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Lot Essay
Following the collapse of the stock market in 1882, Gauguin left the brokerage business in which he had previously made a comfortable living for himself and his growing family, and committed himself to becoming a painter. He believed that he could successfully apply his business acumen to the art market. However, over the course of the next couple of years, his fortunes ebbed and the needs of his family became an insurmountable burden. In the fall of 1883, Gauguin went to Rouen to visit Camille Pissarro, who was painting there. He returned to Paris with the idea that he might live in Rouen at considerably less expense than in the capital and at the same time escape the growing factionalism that had crippled the Impressionist movement. With the help of his Danish-born wife Mette, he hoped to cultivate a new clientele with progressive tastes among the sizable Scandinavian contingent living in Rouen. He moved his family there at the beginning of 1884, taking an apartment on the Impasse Malherne. Mette had recently given birth to their son Pola, their fifth child. On his birth certificate Gauguin for the first time listed his occupation as "painter."
Gauguin's dreams of success came to nothing, for there was little interest among the Rouen bourgeoisie for his paintings. Meanwhile, Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris returned all seven of his paintings that it had taken on consignment. Moreover, the situation in his home, with a wife and five children crowded into quarters smaller than they had in Paris, was not conducive to painting. Distressed by their increasingly straitened circumstances, Mette traveled to Copenhagen in July to seek business possibilities. While she was away Gauguin sold his life insurance policy to make ends meet. Mette returned from Copenhagen with an optimistic report, and persuaded Gauguin to relocate their family there. She brought the children to Denmark in October, and Gauguin followed a month later. He took a job as a traveling salesman for waterproof cloth, but within a year he abandoned his family and returned to Paris.
The landscapes that Gauguin painted in and around Rouen during this time display none of the stress of these difficult times, but instead show ample evidence of the painter's growing mastery of Impressionist techniques. Gauguin had met Paul Cézanne in Paris in 1880-1881, and later worked beside him at Pissarro's home in Pontoise, where Armand Guillaumin was also a frequent guest. Gauguin adopted their small brushstrokes, using colors straight from the tube and mixing them on the canvas, as seen in the present painting. The scene shows the eastern bank of the river port of Rouen, looking downstream, with the hills of Canteleu and Bois-l'Archevêque in the background. In the following years, the Rouen waterfront was extensively rebuilt, and the modern look of the city attracted Pissarro and other painters during the 1890s.
Gauguin's dreams of success came to nothing, for there was little interest among the Rouen bourgeoisie for his paintings. Meanwhile, Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris returned all seven of his paintings that it had taken on consignment. Moreover, the situation in his home, with a wife and five children crowded into quarters smaller than they had in Paris, was not conducive to painting. Distressed by their increasingly straitened circumstances, Mette traveled to Copenhagen in July to seek business possibilities. While she was away Gauguin sold his life insurance policy to make ends meet. Mette returned from Copenhagen with an optimistic report, and persuaded Gauguin to relocate their family there. She brought the children to Denmark in October, and Gauguin followed a month later. He took a job as a traveling salesman for waterproof cloth, but within a year he abandoned his family and returned to Paris.
The landscapes that Gauguin painted in and around Rouen during this time display none of the stress of these difficult times, but instead show ample evidence of the painter's growing mastery of Impressionist techniques. Gauguin had met Paul Cézanne in Paris in 1880-1881, and later worked beside him at Pissarro's home in Pontoise, where Armand Guillaumin was also a frequent guest. Gauguin adopted their small brushstrokes, using colors straight from the tube and mixing them on the canvas, as seen in the present painting. The scene shows the eastern bank of the river port of Rouen, looking downstream, with the hills of Canteleu and Bois-l'Archevêque in the background. In the following years, the Rouen waterfront was extensively rebuilt, and the modern look of the city attracted Pissarro and other painters during the 1890s.