his goal4 ,illustration3 ,matamua 7,olden ,days74 ,,ii ,it is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in ,gauguin's career1 unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical ailments1 from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from the terrible crisis of the previous year1 that he was afflicted for the time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania4 ,he had been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown power was now pursuing him with its hatred4 ,in his next stage1 we find him turning even against the natives4 ,on his return to ,tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged thirteen-and-a-half for wife1 companion and model4 ,she had served him devotedly1 had procured him food when he was unable to walk1 had nursed him in his illness4 ,after his return to the house from ,papeete1 she had resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child4 ,now1 for some reason or no reason1 ,gauguin suddenly took it into his head that she had robbed him1 and drove her out4 ,the poor soul1 however1 returned and1 as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple1 he attempted to call in the law to enforce her removal1 claiming that her return was a violation of his domicile4 ,of course1 the law did nothing4 ,this only further enraged ,gauguin4 ,he decided to attack the entire colonial administration4 ,since his return1 he had been everywhere treated by the ,europeans at ,tahiti as a madman or fool4 ,now he would get his revenge4 ,with the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several numbers of a paper called1 first ,les ,gupes1 and later ,le ,sourire4 ,the contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff that ,gauguin ever wrote4 ,but these crude gibes at the governor and at the colonial administrations generally1 together with the equally crude caricatures that ,gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony1 seem to have produced a stir4 ,people began to fear him at last2 it was1 for a moment1 a triumph4 ,but ,tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him4 ,a railway had been built into the interior2 the ,protestant missionaries grew every day more powerful2 disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the natives4 ,gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to de ,monfreid for medicines4 ,but shortly he found his own need of medicine as great as that of any of the wretched natives4 ,an epidemic of influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the hospital1 where he had to pay twelve francs a day4 ,to add to his griefs1 the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an impossible figure4 ,hearing that life in the ,marquesas ,islands was cheaper1 that the natives there were physically more unspoilt1 also that ,europeans were few and far between1 he decided to quit ,tahiti and install himself in the island of ,hiva-,hoa or ,dominica4 ,he hoped to find there elements of a purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength4 ,this hope was destined to be realized only in part4 ,gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots1 ,martinique1 ,brittany and ,tahiti4 ,he might have done better work at other places1 had he had the time1 the opportunity or the strength4 ,in the case of his removal to the ,marquesas it was the strength that was lacking4 ,traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his eyes are to be found even in his latest ,tahitian pictures4 ,owing to his habit of dating his pictures1 we can follow the failure of his power4 ,the first things that he painted after his return are1 on the whole1 superior to the productions of #ahia-ic4 ,the ,te ,arii ,vahine or ,reclining ,woman1 of #ahif is finer in design even than the ,l',esprit ,veille of #ahib-c4 ,the ,youth ,between ,two ,girls1 ,la ,case 7#ahig71 the beautiful ,nav ,nav ,mahana 7,delightful ,days7 of #ahif1 with its feeling of a terrestrial paradise--these are masterpieces of their kind4 ,but the portrait of himself 7#ahig7 already shows signs of inability to finish and remains a sketch1 albeit a powerful one4 ,and with many of the succeeding works there came a greater impatience1 a greater carelessness1 a more hectic and feverish lack of control4 ,the more savage ,gauguin's work grew1 the less became his strength to produce it4 ,one is reminded of a similar case to his1 that of the ,irish dramatist1 ,synge4 ,the ,gauguin who sought solitude of far-off ,hiva-,hoa was not the ,gauguin of ten years before4 ,he was an extinct volcano1 a burned-out crater4 ,and he was destined to find only death in this last solitude4 ,nevertheless1 before death came1 his art attained its final summit of expression4 ,pictures like the ,jeune ,fille l',eventail 7#aijb7 or the magnificent ,contes ,barbares 7also #aijb7 in which the ,marquesas type appears1 are the last word of ,gauguin's gospel of beauty1 the revelation of a new heaven and earth4 ,the flame burned clear in him just before the close--then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness4 ,,iii ,the ,marquesas ,islands are small