Hill-Stone, Inc.
Atuona, Marquesas Islands by Paul Gauguin- Price Upon Request
PAUL GAUGUIN Paris 1848 – 1903 Atuona, Marquesas Islands Manao Tupapau, [Elle pense au Revenant. ¬¬– ¬ L’Esprit des Morts Veille] {Watched by the Spirits of the Dead} Lithograph on stone, the stone executed in Pen, crayon and wash. 1894. Signed in the image with the artist’s monogram, and by the artist in pen below right on the support sheet, published in an edition of 100 by André Marty in L’Estampe Originale, Part VI, April to June 1894. Mongan, Kornfeld and Joachim 23, only state. An extremely fine impression in fine, fresh condition. The authors cite only thirty impressions, not including ours. The remarkable image is related to a painting by Gauguin of 1892, two later woodcuts and a sketch for the Maori housepost and a watercolor monotype of 1894 . Gauguin noted in a letter to his wife in 1892 that the painting of the subject of that date was to depict the young Maori girl whose nudity was to be understood as the artist’s interest in the role of her body in the overall composition of the image. Like many of Gaguguin’s printed works, Manao Tupapau took as its starting point the painting of the same subject of 1892. Our lithograph, however, dods not adhere completely to the composition of the painting. The very overt contact made by the subject with the viewer is suppressed in the lithograph and figure in the background of the painting, the spirit who accompanies the young woman is augmented by a female idol and a second idol’s face above the seated figure. The lithograph, then, concentrates less on the seductive young woman (who he acknowledged in his letter to his wife could have easily been made to seem indecent) that the contrast between the spirits of the dead and the implied innocence of the young girl. Gauguin’s art has been seen as one of the most powerful and expressive statements of the European belief in the virtues of so-called “uncivilized man”. His magnificent achievement in all media: painting, sculpture and printmaking puts him in the first rank of the art of the period.
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