Gauguin's
paintings bear witness to his search for a primitive, spiritual lifestyle. As
early as 1886 he had abandoned 'civilized' Paris for the Breton countryside,
and his quest continued in the remote South Sea Islands. In 1888, he painted
his first mature work, Vision after the Sermon, while living among the peasants
of Brittany. Like the Yellows Christ, it expressed his own feelings about
religion in a distinctive, non-realist manner, with bold colours and outlines.
On his
second visit, poverty and disease nearly broke his spirit and the great
allegory Where Do We Come From? was intended as a final meditation on life. But
Gauguin survived his subsequent attempt at suicide. Late paintings such as The
White Horse and Breasts and Red Flowers show a new-found lyrical harmony.
Writer
– Marshall Cavendish
Painting Gallery of Poul Gauguin-
In a
Breton churchyard, peasant women experience a vision of Jacob the father of
Israel wrestling with an angel. The Old Testament story may have been the
subject of a sermon delivered by the priest who appears on the right. Blending
symbol with reality, Gauguin frames the blood-red field of spiritual battle
with the women's white headdresses, and separates them from the vision with a
tree.
Gauguin
painted his magnificent of a Tahitian girl wearing Western-style clothes after
his arrival in the South Seas. Despite her grey dress, the girl is linked to
coloured backdrop by the flower which she holds. The Tahitian title appears as
part of the decorative scheme.
Two
statuesque women laze on a sanity Tahitian beach self-absorbed and silent in a
mood of timelessness and languor. The background is made up of bonds of flat
colour, which divide up the canvas vertically. This has the effect of pushing
the figures forward, emphasizing their monumental solidity.
Gauguin
mixes Tahitian with Egyptian imagery in the frieze-like painting, and in fact
the composition derives from a photograph of an ancient Egyptian wall-painting.
A simple rhythm of turned heads and stylized gestures runs across the canvas as
a counterpoint to the girls bent knees, which are all turned in the same
direction. The point is applied very thinly on the coarse sacking
canvas-Gauguin was too poor to be generous with his paint.
Painted
after one of the worst years in Gauguin's life, this 12-foot canvas was
intended to be his parting message to the world .The painting 'reads' from
right to left, beginning with the baby and moving across to the old woman
contemplating death. The questions of the title written in the yellow panel in
French rather than Tahitian remained unanswered and unanswerable.
The
ignominious fate of Captain Bligh cast adrift .from his own ship in April 1789
was powerful evidence of the lure of Tahiti. Fletcher Christian and his
co-mutineers returned to the island before founding their own colony, with
Tahitian wives, on Pitcairn Island. 
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