and1 in contrast to the coral and basaltic formation of ,tahiti1 of volcanic origin4 ,they lie about a thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more humid and less supportable to white men4 ,owing to this fact1 and to the fact that they are out of the track of steamers between ,san ,francisco and ,sydney1 they have preserved more of their unspoilt character4 ,the natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any ,polynesian peoples4 ,in distinction to the ,tahitians1 who are either red or olive brown1 their skin is largely of a clear golden color4 ,in this they resemble the ,maories of ,new ,zealand1 as in the practice of face-tattooing common among the males4 ,they were formerly great fighters and ferocious cannibals1 as ,herman ,melville's ,omoo tells us4 ,the first white settlers amongst them were ,french ,roman ,catholic missionaries who1 by buying up most of the valuable land1 by discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial abuses1 have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well4 ,the ,marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is ,tahiti4 ,it was on the chief island of this group that ,gauguin installed himself4 ,his capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start constructing another house4 ,this1 like his house in ,tahiti1 was ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings4 ,in the garden1 stood a rude clay statue--a sort of combination of a ,buddha and a ,maori idol--under a canopy4 ,gauguin called this statue ,te ,atua--the ,god1 and was reported to say his prayers to it every day4 ,on the base of the statue were engraved these words1 taken from ,morice's verses in ,noa ,noa3 ,the ,gods are dead and ,tahiti dies of their death1 ,the sun1 which once lit the isles with flame1 now sleeps1 ,a sorrowful sleep1 with brief dream wakenings3 ,now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of ,eve1 ,who pensively smiles1 gazing upon her breast1 ,sterile gold1 sealed by some divine design4 ,altogether in the ,marquesas1 ,gauguin found a great charm and repose4 ,he seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king4 ,but his health was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one ,chinese boy1 he lived alone4 ,he even dreamed of abandoning the ,marquesas 7not because he was weary of the place1 but because he knew his strength was small7 and seeking a more favorable climate in ,spain1 where he thought he might be able to paint4 ,except for the constant trouble with his health1 his only difficulty was with the missionaries4 ,with the exception of a few settlers1 they were the only whites on the islands4 ,gauguin had advanced in savagery to such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people4 ,he refused to see that the ,catholic ,missionaries had at least attempted to save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the ,protestant ,missionaries in ,tahiti4 ,the insistence of the ,catholics upon monogamy1 upon ,european dress1 upon mission schools and religious observances infuriated him4 ,he made a statue of a nude woman and set it up in his garden4 ,the ,bishop protested4 ,gauguin promptly made a caricature in clay of the bishop1 with horns on his head like the ,devil1 and set it up facing the statue4 ,something of the old ,gothic love of the grotesque1 something1 too1 of the typically ,parisian desire to pater de bourgeois remained in him to the last4 ,but this was not all4 ,gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in peace4 ,although de ,monfreid had worked devotedly1 his position in ,france was still insecure2 ,vollard might at any moment refuse to take more pictures to sell4 ,the wound he had received by his failure to impress ,paris in #ahic still smarted4 ,he determined to write two articles containing his opinions on art1 technique1 painting1 life and morality1 in order to confound the ,parisian critics4 ,these articles1 entitled ,anecdotes of an ,apprentice and ,before and ,after1 are little more than a series of feverishly jotted notes4 ,later1 with other notes of a similar nature1 they were embodied in a large album entitled ,avant et ,aprs1 which remains the fullest body of information about ,gauguin's life and art we possess4 ,the ,mercure de ,france judged1 perhaps rightly1 that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print them4 ,the other old score that he had to wipe out was with the ,french colonial administration4 ,in ,tahiti1 he had fought the governor1 the law courts1 and the gendarmes4 ,here it was the customs officials who roused his wrath4 ,two ,american ships had recently visited the island and a certain amount of goods had been sold to the natives1 through the connivance of the gendarmes1 without paying tax4 ,gauguin immediately wrote a letter on the subject to the ,administration1 stating the facts as he understood them and protesting1 on behalf of the natives1 against the bribery and corruption of the ,customs in this instance4 ,the only reply made was a notice from the law courts that the ,administration intended to take steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement4 ,gauguin appeared in court1 where he was promptly condemned to prison for three months and to a fine of a thousand francs4 ,it was ruin1 but ,gauguin determined to appeal4 ,the tribunal was irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part1 at least1 true4 ,he was sure of winning his case1 but an appeal necessitated a return to ,tahiti and the costs of an attorney1 and his capital was again running low4 ,he wrote to de ,montfreid1 begging him to find a buyer for three pictures1 at the price of fifteen hundred francs2 he sent off ten more pictures to ,vollard4 ,then he prepared to make his appeal4 ,death surprised him suddenly and ,paul ,gauguin's appeal will never be heard in this world4 ,a letter from the only white man1 the ,protestant minister ,vernier1 who knew him1 leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of ,gauguin's death4 ,it was not the eczema of the legs1 nor leprosy1 as some have hinted1 nor another dose of arsenic1 nor syphilis1 that ended his life2 it was a simple syncope of the heart4 ,his energy1 with which he had kept up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had drawn so many beautiful pictures1 was worn out4 ,the machine slackened and stopped4 ,paul ,gauguin died on the #fth of ,may1 #aijc4 ,a few days before his death he had written his last letter to ,charles ,morice1 the words of which stir one like a trumpet4 ,i am on the ground but ,i am not beaten4 ,the ,indian1 who smiles while he is being tortured1 is not conquered4 ,you are mistaken if you meant that ,i am wrong in calling myself a savage4 ,i am a savage1 and the civilized feel this1 for there is nothing in my work which could produce bewilderment save this savage strain in me1 for which ,i am not myself responsible4 ,it is therefore inimitable4 ,every human work is a revelation of the individual4 ,hence there are two kinds of beauty2 one comes from instinct1 the other from labor4 ,the union of the two1 with the modifications resulting therefrom1 produces great and very complicated richness4 ,art-criticism has yet to discover the fact4444 ,raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in him4 ,raphael was born with beauty4 ,all the rest in him is modification4 ,physics1 chemistry1 and above all the study of ,nature1 have produced an epoch of confusion in art1 and it may be truly said that artists robbed of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of the productive element they no longer possess4 ,they now act only in disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone4 ,solitude is not to be recommended to every one1 for a man must have strength to bear it and to act alone4 ,all ,i have learnt from others has been an impediment to me4 ,it is true ,i know little1 but what ,i do know is my own4 ,yet civilization1 after all1 had the last word4 ,the very bishop1 whom ,gauguin in life had hated and caricatured1 intervened when he lay cold and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full ,catholic rites in the cemetery of the ,church at ,atuana4 ,and1 by a concluding stroke of irony1 the grave was left unmarked4 ,thus one of the greatest painters of the later nineteenth century1 and one of the bravest men the world has ever seen1 mingled his dust with that of the humblest natives1 in the same way as ,blake1 one of the greatest painters of the early nineteenth century1 had been buried before him in an unmarked grave among the paupers1 at ,bunhill ,fields4 ,,iv ,the immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth century took place so rapidly and universally1 that no one was able to estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects4 ,at the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded ,europe and ,america was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man1 born in the fires of the ,french ,revolution4 ,after #ahdh this idea gradually vanished1 and another took its place2 the purely material idea of progress4 ,the perfected application of steam and the consequent development of machinery2 the immense tapping of the world's resources of coal1 metals1 agricultural products2 the equally immense1 universal exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to their maximum2 the creation of an international finance1 resting upon vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few1 whose world-wide interests were linked together by railways1 steamship lines1 telegraphs1 telephones2 the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist class1 invisibly controlling the old1 decayed aristocracy1 the official church1 the machinery of the law2 a larger middle class1 dependent upon and subservient to the capitalists2 and an immense laboring class1 exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes3 all these were virtually the creation of a single century4 ,against this overwhelming flood of change1 a few exceptionally gifted men vaguely protested1 affirming the greater value of human life over mechanical invention2 maintaining the antique dignity of man4 ,their protest was incoherent1 individualistic4 ,these men