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Paul GAUGUIN

Lettre autographe signée de Paul Gauguin : "je suis doué dit-il à en rendre les autres jaloux"

s.l. (Tahiti) août (1896), 20,5x27cm, quatre pages sur deux feuillets.

“Yes I have sarcasm in my words, yes I do not know how to flatter and bend my back, how to beg in official salons […] I am nothing but a braying schemer, but if I had submitted - yes I would be comfortable."

 

"I'm gifted, he says, to the point of making others jealous."

Autograph letter signed to George-Daniel de Monfreid from Tahiti
[Tahiti] août [1896] | 20,5 x 27 cm | 4 pages on 2 leaves
Autograph letter dated August 1896 and signed by Paul Gauguin to painter Daniel de Monfreid. Four pages in black ink on two lined leaves. Small tears to margins not affecting the text, traces of folds inherent to sending.

In the midst of his descent into hell, abandoned in his Tahitian artificial paradise, Gauguin feels cursed: “Definitely, I was born under a bad star,” he laments. His quest for primitive freedom leaves him in destitution and misery. Suffering agony, the painter sends paintings to one of his few supporters, his faithful friend Daniel de Monfreid – but writes the wrong address...
Published in Lettres de Paul Gauguin à George-Daniel de Monfreid, 1918, p. 146, n° XXIII; our letter reveals the name of Émile Schuffenecker, his friend and associate on the Paris stock exchange and then Pont-Aven – anonymized in the published version – whom Gauguin vilifies on numerous occasions in these pages.
This exceptional missive was written in Tahiti, where the painter had returned the previous year, bidding a final farewell to the old Europe. Gauguin had just come out from a stay in hospital in Papeete to treat his bruised legs following the beating he had received in Concarneau two years earlier for defending his muse, Annah the Javanese. The painter could not escape the aftermath of this altercation and suffered from a terrible purulent eczema on his leg, as well as syphilis, drowning his torments in alcohol. The letter is a perfect example of Gauguin's correspondence from the summer of 1896 which “smells of the fever that has seized a mind overheated by pain and lack of sleep” (David Haziot). In his confusion, the painter misspelt the address of Monfreid's studio at the Cité Fleurie, a famous chalet-like artists' residence where Gauguin had stayed: “I sent you         a bunch of paintings last month. I'm afraid for them because it seems to me that I put 55 Bd Arago instead of 65” This mailing included his composition Eihaha Ohipa, painted in his studio in Punaauia and now kept at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Shipped via a naval officer – fees to be paid by Monfreid – the paintings did not arrive until November. Beyond his feverish fears, Gauguin delivers in these lines a true manifesto of his integrity as an artist – the perfect counterpart to his famous Christlike self-portrait Near Golgotha, painted around the same period. To him, his destiny and generosity are nothing short of Christ-like: “in the most difficult moments of my life, I more than shared with unfortunate people and never had any reward other than complete abandonment”. He had in fact helped display Schuffenecker's paintings in Impressionist exhibitions, saved his friend Laval from suicide and opened his purse to so many others. Instead of returning the favor, Schuffenecker prefers to feel sorry for himself: “Schuff really wrote me a crazy and unfair letter and I don't know what to answer because he is a sick mind [...] he would be more unhappy than me who has glory, strength and health. Let's talk about it! I'm good at making others jealous, he says”. Gauguin, who had always refused to compromise, is finally betrayed by one of his closest relations, Schuffenecker, who becomes in the letter a true Judas Iscariot: “Schuff has just made a useless petition, I believe, for the State to come to my aid. This is the thing that can offend me the most. I'm asking friends to help me out for the time it takes to get back the money I'm owed, and their efforts to recover it, but begging the State was never my intention”. The painter reaches a point of no return, not only bruised in his flesh, but also in his self-esteem: “All my efforts to fight outside the official arena, the dignity I have strived for all my life, are now losing their character. From this day I am nothing but a braying schemer, but if I had submitted – yes I would be comfortable. Really, this is a sorrow that I didn't intend to have. Definitely, I was born under a bad star.” After this final abandonment, Gauguin gave free rein to his artistic and sensual frenzy in his Maison du Jouir in the Marquesas.

Suffering and penniless, a distressed Gauguin writes of his shattered pride – a Nabi Christ abandoning his cross, ready to fall into lust and the intoxication of the paintbrush.
 

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