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Paul Gauguin

41 quotes

“My Dear Mr. Pissarro; - I accept with pleasure the invitation that you and Mr. Degas were kind enough to extend to me. And naturally in that case I shall abide by all the rules that govern your Societe. Based on this decision, I also have the membership dues available. I will probably see you at Miss Latouche's and we will talk about this.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a short letter of Gauguin, 3 April 1879, to French artist to Pissarro; as cited on 'Paul Gauguin Autograph Letter Signed to Camille Pissarro' - Nade D. Sanders
“This Cézanne [a 'Still life with Compotier, Fruit and Glass', Cézanne made c. 1879-1882!!], that you ask me for is a pearl of exceptional quality and I already have refused three hundred francs for it; it is one of my most treasured possessions, and except in absolute necessity, I would give up my last shirt before the picture.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter (June 1888) to Gauguin's friend Émile Schuffenecker; as cited in Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition, Anne Distel, Michel Hoog, Charles S. Moffett, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.) 19…
“How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a conversation in 1888, Pont-Aven, with Paul Sérusier as cited by w:Maurice Denis, inL'influence de Paul Gauguin, in Occident (October 1903) and published in Du symbolisme au classicisme. Théories (1912), ed.…
“With this painting, I tried to make everything breathe faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style and great nature with its scream.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in a letter to Theo van Gogh (1889-11-20)
“freely and madly; you will make progress.. .Above all, don't sweat over a painting; a great sentiment can be rendered immediately..”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: pp. 5 & 22: Gauguin is advising a fellow painter, 1885
“A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 5: Letter to Emile Schuffenecker, (Copenhagen, 14 January 1885)
“I borrow some subject or other from life or from nature, and, using it as a pretext, I arrange lines and colors so as to obtain symphonies, harmonies that do not represent a thing that is real, in the vulgar sense of the word, and do not directly express any idea, but are supposed to make you think the way music is supposed to make you think, unaided by ideas or images, simply through the mysterious affinities that exist between our brains and such arrangements of colors and lines.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love Brittany; I find wildness and primitiveness there. When my wooden shoes ring on this granite, I hear the muffled, dull, and powerful tone which I try to achieve in painting.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 109: in a letter to a friend, c. 1886
“In my figures [of his famous painting 'Vision After the Sermon'] I have achieved a great simplicity, which is both rustic and superstitious... ..In this picture the landscape and the struggle [between Jacob wrestling with the angel ] exist only in the imagination of the people whom the sermon has moved to prayer. That's why there is a contrast between the people, depicted naturally, and the struggle in its unnatural and dis-proportioned landscape.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 24: quote in his letter to Vincent van Gogh, c. 1888
“Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 39: 'Huysmans and Redon', (written in 1889, published 1953)
“Life at Papeete soon became a burden.It was Europe, the Europe which I had thought to shake off — and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial snobbism, and the imitation, grotesque even to the point of caricature, of our customs, fashions, vices, and absurdities of civilization.Was I to have made this far journey, only to find the very thing which I had fled?”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Noa Noa ,(1893) [Dover, 1985, ], p. 2.
“'Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?'”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Title of his large painting, 1897
“Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in a letter to Charles Morice (July 1901), from French Paintings and Painters from the Fourteenth Century to Post-Impressionism, ed. Gerd Muesham [Frederick Ungar, 1970, ], p. 551
“If we observe the totality of Camille Pissarro's works, we find there, despite the fluctuations, not only an extreme artistic will which never lies, but what is more, an essentially intuitive pure-bred art.. .He looked at everybody, you say! Why not? Everyone looked at him, too, but denied him. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote c. 1902, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished F…
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge — and has to content oneself with dreaming.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Avant et Après, (1903); taken from Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals, trans. (1923) Van Wyck Brooks [Dover, 1997, ], p. 2
“With what is he concerned? Drawing was at its lowest ebb; it had to be restored. Looking at these nudes, I exclaim, 'Drawing has come back again!' As a man and painter he sets an example. 'Degas' is one of those rare masters who could have had anything he wanted, yet he scorned decorations, honors, fortune, without bitterness, without jealousy.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Paul Gauguin, in Avant et après (1903)
“[In] painting...all sensations are condensed, everyone...with a single glance [has] his soul invaded by the most profound recollections...everything is summed up in one instant. Like music, it acts on the soul through the intermediary of the senses: harmonious colors correspond to the harmonies of sound.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Gauguin's unfinished essay 'Notes Synthetiques', published in the July / September 1910 issue of ' Vers et Prose' XXII, pp. 51-55, as cited in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics…
“I have lingered among the nymphs of Corot, dancing in the sacred wood of Ville-d'Avray.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote in a letter - late in Gauguin's life, from the Marquesas-Islands; as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Ar…
“I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. xxvii: Quote from Le Sourire (Tahiti, August 1899)
“I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 22: quote in a letter to Ambroise Vollard, 1900
