拍品專文
It was in Pont-Aven in 1888 that Gauguin finally broke free from earlier traditions and emerged as an immensely important modern master. He left Paris for Pont-Aven, the small village in Brittany beloved of artists, in late February 1888. He had painted there in 1886, and was anxious to return, certain that another campaign would be crucial for his evolution. Shortly before leaving, he wrote his wife, Mette:
On the point of being launched, I must make a supreme effort for my painting, and in Brittany at Pont-Aven, I am going to paint for six months. From the village on 29 February 1888, he wrote to Vincent van Gogh, "I have come to Brittany (always in a rage for painting)... I think that I shall bring back some good canvases" (quoted in B. Denvir, ed., Paul Gauguin, The Search for Paradise, London, 1992, p. 40). At the same time, he wrote to Emile Schuffenecker:
I let myself live in the mute contemplation of nature which provides me the whole of my art. Apart from this, there is no salvation... I love Brittany. I find here the savage and the primitive. When my boots clang on this granite earth, I hear the dull, muffled tone, flat and powerful, that I try to achieve in painting. (Quoted in ibid., p. 38)
Years later, his son was to explain that the artist went there "in the hope that the simplicity of the scenery and the primitive nature of the people would answer the intentions of his art...to exploit to the full that simplification in his painting which he aimed at in agreement with his feeling for nature" (P. Gauguin, My Father Paul Gauguin, New York, 1937, p. 101).
The central development for the artist at Pont-Aven was that he devised a personal method to work from nature, but in a non-mimetic and self-expressive manner. At the end of July, about a month after he made the present work, he wrote to van Gogh:
I agree with what you say about the small importance of accuracy in art. Art is an abstraction which unfortunately means one becomes less understood... in my most recent studies I have surpassed what I did before. Naturally, the band of boors who are here think that I am completely mad, which I find most gratifying, for it proves to me that I am not... I seem to have need for struggle, to hammer things out with blows like a mason. After all the experiments I intend to make here, I believe that I have the power to progress easily in the future. (Quoted in ibid., p. 44).
That summer, in much the same vein, he wrote to Schuffenecker:
A word of advice. Don't copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction; derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation which will result. This is the only way of mounting toward God--doing as the Divine Master does, create (quoted in R. Goldwater, Paul Gauguin, New York, 1957, p. 80).
At the end of summer he wrote Schuffenecker:
How prosaic they are, those naturalist painters, with their trompe-l'oeil rendering of nature. We alone sail on, on our phantom vessels, with all our fanciful imperfection... This enemy, the beast in me, will be sated when I have dinner, but my thirst for art will never be quenched. (quoted in B. Thomson, Gauguin by Himself, Boston, 1993, p. 90)
And at the same time, he told van Gogh:
Yes, you are right to want painting to have a coloring evocative of poetic ideas... I find everything poetic, and it is in the deepest recesses of my heart, that are sometimes mysterious, that I glimpse poetry. Forms and colors brought into harmony produce poetry by themselves (quoted in ibid., p. 90).
In Les dindons Gauguin brings form and color into harmony, producing a kind of proto-Synmbolist poetry, prophetic of the future direction of his work. The palette is new and idiosyncratic--lilac trees and architecture, rich apple-green grass, carnation pink rocks and roof tops. Gauguin has taken the standard Impressionist color scheme of the 1880s (with its reliance on purples and greens), and made it bolder, more eccentric and daring. The freedom that would charcaterize his palette for the remainder of his career is here evident for nearly the first time. The painting technique is also rooted in Impressionist practice--indeed, Les dindons has been called "one of [his] last pictures that show impressionistic brushwork (exh. cat., Gauguin, Chicago, 1959, pp. 29-30)--but the brushwork is more fragmentary and likewise points to the future and independence. It is closer to Czanne than to Pissarro or Monet. Looking at Les dindons, one can see Post-Impressionism being born.
At the end of the summer, Gauguin moved to Arles and lived with van Gogh in the Yellow House. From there he wrote to Schuffenecker, "This year I sacrificed everything--execution, color--for style, wanting to force myself to do something other than what I know how to do" (quoted in M. Prather and C. Stuckey, Gauguin, A Retrospective, New York, 1987, pp. 85-86). Les dindons is one of the desperately bold and experiment pictures Gauguin used to set himself free and create a new style in art.
