PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 820, 15 April 1955, Page 12

PORTRAIT OF GAUGUIN

THE NOBLE SAVAGE, by Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson; Chatto and | Windus, English price 21/-. [HE dullest part of a biography is usually the first chapter. Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, who have already written good books on the Brontes and George Eliot, avoid this awkwardness by introducing Paul Gauguin when he first meets Mette Gad. his future wife. Family background and early years are described as if Gauguin himself were telling the story. The method, skilfully used, allows information to be acquired as easily as if it came from the pages of a novel. Nevertheless, this is a serious study of a turbulent and powerful man. Gauguin has become a classic figure of revolt among the artists. Many people, influenced by a Somerset Maugham novel, think of him as a business man who suddenly became a painter, deserted his wife and five children, and went off to Tahiti to produce pictures which have unaccountably become masterpieces. The

real story is rather different from the legend. He was, it is true, a stockbroker of sorts when he married Mette; but he had had an exotic childhood in Peru, and from heredity and environment had | received a character which seemed to) belong inevitably to an artist. Much of his best work was done in| Brittany, long before he thought of Ta- | hiti, and even then he had broken away | from the Impressionists. Although a hard man to get on with, he had his disciples. His work is described competently in this book: but the authors emphasise that their interest is in the man, and they see him increasingly through his relationship with Mette. It is clear from the evidence that Gauguin’s ruthlessness in the separation’ has been greatly exaggerated. He refused to give up painting; but he was incurably an optimist: he really believed that in a few years he would be able to sell his canvases and support his family in comfort. His wife and children were not starving; they were living with relations in Denmark, and in later years Mette was able to sell many of Gauguin’s pictures | at prices which surprised her. It was_ Gauguin himself who knew hunger. He was not silent about his sufferings: on | the contrary, his letters to Mette were full of bitterness. Both of them wrote too much; but although they reproached each other the link between them was not finally broken until near the end of | the artist’s life. And it was always Gauguin who wanted a reconciliation. The story of those last years at Tahiti is one of unrelieved tragedy-un-less, perhaps, there is relief in the. frenzied outbursts of painting while his splendid health was being broken down | by syphilis. Gauguin suffered terribly, and much of the evil that came upon | him was of his own making. But he had his own integrity, a complete dedication to his work; and he did not mistake his genius. The Hansons «have written this biography. carefully. They show the man in the round, hiding nothing; he is there, when they have finished with him, to be seen and heard. but not to be judged.

H.