“I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization. I want only to do simple, very simple art, and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 48: quoted in the interview 'Paul Gauguin Discussing His Paintings', Jules Huret, printed in L'Écho de Paris, (23 February 1891)
“A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 68: from his manuscript, known as 'Cahier pour Aline' (ca. 1892-1893)
“Your Nordic blue eyes looked attentively at the paintings hanging on the walls. I felt stirrings of rebellion: a whole clash between your civilization and my barbarism. Civilization from which you suffer. Barbarism which for me is a rejuvenation.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 105: quote from his letter to August Strindberg (5 May 1895)
“In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 107: in his letter, published in Le Soir, (25 April 1895)
“Copying nature — what is that supposed to mean? Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 108: cited by Eugène Tardieu, 'Interview with Paul Gauguin,' in L'Écho de Paris, (13 May 1895)
“In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 110: cited by Eugène Tardieu, 'Interview with Paul Gauguin,' in L'Écho de Paris, (13 May 1895)
“A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 125: letter to Georges-Daniel de Monfreid (Tahiti, October 1897)
“The critic asks me: 'So you are a Symbolist? I mean well and I would like to learn; why don't you explain Symbolism to me'.. I answer.. .'Well, my paintings probably speak Hebrew, which you do not understand, so there is no point in continuing the conversation.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 130: quote in 1898
“At an exhibition in London, one sagacious critic wrote: 'Monsieur Degas seems a good pupil of Nittis!' Doesn't this reflect that mania which men of letters have for squabbling in court over who had a given idea first? And the mania spreads to painters who take great care of their originality.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 219: quote in 1898
“..so before I died I wanted to paint a large canvas that I had worked out in my head, and all month long I worked [on Tahiti] day and night at fever pitch.. .It's all done without a model.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: pp. 159-160: in a letter from Tahiti to a friend, 1898
“My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: pp. 184-185: Letter to André Fontainas, March 1899
“I was so bent on putting all my energy in its 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going' before dying [suffering from syphilis, Gauguin decided to commit suicide at the end], such painful passion amid terrible circumstances, and such a clear vision without corrections that the hastiness of it disappears and life bursts from it. It does not stink of models, professionalism, and the so-called rules that I have always disregarded.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 160: Gauguin's quote in his letter from Tahiti to a friend, c. 1899
“No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's — peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 205: in a letter to Ambroise Vollard, January 1900
“You have long known what I have tried to establish: the right to dare everything; yet the difficulty I have had finding enough money to live on has been too great, and my capacities have not produced a very big result but the mechanism has got underway nevertheless. The public does not owe me anything because the pictorial work I have done is only relatively good, but the painters who benefit from that freedom today do owe me something.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 214: in a letter to George-Daniel de Monfreid, Marquesas Islands, October 1902
“..color being enigmatic in itself.. ..then to be logical we cannot use it any other way than enigmatically..”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At the age of ten, twenty, a hundred, very young, a little older, and very old, an artist is always an artist. Isn't he better at some times, some moments, than at others? Never impeccable, since he is a living, human being?”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 219: quote from 1903
“In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Bengt Danielsson in Gauguin in the South Seas (1966)
“Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them. Like music, it acts on the soul through the intermediary of the senses, the harmonious tones corresponding to the harmonies of sounds, but in painting, a unity is obtained which is not possible in music, where the accords follow one another, and the judgement experiences a continuous fatigue if one wants to reunite the end and the beginning. In the main, the ear is an inferior sense to the eye. The hearing can only grasp a single sound at one time, whereas the sight takes in everything and at the same time simplifies at its will.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Gauguin from: Notes Synthéthiques (ca. 1884-1885), ed. Henri Mahaut, in Vers et prose (July-September 1910), p. 52; translation from John Rewald, Gauguin (Hyperion Press, 1938), p. 161.
“I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue — which is what many people think I am, for that matter. Oh well, what difference does it make. What upsets me the most is not so much the poverty as the things that perpetually get in the way of my art, which I cannot carry out the way I feel and which I would carry out if it weren't for the poverty that is like a straitjacket. You tell me I am wrong to stay away from the artist[ic] center. No, I am right; I've known for a long time what I am doing and why I am doing it. My artistic center is in my brain and nowhere else, and I am strong because I am never thrown off-course by other people and because I do what is in me.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: pp. 53-54: Quote in a letter to his wife, Mette (Tahiti, March 1892)
“As I wanted to suggest a luxuriant and untamed type of nature, a tropical sun that sets aglow everything around it, I was obliged to give my figures a suitable setting.It is indeed the outdoor life — yet intimate at the same time, in the thickets and the shady streams, these women whispering in an immense palace decorated by nature itself, with all the riches that Tahiti has to offer. This is the reason behind all these fabulous colors, this subdued and silent glow."But none of this exists!""Oh yes it does, as an equivalent of the grandeur, the depth, the mystery of Tahiti, when you have to express it on a canvas measuring only one square meter."Very subtle, very knowing in her naïveté is the Tahitian Eve. The riddle hiding in the depth of her childlike eyes is still incommunicable to me.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 137: Diverse Choses, his notebook (1896 - 1898)