were like broken and scattered fragments of dykes1 still unsubmerged and striving to hold back the waters of a flood4 ,among them must be ranked the artist whose life-story ,i have written4 ,all that is vital and valuable in ,french painting of the nineteenth century1 since ,ingres1 springs directly from the enthusiasm and spiritual energy of the ,french ,revolution4 ,the somber fury of ,delacroix1 the colossal caricature of ,daumier2 the peasant art of ,millet2 the sane realism of ,courbet2 the mordant irony of ,degas and ,forain2 even the feeling for nature and the open air which the ,impressionists gave us1 all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for personal freedom1 for human liberty and development4 ,when ,gauguin arrived on the scene1 the reaction was already taking place4 ,the official1 academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock of outworn formulas4 ,on the other hand1 the ,impressionists were striving to render nature scientifically1 unemotionally4 ,nature was becoming to them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical formulas for soil1 air1 sunlight4 ,only ,puvis de ,chavannes remained1 aloof and misunderstood1 painting great decorations that seemed but the remembrance of some golden age of the past1 and easel pictures of a profound1 hopeless pessimism4 ,gauguin began to paint1 and the protest against science1 against materialism1 against unemotional vision began4 ,at the outset he attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the ,impressionists4 ,but1 by the purest instinct he discovered1 as ,czanne had already discovered1 that the sensation of light could not be painted1 could only be rendered in color4 ,and he also discovered 7this time the discovery came from ,puvis de ,chavannes7 that the sensation of form could not be painted either--that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by nature1 the artist must select those most significant to him and that even these must be transposed1 altered1 accentuated or suppressed to suit the harmony of the composition4 ,thus unconsciously1 almost without volition on his part1 he was led to understand that the ,primitives everywhere were the truly great artists1 since they expressed great human emotions about man and nature1 without troubling whether their vision was or was not exact4 ,and so he fought1 bitterly1 savagely1 for the actual restoration of primitive art and life2 for the cause of natural humanity against the cause of mechanical1 dehumanized efficiency4 ,unless we realize this fact1 we have not grasped the key1 either to his art or to his life4 ,gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only a fragmentary indication1 an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished world4 ,and he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and disorder of his own life1 but have despaired of ever attaining to harmony with himself4 ,at least the caricature of himself in ,contes ,barbares is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled child that some imagine him to be4 ,having both the world and himself to struggle against1 he at least determined that his pictorial work should represent the best part of his personality1 even if his life proved only to be1 as he said in his last letter to de ,montfreid1 a downfall followed by an attempt to rise1 followed by another downfall4 ,and so in his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by ,van ,gogh after the disaster that parted them3 ,gauguin made one feel that a good picture should be the equivalent of a good action4 ,and indeed it is so4 ,every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound moral responsibility4 ,this responsibility is not1 as supposed1 the duty of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of ,christian ethics1 by which we are ruled4 ,it is not the duty of upholding a system of negations1 of prohibitions1 of compromises1 striking at the very roots of life4 ,it is a far nobler1 far more difficult task4 ,the duty of the artist is to affirm the dignity of life1 the value of humanity1 despite the morbid prejudices of ,puritanism1 the timid conventionality of the mob1 despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of suffering1 decay and death4 ,this duty ,gauguin in his art strove to accomplish4 ,he affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's labor1 the earth4 ,czanne1 perhaps a more accomplished painter1 endowed perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great painters of the past1 shrank from making ,gauguin's affirmation4 ,he accepted in his own life a compromise2 in his art he ruthlessly eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination4 ,and then1 towards the end of his life1 ,czanne complained that ,gauguin had vulgarized him4 ,gauguin has not understood me2 never will ,i accept the lack of gradation and of tone2 it's nonsense4 ,it would have been better for ,czanne to have said that he could not1 dared not understand ,gauguin4 ,nor is this all that ,gauguin accomplished4 ,he restored painting to its proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts4 ,he showed us that its place is between architecture and music1 and that sculpture is its twin sister4 ,he was the first man to suspect that the progress of the scientific spirit among the ,greeks had produced the same effects in disassociating and destroying the arts1 as has the progress of the scientific spirit in the present day4 ,he believed1 and constantly affirmed1 that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies1 as well as upon the chosen architectural proportions of form1 which1 whether given by perspective or not1 seemed to him necessary4 ,thus he reconciled the ,venetians and the ,primitives1 and showed that the goal of both form and color is decoration4 ,william ,blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan1 who painted his dream of a golden age in his own way1 who steadfastly strove to grasp the essential truth in every tradition3 ,egyptian1 ,cambodian1 ,persian1 ,chinese1 ,gothic1 ,greek and ,renaissance4 ,but ,gauguin could never1 had he known of ,blake1 have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic negation1 the contemptuous denial of earthliness1 of the delusions of the goddess ,nature4 ,in ,gauguin1 the spirit never conquered the flesh1 and he remained to the end1 a man4 ,blake was possibly the greater visionary3 ,gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build4 ,v ,after ,gauguin's death1 his art rapidly became almost forgotten in ,france4 ,he remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were not fifty of his pictures in that country4 ,even the few there are1 hang in scattered private collections1 each containing one or at most three or four4 ,the great bulk of his work is in ,germany1 ,scandinavia and ,russia4 ,it proved impossible even in #aiaa to raise sufficient money to buy ,l',esprit ,veille for the ,louvre4 ,it is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able to assemble a considerable quantity of his work4 ,gauguin was1 above all things1 a decorator1 and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater effect than one4 ,one does not judge ,puvis de ,chavannes1 another decorator1 solely by his easel pictures1 but by the great decorative schemes in ,paris1 at ,amiens and in ,boston4 ,this remark applies equally to other decorators1 such as ,raphael1 ,michelangelo1 ,tintoretto and ,veronese4 ,a room hung with twenty ,gauguins would produce an immense effect of monumental power4 ,that such a room exists in ,moscow can be small consolation to ,western ,europeans at present4 ,his pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively1 like ,srusier1 or drifted off into academicism1 like ,bernard1 or watered down their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume decoration of ,maurice ,denis4 ,none of them seized ,gauguin's secret of remaining simple1 direct and savage4 ,aristide ,maillol is an honorable exception4 ,a sculptor and tapestry designer1 he was able to work upon the indications that ,gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches and to show us1 in part at least1 how they might be realized4 ,the main stream of ,french art simply ignored ,gauguin4 ,instead of making with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition1 it went forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting4 ,the ,neo-,impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were followed by disciples of ,czanne1 who sought to reduce all forms to certain geometrical primaries1 basing their doctrine on certain words which the master of ,aix had let fall concerning the simplification of form4 ,out of these emerged ,matisse1 whose art became1 through a more and more ruthless elimination of modeling1 through a more and more arbitrary placing of colors1 an abstraction1 an utterly unemotional series of hieroglyphs4 ,then ,picasso came upon the scene1 eliminated color altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form4 ,the ,cubists followed ,picasso4 ,the ,futurists in their turn started another kind of abstract painting1 the painting of mechanical energy1 the dynamism latent in form4 ,the ,expressionists1 meanwhile1 held to ,van ,gogh's and ,gauguin's idea that the picture must represent some emotion1 but they denied ,gauguin's corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose this emotion into its pictorial equivalent4 ,consequently they eliminated form and strove to paint abstract emotion4 ,finally1 the ,vorticists combined ,futurism and ,expressionism into a single whole and painted the abstraction of an abstraction--the emotion of dynamic energy1 thus declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself1 an art utterly innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever4 ,the motives of all these confused art movements1 perplexing and apparently in-congruous1 were identical4 ,they were all actuated by a mania for scientific discovery1 a desire to analyze phenomena until the reality behind phenomena could be found4 ,the physicists1 chemists1 philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real world--that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and