Fig. 1 La pension Gloanec a Pont-Aven au temps de Gauguin
Fig. 2 Paul Gauguin, Winter, Breton Boy Adjusting His Clog, with Village of Pont-Aven in the Background, 1888
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
Fig. 3 Paul Gauguin, Edge of the Pond, 1885
Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan
Fig. 4 Paul Gauguin, Young Breton Shepherd, 1888
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Fig. 5 Paul Gauguin, Vegetation tropicale, 1887
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
On the point of being launched, I must make a supreme effort for my painting, and in Brittany at Pont-Aven, I am going to paint for six months. From the village on 29 February 1888, he wrote to Vincent van Gogh, "I have come to Brittany (always in a rage for painting)... I think that I shall bring back some good canvases" (quoted in B. Denvir, ed., Paul Gauguin, The Search for Paradise, London, 1992, p. 40). At the same time, he wrote to Emile Schuffenecker:
I let myself live in the mute contemplation of nature which provides me the whole of my art. Apart from this, there is no salvation... I love Brittany. I find here the savage and the primitive. When my boots clang on this granite earth, I hear the dull, muffled tone, flat and powerful, that I try to achieve in painting. (Quoted in ibid., p. 38)
Years later, his son was to explain that the artist went there "in the hope that the simplicity of the scenery and the primitive nature of the people would answer the intentions of his art...to exploit to the full that simplification in his painting which he aimed at in agreement with his feeling for nature" (P. Gauguin, My Father Paul Gauguin, New York, 1937, p. 101).
The central development for the artist at Pont-Aven was that he devised a personal method to work from nature, but in a non-mimetic and self-expressive manner. At the end of July, about a month after he made the present work, he wrote to van Gogh:
I agree with what you say about the small importance of accuracy in art. Art is an abstraction which unfortunately means one becomes less understood... in my most recent studies I have surpassed what I did before. Naturally, the band of boors who are here think that I am completely mad, which I find most gratifying, for it proves to me that I am not... I seem to have need for struggle, to hammer things out with blows like a mason. After all the experiments I intend to make here, I believe that I have the power to progress easily in the future. (Quoted in ibid., p. 44).
That summer, in much the same vein, he wrote to Schuffenecker:
A word of advice. Don't copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction; derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation which will result. This is the only way of mounting toward God--doing as the Divine Master does, create (quoted in R. Goldwater, Paul Gauguin, New York, 1957, p. 80).
At the end of summer he wrote Schuffenecker:
How prosaic they are, those naturalist painters, with their trompe-l'oeil rendering of nature. We alone sail on, on our phantom vessels, with all our fanciful imperfection... This enemy, the beast in me, will be sated when I have dinner, but my thirst for art will never be quenched. (quoted in B. Thomson, Gauguin by Himself, Boston, 1993, p. 90)
And at the same time, he told van Gogh:
Yes, you are right to want painting to have a coloring evocative of poetic ideas... I find everything poetic, and it is in the deepest recesses of my heart, that are sometimes mysterious, that I glimpse poetry. Forms and colors brought into harmony produce poetry by themselves (quoted in ibid., p. 90).
In Les dindons Gauguin brings form and color into harmony, producing a kind of proto-Synmbolist poetry, prophetic of the future direction of his work. The palette is new and idiosyncratic--lilac trees and architecture, rich apple-green grass, carnation pink rocks and roof tops. Gauguin has taken the standard Impressionist color scheme of the 1880s (with its reliance on purples and greens), and made it bolder, more eccentric and daring. The freedom that would charcaterize his palette for the remainder of his career is here evident for nearly the first time. The painting technique is also rooted in Impressionist practice--indeed, Les dindons has been called "one of [his] last pictures that show impressionistic brushwork (exh. cat., Gauguin, Chicago, 1959, pp. 29-30)--but the brushwork is more fragmentary and likewise points to the future and independence. It is closer to Czanne than to Pissarro or Monet. Looking at Les dindons, one can see Post-Impressionism being born.
At the end of the summer, Gauguin moved to Arles and lived with van Gogh in the Yellow House. From there he wrote to Schuffenecker, "This year I sacrificed everything--execution, color--for style, wanting to force myself to do something other than what I know how to do" (quoted in M. Prather and C. Stuckey, Gauguin, A Retrospective, New York, 1987, pp. 85-86). Les dindons is one of the desperately bold and experiment pictures Gauguin used to set himself free and create a new style in art.
Fig. 1 La pension Gloanec a Pont-Aven au temps de Gauguin
Fig. 2 Paul Gauguin, Winter, Breton Boy Adjusting His Clog, with Village of Pont-Aven in the Background, 1888
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
Fig. 3 Paul Gauguin, Edge of the Pond, 1885
Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan
Fig. 4 Paul Gauguin, Young Breton Shepherd, 1888
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Fig. 5 Paul Gauguin, Vegetation tropicale, 1887
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh