Brittany smears

Early works from Gauguin at the Wadsworth

by Leon Nigrosh

ROMANCE IN STEEL:THE HERITAGE OF ARMOR
at the Higgins Armory Museum, 100 Barber Avenue, Worcester, through June 3

It must be great to be an artist. You can quit your day job whenever you want, forsake your familial responsibilities, and take off to distant places so that you can make art with your bud- dies, drink absinthe, have affairs, and even carve your own sabots (wooden shoes). Well, at least that's what Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin did.

A successful Parisian stockbroker, husband, and father of five, Gauguin (1848-1903) dabbled in paint for a few years until he met Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and his art dealer brother, Theo. The two men encouraged Gauguin to start painting seriously, so he said goodbye to his wife and kids and took off for extended stays in different parts of Brittany, Panama, Martinique, and Tahiti -- eventually ending up in the Marquesas Islands.

While much has been made of his relationship to van Gogh and his tropical island days, one often overlooked -- but very important - period in Gauguin's life is the 14 months he spent in Le Pouldu, Brittany, with his friend, student, and patron, Meyer Jacob de Haan (1852-95). The current exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum contains more than 50 works by these two artists (and some of their friends) including still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and more. Through these works we can see the slow evolution of Gauguin's style from that of a Cézannesque impressionist to what would become his singular imagery of flat, non-natural planes of color. Almost every one of the still lifes Gauguin made during this period, including Still Life with Onions, display the reverence he held for Cézanne's brushstroke and colorations. The same can be said for his Portrait of the Painter Louis Roy. But here we also can see the beginnings of his use of personal symbols in such paintings, a poster from an exhibition they both had been in, along with one of Gauguin's own ceramic pieces.

Several of Gauguin's works in different media are also included in this show. A small terra-cotta statue, Statuette of a Martinique Woman, a larger than life carved and painted oak Portrait of Meyer de Haan, and The Goose, a portion of the tempera on plaster mural that had been painted directly on the wall at the inn Maison Marie Henry. All of which attest to his virtually tireless artistic energy, often spent learning to become proficient in new mediums.

Gauguin and de Haan often painted the same subject matter, like a still life set-up with a chunk of ham. De Haan produced a relatively naturalistic close-up view, while Gauguin added wrought iron legs to the table and placed the centralized arrangement in front of a decorated blazing orange wallpaper. It's not known whether they later ate the display. They would paint together outside as well. Comparing two paintings both titled The Valley of Kerzellec, Le Pouldu, we see that de Haan's canvas is well covered with fairly natural trees blossoming with lush vegetation growing around relatively ordered gardens. In Gauguin's work, the trees have simply been removed, the better to see the cows and farmer. The plantings are dismissed with a few brush strokes and the roiling sky is more dominant.

But all was not harmonious between these two. They both sought the affections of the pretty innkeeper Marie-Jeanne Henry or "Marie Poupée" (Marie the Doll). And when de Haan, a scrawny hunchback with pointy ears, won out, Gauguin, a tall, fit, urbane figure, seethed with jealousy. His only revenge apparently was in his portraits of de Haan, like Nirvana, wherein he emphasizes de Haan's deformities and plays up his slanted eyes, pointed ears, and red beard, to give his sitter a devilish look.

Even years after de Haan's untimely demise, Gauguin still couldn't rid himself of his irrational animosity toward his friend. In Contes barbares (Primitive Tales) completed in 1902 on the remote island of Hiva-Oa, de Haan reappears, this time seated with two semi-nude island girls surrounded with lush, bright flowers. De Haan, represented as devil-like as before, is now dressed in purple missionary robes and has long blood-red claws for feet. This complex and enigmatic work was one of the last paintings Gauguin ever made before he contracted Athlete's Foot on the tiny island of Atuona in the Marquesas -- and died from complications, alone, at age 55.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 860-278-2670.