Portraits of Meyer de Haan and Mimi

Details

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
Portraits of Meyer de Haan and Mimi
black crayon, brush and black wash on paper
6 3/8 x 7½ in. (16.2 x 19.1 cm.)
Executed in 1889

Provenance

Mme Marie Henry (later Mme Mothère), Le Pouldu.
Léa Mothère (nicknamed Mimi), by whom acquired from the above by descent; her sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 16 March 1959, lot 111.
Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London (no. 02257), by 1959.
Benjamin Sonnenberg, New York; his sale, Sotheby's, New York, 9 June 1979, lot 1424.
Acquired by the present owner in the early 1980's.

Literature

Mahonri Sharp Young, 'Letters from New York: Artists and Writers', in Apollo, vol. XCIII, no. 112, June 1971, p. 517.
Exh. cat., Gauguin's Nirvana, painters at Le Pouldu 1889-90, New Haven & London, 2001, no. 34b (illustrated p. 29).

Exhibited

London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., XIX and XX Century European Masters, 1959, p. 10, no. 24 (illustrated p. 23).
New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, Artists and Writers: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Portrait Drawings from the Collection of Benjamin Sonnenberg, May - July 1971, no. 26 (illustrated p. 29).

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

This work will be included in the forthcoming Paul Gauguin catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.

Gauguin made three trips to Brittany between 1886 and 1890. During his third trip, the longest and the most prolific - from April 1889 to November 1890 - Gauguin stayed at Le Pouldu, a few miles away from the touristy Pont-Aven, with his friend Mayer de Haan, depicted here at the right and easily recognisable with his skullcap. The two friends settled at Melle Marie Henry's Inn, who let the artists decorate the main room. She later had a child with Meyer de Haan, called Ida. In the present drawing, it is her other daughter Léa, nicknamed Mimi, whom Gauguin sketched in her Breton cap, at the left of the composition; this drawing comes from her collection.

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