Gauguin [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on 7 June 1848, first son of Pierre Guillaume Clovis Gauguin, a republican newspaper editor, and Aline Marie Chazal. The artist rarely spoke or wrote about his father's family, and litrie is known of them but that they hailed from Orléans. Of his maternal ancestry, however, he was particularly proud, as it offered him the opportunity either to assert that he was of aristocratic birth, or when it suited him, to cast himself in the role of Peruvian savage. In fact he could barely claim to be an eighth Peruvian as his greatgrandfather, Don Mariano Tristan y Moscolo (whose brother indeed became the viceroy of Peru), was essentially of Spanish stock. The connection was, however, strengthened in the artist's mind by the romantic figure of his grandmother, Moscolo's illegitimate daughter, the writer Flora Tristan, well known in the 1830s and '40s for her crusading socialist views. The stories of his grandmother's colourful life in Paris and Peru were so numerous and contradictory, however, that in writing of her towards the end of his own life, Gauguin declared that he could not distinguish the fact from the fiction, and described her both as 'a blue-stocking Socialist Anarchist' and 'a very pretty and noble lady'. Despite this confusion, the example of her bravery and pioneering ideas undoubtedly offered encouragement to the unorthodoxy of his own existence, reason enough for him to claim that she had genius. Clovis Gauguin met Flora's daughter when he was already a political reporter, but when she was still at boarding school. They married, but without the pros- pect of settling down into a quiet domestic life in Paris. Following the suppression of the 1848 revolt against the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, Clovis's republican sympathies placed him in increasing danger. With a view to preserving his family and finding a voice elsewhere, he planned their departure for Lima, where he firmly intended to start his own newspaper. In August 1849 the one-year-old Paul Gauguin and his two-year-old sister Marie sailed with their parents to Peru. But Clovis Gauguin was already suffering from an advanced stage of heart disease, a condition which deteriorated, making him increasingly ill on the journey. According to his son, their 'dreadful captain' mismanaged the affair and Clovis subsequendy died of a ruptured aneurism in the lifeboat taking him ashore to the Gulf of Port-Famine in Lima. The family had some small assets, but Aline was nevertheless now left with the daunting task of bringing up the two young children alone. After the horrors of the journey the diminished family could not have been received more cordially by their great-uncle Don Pio de Tristan Moscolo. Gauguin later related how: The old uncle Don Pio fell head over heels in love with his niece, so pretty and bearing such a strong resemblance to his beloved brother, Don Mariano. Don Pio remarried at the age of SO, having several children by this new marriage . . . This made for a large family and my mother, in the midst of it, was a truly spoilt child.