Lot Essay
In 1877, assisted by Bouillot, Gauguin made what is considered his first sculpture -- a marble bust of Gauguin's wife, Mette. A few years later, he turned his attention to wood, the material that would characterize his sculpture for the rest of his career.
Gauguin was soon drawn to the less refined, more modern work of Degas and began to change his subject matter from formal portraiture to Parisian cabaret and street characters. La petite Parisienne makes reference to Degas and in particular to a charcoal and pastel drawing, Project for Portraits in a Frieze (fig. 1), which he would have known from the 1979 Impressionist exhibition. Christopher Gray describes another aspect of the work:
"Though the statuette has all the elegance of a Parisienne, which the artist intended to express, there is also another quality appearing that was to play an important part in Gauguin's later sculpture and ceramics. As a painter, Gauguin was developing a profound feeling for what he regarded as the essential materials of the painter's craft, color and line, which he tended to liberate from the too severe strictures of naturalistic representation in order to allow them to have an esthetic (sic.) expressiveness of their own. In the same manner, when Gauguin worked in wood and potter's clay, he expressed the craftsman's innate love and respect for the qualities of his material. In his work in wood he began to react esthetically to both the quality of the chisel cut and the fiberous (sic.) grain of the wood, allowing both to play their part in the expression of the figure (C. Gray, op. cit., p. 3).
Gauguin exhibited La petite Parisienne in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition, shown under the title Dame en promenade. The contemporary critic J.K. Huysmans described the work as "gothically modern". Ultimately Huysmans was one of the few critics sympathetic to the artist's breakthrough, who, like Degas and Seurat, perceived the innovative nature of this work. It is also noteworthy that the rigid pose of the present work influenced Seurat's upright figure drawings made the following year.
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Portraits in Frieze for Decoration of an Apartment, circa 1879.
Location Unknown.
(fig. 2) Camille Pissarro, Sketch of Gauguin carving, circa 1880-1883.
The National Gallery, Stockholm.
Gauguin was soon drawn to the less refined, more modern work of Degas and began to change his subject matter from formal portraiture to Parisian cabaret and street characters. La petite Parisienne makes reference to Degas and in particular to a charcoal and pastel drawing, Project for Portraits in a Frieze (fig. 1), which he would have known from the 1979 Impressionist exhibition. Christopher Gray describes another aspect of the work:
"Though the statuette has all the elegance of a Parisienne, which the artist intended to express, there is also another quality appearing that was to play an important part in Gauguin's later sculpture and ceramics. As a painter, Gauguin was developing a profound feeling for what he regarded as the essential materials of the painter's craft, color and line, which he tended to liberate from the too severe strictures of naturalistic representation in order to allow them to have an esthetic (sic.) expressiveness of their own. In the same manner, when Gauguin worked in wood and potter's clay, he expressed the craftsman's innate love and respect for the qualities of his material. In his work in wood he began to react esthetically to both the quality of the chisel cut and the fiberous (sic.) grain of the wood, allowing both to play their part in the expression of the figure (C. Gray, op. cit., p. 3).
Gauguin exhibited La petite Parisienne in the 1881 Impressionist exhibition, shown under the title Dame en promenade. The contemporary critic J.K. Huysmans described the work as "gothically modern". Ultimately Huysmans was one of the few critics sympathetic to the artist's breakthrough, who, like Degas and Seurat, perceived the innovative nature of this work. It is also noteworthy that the rigid pose of the present work influenced Seurat's upright figure drawings made the following year.
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Portraits in Frieze for Decoration of an Apartment, circa 1879.
Location Unknown.
(fig. 2) Camille Pissarro, Sketch of Gauguin carving, circa 1880-1883.
The National Gallery, Stockholm.