PAUL GAUGUIN

(1848-1903)

Paysage de Bretagne

Footnotes

This work will be included in the forthcoming Paul Gauguin Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.

Provenance
(Possibly) Galerie Schmit, Paris.
Marcel Heyndricx Collection (acquired in the 1930s-1940s).
Private collection, France (by descent from the above).

Previously unrecorded, this rare watercolour monotype is thought to date from Gauguin's intense spell of experimentation with the technique in 1894 and marks a significant moment of artistic development. Depicting the picturesque village of Pont-Aven in rural Brittany, the composition immediately recalls the artist's earlier works from his first visit to the area in the 1880s. Recently separated from his wife and having lost his lucrative financial career following the stock market crash, Gauguin chose to make the first of many visits to Brittany in the summer of 1886, drawn away from Paris not only by economic necessity but by the fascinating subject matter that the Breton people, their costumes and landscape offered. This physical distance from Paris offered Gauguin space to reject traditional academic artistic doctrine and the prevailing Impressionist style. Here his work evolved towards Cloisonnism in the manner of Émile Bernard, characterised by flat planes of vivid colour contained by bold outlines and a rejection of traditional perspective. Traces of these bold outlines remain in Paysage de Bretagne whereby the blue cernes of the monotype transfer separate areas of distinct colour. Green fields sit above one another while the winding path leads upwards rather than through the composition, emphasising the paper's two-dimensionality.

Driven by a quest to find a more unspoilt Eden, Gauguin's well-documented travels to Panama, Martinique and then Tahiti followed, voyages which resulted in many of his best-known works. However, the artist returned to Paris in August 1893 disillusioned and penniless. Adopting an increasingly eccentric public persona, he walked around Paris in Polynesian dress and had an affair with a young woman known as 'Annah the Javanese', though she was in fact half-Indian and half-Malay. Swiftly tiring of the city and seeking a return to the region which had been so fruitful in his earlier career, together they travelled to Brittany. It was an ill-fated trip that was to be Gauguin's final visit to the area. On 25 May in the port of Concarneau, near Pont-Aven, a group of local sailors threw stones at Annah and harassed her; the resulting brawl left Gauguin badly beaten and with a fractured leg. For months his only solace was in the pain-dulling morphine and alcohol he imbibed; he was unable to walk and unable to work. Having eventually grown tired of the crippled and irascible artist, Annah returned to Paris, whereupon she ransacked Gauguin's studio home of his valuables, leaving only his artworks. Gauguin remained in both Pont-Aven and the more remote Le Poldu, alone and debilitated. Unable to shake the influence of the South Seas however he created his first watercolour monotypes, many of which looked back to Tahitian subjects. The present work is one of the few that roots the artist back in his homeland.

Gauguin's decision to turn to printmaking was significant and indicative, according to Starr Figura, of a time of reflection for the artist, 'when he had recently completed a major body of paintings or sculptures or was otherwise at a crossroads. Printmaking often provided a crucial creative impetus when he had difficulty painting. [...] A major group of watercolor monotypes, a small body of watercolor and gouache monotypes from around 1896-1902, and a large body of oil transfer drawings from approximately 1899 to 1903 tended to serve as more informal, individual meditations on Gauguin's earlier themes' (S. Figura, Gauguin: Metamorphoses, exh. cat, New York, 2014, pp. 15-16).

The 1894 watercolour monotypes reimagined scenes from the South Seas alongside more domestic still lifes and Pont-Aven landscapes such as the present work. The series is known to consist of approximately 34 works but, as the discovery of Paysage de Bretagne demonstrates, more are surely to be found: 'Gauguin's concern with the monotype has been neglected, largely because the evidence has been scattered or lost' (R.S. Field, Paul Gauguin: Monotypes, exh. cat., Philadelphia, 1973, p. 12). Further to this, the very categorisation of a work as a watercolour or monotype can be problematic, not least due to Gauguin's continued experimentation with media. In Noa Noa, a travelogue consisting of the artist's notes on his Tahitian experience and illustrated with ten woodcuts, there is, according to Richard Field, at least one watercolour which was originally mistaken for a monotype because of its grainy, diffuse appearance – however, it was found to be formed of two sheets of paper, Gauguin laying the thinner sheet over a finished watercolour to subtly obscure the composition.

The precise technique employed by the artist for his 1894 series is not known, but various methods have been suggested. Gauguin held an exhibition in his studio in December that year which included several watercolour monotypes, which the critic Julien Leclercq described as 'a process of printing with water, [to which] he imparts to the watercolour the gravity, sumptuosity and depth which are for him, no matter what subject he chooses, the necessary condition of art' (Julien Leclercq quoted in ibid, p. 16).

