Paul Gauguin Paintings

Paul Gauguin Biography

b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr.--d. May 8, 1903,
Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia

One of the leading French painters of the Postimpressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. After spending a short period with Vincent van Gogh in Arles (1888), Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for expressiveness through color.

From 1891 Paul Gauguin (Eugène-Henri-) lived and worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. Paintings of Gauguin include the early Vision After the Sermon (1888) and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-1898).
Although his main achievements were to lie elsewhere, Gauguin artist was, to use a fanciful metaphor, nursed in the bosom of Impressionism. His attitudes to Gauguin art were deeply influenced by his experience of its first exhibition, and the painter himself participated in those of 1880, 1881 and 1882. The son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole, whose mother had been a writer and a follower of Saint-Simon, Paul Gauguin was brought up in Lima, joined the merchant navy in 1865, and in 1872 began a successful career as a stockbroker in Paris.
In 1874 painter Gauguin saw the first Impressionist exhibition, which completely entranced him and confirmed his desire to become a painter. He spent some 17,000 francs on works by Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir and Guillaumin. Pissarro took a special interest in his attempts at painting, emphasizing that Paul Gauguin should `look for the nature that suits your temperament', and in 1876 had a Gauguin painting landscape in the style of Pissarro accepted at the Salon. In the meantime Pissarro had introduced him to Cézanne, for whose paintings Paul Gauguin conceived a great respect---so much so that the older man began to fear that he would steal his `sensations'. All three worked together for some time at Pontoise, where Pissarro and he drew pencil sketches of each other (Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre).

Analysis of Paintings of Gauguin

Portrait Gauguin - The Yellow Christ
The whole picture of the oil painting is supported by the figure and cross in the foreground. All the images are united in the bright and brief picture.
The cross in the Gauguin artwork of The Yellow Christ was depicted according to a dyed wood statue of the suffering Christ in nearby church. However, the painter sought an expression of emotion. To convey the “mysterious core of thought” is Gauguin’s target. Gauguin was not a peasant, but he used Gauguin Christ to convey the “simple and innocent characteristics brimming with a strong rural flavor and superstitic color” which he found in the people of Tahiti. Thus, he used simplified composition, rough outline and strong colors to form a visual impression on the simple and devout religious belief.

Gauguin painting - Spirit of the Dead Watching
Gauguin regarded this painting as one of his best works. Spirit of the Dead Watching is originated from life experience. The yellow sheet connects the purple background, orange human body and the blue bedspread. It makes people feel as if that to be tribal people as a disembodied spirits flickering. The nude in Gauguin women painting is realistic and symbolic, which makes the nude painting covered in a superstitic and horrible halo.

Gauguin art - Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
In February 1897, Gauguin finished his largest oil painting “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”. In his words, the meaning of this painting Tahiti Gauguin is far beyond that of previous paintings supplies, he can’t create a painting as valuable as this one any more.
Although “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” contains intermediate tones, the scene is entirely in stable blue and green. All of the nudes in bright orange are standing out from the scenery.