Unseen Gauguin to Be Auctioned

Reuters ^ | Thu, Jun 12, 2003

[presidio9]

A painting by Paul Gauguin, unseen in public for over half a century, will be the star at an auction in London later this month of Impressionist and Modern Art.

L'Apparition, a brooding study of a local magician and a nude, done the year before Gauguin died on the French Polynesian island of Hiva Oa in 1903 -- has been in private hands since it was last sold in 1944 in New York.

If it fetches its presale estimate of up to $15 million at the June 23 sale, it will become the second most expensive painting by the French artist to be sold at auction after Mata Mua went for $24 million in 1989.

"It has a rarity value because it has not been seen for so long and was painted in such an important part of his life," a spokeswoman for auction house Sotheby's said Wednesday.

The painting, one of the series of primitive-style works Gauguin executed during his two South Seas sojourns on Tahiti and Hiva Oa, is among 35 lots at the auction.

Sous Bois, a landscape by Paul Cezanne, an early mentor of Gauguin, is expected to fetch up to $6.6 million, while Le Pelerin by Rene Magritte is seen going for up to $5.8 million.

[presidio9]

Is someone would be so kind as to post the photo...

[Quix]

The painting doesn't look worth a High School student's lunch money to me--and probably quite doable by the same high school student.

Ahhhh but for the signature.

I C.

for whatever it's worth.

[presidio9]

You'd think that, but then Gauguin is something of an acquired taste. His use of color is extrodinary. He was a master of subtle compliments.

[Quix]

Good point.

And, now that you point it out--I realize that the colors in his works are mostly the source of the attraction, interest I've had in his works.

Thanks.

[presidio9]

The purple robe over the pink tunic is especially striking. Not saying that I'd pay $15mm for it, but it is a pretty painting. And Gauguin needs to be seen in person. The camera never does his work justice. It can't capture the color variations.

[Quix]

i c

i can believe that.

[eleni121]

A true genius. His remarkable depictions of the "natives" display the incredible natural beauty of the common person and his vision was to convey that beauty to the ages.

[Constitution Day]

Great post, thanks. I'm a Gauguin fan and I appreciate it.

[presidio9]

b. 1848, Paris; d. 1903, Marquesas Islands
Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, 1848, in Paris and lived in Lima, Peru, from 1851 to 1855. He served in the merchant marine from 1865 to 1871 and traveled in the tropics. Gauguin later worked as a stockbroker’s clerk in Paris but painted in his free time. He began working with Camille Pissarro in 1874 and showed in every Impressionist exhibition between 1879 and 1886. By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. He returned to Paris in 1885 to paint full-time, leaving his family in Denmark.

In 1885 Gauguin met Edgar Degas; the next year he met Charles Laval and Emile Bernard in Pont-Aven and Vincent van Gogh in Paris. With Laval he traveled to Panama and Martinique in 1887 in search of more exotic subject matter. Increasingly, Gauguin turned to primitive cultures for inspiration. In Brittany again in 1888 he met Paul Sérusier and renewed his acquaintance with Bernard. As self-designated Synthetists, they were welcomed in Paris by the Symbolist literary and artistic circle. Gauguin organized a group exhibition of their work at the Café Volpini, Paris, in 1889, in conjunction with the World’s Fair.

In 1891 Gauguin auctioned his paintings to raise money for a voyage to Tahiti, which he undertook that same year. Two years later illness forced him to return to Paris, where, with the critic Charles Morice, he began Noa Noa, a book about Tahiti. Gauguin was able to return to Tahiti in 1895. He unsuccessfully attempted suicide in January 1898, not long after completing his mural-sized painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? In 1899 he championed the cause of French settlers in Tahiti in a political journal, Les Guêpes, and founded his own periodical, Le Sourire. Gauguin’s other writings include Cahier pour Aline (1892), L’Espirit moderne et le catholicisme (1897 and 1902) and Avant et après (1902), all of which are autobiographical. In 1901 the artist moved to the Marquesas, where he died on May 8, 1903. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1906.

[Quix]

Thanks--many details I hadn't known.

Was there some noise about him being gay once upon a time?

[presidio9]

Was there some noise about him being gay once upon a time?

The buttsex crowd accuses everybody who can't defend themselves of being gay.

[Quix]

I didn't read much of whatever it was. Just seemed a surprise from what little I knew of him.

[two23]

I'm a Gauguin appreciator--thanks for the post.