electrons1 of radiant or non-radiant energy1 or perhaps of elasticity and inelasticity4 ,these young art revolutionaries1 who gave themselves so many queer labels1 were not1 as many supposed1 either insincere or insane4 ,they were merely smitten with the desire to make painting--and not only painting1 but even other arts as well--a branch of abstract science4 ,the world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion1 making some abstract concept4 ,therefore they strove to paint1 not what seemed to them unreal1 but their absolute conceptions4 ,this new metaphysic1 this new attempt at absolute realism1 this final development of scholastic art-dogma1 as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the rules for painting religious ikons1 evolved and practiced for centuries by the ,byzantine monks of ,mount ,athos1 was rapidly conquering the whole field of aft when the past war broke out4 ,nor has the war altogether suppressed its manifestations4 ,the enormous destruction of human life1 of nature1 of art1 in the past war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results achieved by either side4 ,however true it may be to hold the ,germans as primarily responsible for this destruction1 in the first instance1 yet it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape responsibility for the later developments of the struggle4 ,apart from ,germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war1 civilization as a whole must answer for the horror of its method4 ,a piece of heavy artillery is equally destructive1 whether it be cast at ,essen or at ,le ,creusot2 a ,caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a ,gotha2 the submarine was first employed in war by the ,americans2 the machine gun is an ,english invention4 ,for all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth century1 with our belief in purely material progress1 stand guilty to-day2 and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come4 ,the past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an inhuman1 scientific1 organized machine4 ,and the machine was victorious4 ,just as the scientific spirit1 conquering art before the war1 led to the extravagances of ,cubism and ,vorticism so1 since the war1 it has attacked life itself2 and made of national existence1 no longer a problem of human bravery1 resource and intelligence1 but merely a problem of relative man-power and munitions4 ,we have learned to speak of man-power as our books on physics speak of horse-power4 ,the task we1 in the war1 set ourselves was a grisly paradox2 we proposed to save civilization1 to undo a great wrong1 by destroying the very basis of human life on which all civilization stands4 ,it is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a few artists who1 in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1 foresaw that material progress would end in annihilating humanity1 that nature and humanity1 hand in hand1 are more sacred than all the shells that could ever be produced1 the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws that could ever be written4 ,with a sense of spiritual release we revert to those who dreamed of the great return to nature--to ,rousseau1 ,whitman1 ,gauguin1 as well as to others who1 although perhaps lesser men than they1 followed in their path--,david ,thoreau1 ,richard ,jefferies4 ,they were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail--the gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above sthetic negation4 ,their vision was of something not in themselves but of something higher and nobler1 as ,gauguin knew when he deliberately caricatured himself in ,contes ,barbares4 ,as he knew also1 the vision was of something stated only fragmentarily1 inscribed as a promise1 a foretaste1 an indication of what might be4 ,in ,rousseau's prose1 in ,whitman's poetry and in ,gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope for self-tortured humanity1 and the promise of a land where nature and man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding4 ,,bibliography ,,of ,,works ,,consulted ,,works ,,of ,,biography3 #a4 ,paul ,gauguin par ,jean de ,rotonchamp1 ,imprim ,weimar par les ,soins du ,comte de ,kessler et se ,trouve ,paris1 chez ,edouard ,druet1 ,rue de ,faubourg ,saint ,honor1 ,no4 #aad4 #aijf4 ,edition limited to #bej copies4 #b4 ,gauguin1 by ,charles ,morice4 ,floury1 ,paris1 #aiai4 ,this and the preceding work are the standard sources of ,gauguin's life4 #c4 ,lettres de ,paul ,gauguin ,charles ,daniel de ,monfreid4 ,paris1 ,cres1 #aiai4 #d4 ,white ,shadows in the ,south ,seas1 by ,frederick ,o',brien4 ,new ,york1 ,the ,century ,co41 #aibj4 ,a travel book1 with a few new sidelights on ,gauguin's final period4 #e4 ,avant et ,aprs4 ,paul ,gauguin aux ,marquises4 #aijc4 #ajj copies only published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript4 ,a translation into ,german has also appeared4 ,kurt ,wolf ,verlag1 ,berlin1 #aibj4 ,,works ,,of ,,art ,,criticism ,,in ,,english3 #a4 ,modern ,painting1 by ,willard ,huntingdon ,wright4 ,new ,york1 ,the ,john ,lane ,company4