Richard Field feels the most likely technique was a simple transfer of wet watercolour from one sheet of paper to another, but more recent research by Peter Kort Zeggers suggests that at least some of the monotypes were created by 'placing a piece of glass over one of his existing drawings or watercolors; painting on top of the glass in watercolor or gouache, using the image below as a guide; and finally, pulling an impression on dampened paper' (S. Figura, op. cit. p. 26). These tracing lines were usually blue, as in the present work, and to these Gauguin would add additional colour and details not present in the original drawing to the surface of the glass. Pressing a sheet of paper on top of the glass would result in an image transfer which was often heightened with varying degrees of ink, watercolour and gouache. Gauguin was known to use a mix of further substances such as wax, resin, oil and gum, all of which created accidental surface finishes. Indeed, Paysage de Bretagne has a historic application of gum Arabic or similar material to the sky, which heightens the mottled effect from the transfer process and casts an opaque veil over the shimmering surface. The watercolour monotype allows a fusion of printmaking and drawing, the artist's hand very much felt in the heightened deft flecks of red paint to the haystack and the rainbow cascade of brush marks in the thatched roof. The random textures left by the original sheet however mark a move away from Gauguin's disciplined cloisonné style of the late 1880s: '[The watercolour monotypes] exploit the conflict between the astructural, textured color and the more disciplined design of the flat cernes. [...They are the] most delightful evocations in Gauguin's oeuvre' (R.S. Field, op. cit., p. 40).

The fluidity of these watercolour monotypes has been read as a reaction to the artist's previous woodcuts which emphasised the decorative, with sharper lines. Gauguin had produced 10 large woodcuts to illustrate Noa Noa, which his friend Louis Roy printed in an edition of 30 from each block. Insensitively reproduced in heavy black, all fine details and subtle qualities were lost and the artist was disappointed with the results. His experience however in inking and transferring these woodcuts was formative in his progression to the monotype process.

'These novel experiments mark yet another occasion on which Gauguin relied on his own creativity to produce a new and distinctly ethereal aesthetic. The monotypes, in their evanescence and often small, fragmentary quality, convey his nostalgia for a lost, impermanent, or impenetrable world [...] When compared with related paintings, sculptures, and even woodcuts, they suggest ghostly afterimages, faded mementos, or beautiful scenes viewed through the watery veil of memory' (S. Figura, op. cit., p. 28). The shimmering imprint of Paysage de Bretagne can be read as Gauguin's memory of a place so formative to his evolution as an artist, seen through the nostalgic eyes of an artist continually seeking a romantic idyll.

A key discovery in confirming the authenticity and date of the current work was made when our paper conservator was asked to carefully remove the old backing board: Paysage de Bretagne was revealed to be executed on the reverse of a section of a colour lithograph by another artist, which Gauguin had cut up and repurposed. The lithograph was identified as the cover for L'Estampe Originale (issue 5) by Camille Martin, also from 1894. The present work is taken from the upper left corner of the print, and in doing so, presents us with a fascinating companion to at least two of Gauguin's other 1890s monotypes, also documented as being on sections of the same Camille Martin lithograph. The 1894 monotype, Couple de pêcheurs bretons dans un bateau, currently in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, depicts two Breton fisherwomen and was executed on a section of the lithograph that appears to align with the present work's upper left corner, verso, and further to this is the 1899 work Nature morte à la cruche et aux fruits, also executed on an unknown portion of the sheet. Another watercolour monotype from the 1894 series, Arearea no varua ino is known to be executed on the reverse of a colour lithograph by René-Georges Hermann-Paul, whose print was included in the sixth instalment of L'Estampe Originale. Gauguin's use of found materials is well documented: 'He reused the backs of prints and drawings and even cut carved woodblocks into multiple pieces to form new compositions or to use their un-carved sides. When paper was in short supply, he made use of the paper stock at the Public Works Department where he held a brief clerkship' (M.E. Broadway, H.K. Stratis & M.S. Walton, 'Cast in a new light: surface topographies of Paul Gauguin's transfer drawings', in Journal of the Institute of Conservation, Vol. 41, no. 3, 2018, p. 207).

The rich colours, characteristic brushwork, juxtaposition of translucent transfer and strong contour; together with the rarity of the technique and the context the reverse of the work allows us to place Paysage de Bretagne in, forms not only a fascinating insight into Gauguin's work in 1894 but a small piece of art history. Gauguin's watercolour monotypes can be found in global collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris and The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK, whilst MoMA dedicated a 2014 exhibition titled Gauguin: Metamorphoses to his prints and transfer drawings, which showcased these 'jewel-like watercolor monotypes' (S. Figura, op. cit., p. 15).