http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/charles-saatchis-great-masterpieces-sackcloth-syphilis-birth/
Detail of Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? by Paul Gauguin Credit: Hulton Fine Art Collection/Getty
Gauguin was disappointed on arriving in Tahiti, expecting an untouched, primal paradise. Instead, he found that a hundred years of Western influence had somewhat tarnished his idealised expectation of the island.
Until his thirties he had worked as a broker at the Paris Stock Exchange, having taken up painting simply as a hobby about 10 years earlier. Once in Tahiti, his paintings allowed him to create his fantasised version of the island, and one designed to intrigue Parisians.
“He’s not a seer, he’s a schemer,” Gauguin’s early mentor Pissarro said bitterly, on hearing of the warm response to the Tahitian pictures. He argued that Gauguin hadn’t lost his stockbroker’s instinct or lust for capitalist gain, knowing that his titillating visions of an exotic idyll would arouse and inspire the French art world.
Another of Gauguin’s jealous rivals referred to him as a “syphilitic paedophile” – he had several wives in Tahiti, whom he had married when they were just 13 or 14. A highly sexual man, he had probably been drawn to Tahiti not only by a yearning for a calmer, more primitive way of life, but also by the women, who were rumoured to be much freer with their affections than their prudish Western counterparts. His paintings certainly often portrayed the native women living their lives in hedonistic relaxation, sharing the pleasures of singing and lovemaking.
His most famous works feature the young beauties of the island, who are painted as gentle and unerotic – but in reality they were used as the artist’s sex slaves.
Until his thirties he had worked as a broker at the Paris Stock Exchange, having taken up painting simply as a hobby about 10 years earlier. Once in Tahiti, his paintings allowed him to create his fantasised version of the island, and one designed to intrigue Parisians.
“He’s not a seer, he’s a schemer,” Gauguin’s early mentor Pissarro said bitterly, on hearing of the warm response to the Tahitian pictures. He argued that Gauguin hadn’t lost his stockbroker’s instinct or lust for capitalist gain, knowing that his titillating visions of an exotic idyll would arouse and inspire the French art world.
Another of Gauguin’s jealous rivals referred to him as a “syphilitic paedophile” – he had several wives in Tahiti, whom he had married when they were just 13 or 14. A highly sexual man, he had probably been drawn to Tahiti not only by a yearning for a calmer, more primitive way of life, but also by the women, who were rumoured to be much freer with their affections than their prudish Western counterparts. His paintings certainly often portrayed the native women living their lives in hedonistic relaxation, sharing the pleasures of singing and lovemaking.
His most famous works feature the young beauties of the island, who are painted as gentle and unerotic – but in reality they were used as the artist’s sex slaves.
