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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming Paul Gauguin catalogue critique, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
Executed during the 1880s, Environs de Paris is a lush landscape that perfectly demonstrates Paul Gauguin’s intense love of nature, while reflecting the importance of two of his fellow artists on the development of his art: Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne. It was almost certainly through his guardian, Gustave Arosa, himself a great patron of the artists of his day, that Gauguin had met Pissarro, and for several years he painted in his company, both in studios and in the open landscape. This led to a fascination and great support on the part of Gauguin for the Impressionists; this enthusiasm was reflected both in his collecting works by the artists of the movement, especially Cézanne, and in his adoption of more and more of their techniques in his art.
In Environs de Paris, the attention paid to the varied vegetation and to the cabin appears to speak of the influence of Pissarro, yet the structured manner in which he has eked out a highly three-dimensional landscape with his angled brushstrokes, speaks of the influence of Cézanne, one of the great masters of the watercolour medium. This is especially evident in the trees, where the various surfaces and angles of the branches, have been rendered through a strategic construction of strokes that hint at the planar.
It was in part Gauguin’s love of nature, his desire to rediscover and return to a simple, honest, even ‘savage’ - in his own words - state, that caused him to seek out places far from the ravages of the industrial revolution. This would lead to his famous years in Pont-Aven, Brittany, as well as to his later more exotic travels to Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas. It is his love of nature also that has resulted in the rich texture of Environs de Paris, especially evident in the sumptuous foliage that is clumped together to the left. Regardless of whether he was in France or in more exotic climes, Gauguin’s love of and immersion in nature was of primary importance. He explained: ‘Wherever I go I need a certain period of incubation, so that I may learn every time the essence of the plants and trees, of all nature, in short, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself’ (P. Gauguin, Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals, trans. Van Wyck Books, New York, 1936, p. 31).
Executed during the 1880s, Environs de Paris is a lush landscape that perfectly demonstrates Paul Gauguin’s intense love of nature, while reflecting the importance of two of his fellow artists on the development of his art: Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne. It was almost certainly through his guardian, Gustave Arosa, himself a great patron of the artists of his day, that Gauguin had met Pissarro, and for several years he painted in his company, both in studios and in the open landscape. This led to a fascination and great support on the part of Gauguin for the Impressionists; this enthusiasm was reflected both in his collecting works by the artists of the movement, especially Cézanne, and in his adoption of more and more of their techniques in his art.
In Environs de Paris, the attention paid to the varied vegetation and to the cabin appears to speak of the influence of Pissarro, yet the structured manner in which he has eked out a highly three-dimensional landscape with his angled brushstrokes, speaks of the influence of Cézanne, one of the great masters of the watercolour medium. This is especially evident in the trees, where the various surfaces and angles of the branches, have been rendered through a strategic construction of strokes that hint at the planar.
It was in part Gauguin’s love of nature, his desire to rediscover and return to a simple, honest, even ‘savage’ - in his own words - state, that caused him to seek out places far from the ravages of the industrial revolution. This would lead to his famous years in Pont-Aven, Brittany, as well as to his later more exotic travels to Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas. It is his love of nature also that has resulted in the rich texture of Environs de Paris, especially evident in the sumptuous foliage that is clumped together to the left. Regardless of whether he was in France or in more exotic climes, Gauguin’s love of and immersion in nature was of primary importance. He explained: ‘Wherever I go I need a certain period of incubation, so that I may learn every time the essence of the plants and trees, of all nature, in short, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself’ (P. Gauguin, Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals, trans. Van Wyck Books, New York, 1936, p. 31).