The Gauguin Atlas
The Gauguin Atlas |
If anyone was ever a citizen of the world, it was the artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). At the tender age of one, he emigrated – together with his parents – from France to Peru, where he spent his childhood in paradise. For the rest of his life, he would always remain in search of paradise. As an adult, he sailed all the world’s oceans and stayed for shorter and longer periods of time in various places in France, Denmark, Panama, Martinique, New Zealand, Tahiti and Hiva Oa, a French-Polynesian island in the
South Pacific.
In The Gauguin Atlas, we not only follow Gauguin to all those places where he created his masterpieces, but also accompany him to the era in which he lived. A time when travelling by boat from Marseille to Tahiti was a journey of two months, when the Eiffel Tower had only recently been completed, and when it seemed to take an eternity for the monthly mail boat to arrive with
longed-for letters from Paris – not to mention the payment for his paintings.
Pages 184 | Age 12+ | Sold to UK/USA, Germany
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In 1887 the friends Paul Gauguin and Charles Laval left for Martinique in search of inspiration. That journey is described in The Gauguin Atlas, which was released on friday the 19th of October at the Gauguin exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum.
A pre-publication ‘The Gauguin Atlas‘ in NRC, 17th October 2018. This is a slightly edited version of chapter 3 (in Dutch).