Père Paillard
Paul Gauguin1902
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
<p>Gauguin purposefully displayed his _Père Paillard_ and its female companion piece, Thérèse, in front of his Polynesian home (which he named the House of Pleasure), so that islanders passing by could appreciate the two carved works. Their meaning was evident to everyone. From _Père Paillard_ (Father Lechery or Debauchery) inscribed on its base, they recognized the local Catholic bishop, Monseigneur Martin, who entreated Gauguin to stop his liaisons with local women, while pursuing them himself (with Thérèse and others) despite his vows of celibacy.
Gauguin shows the bishop for what he considered him to be: a nude, horned devil. Though outwardly pious, _Père Paillard's_ solemn expression and praying hands fail to mask his inner desires. Two nude women, carved in shallow relief near the base of the sculpture, may allude to his private predilection. Its specific context notwithstanding, the sculpture also forcefully embodies the artist's primitive aesthetic and anti-Western values.
Gauguin retained the cylindrical form of the miro wood log (native to the Marquesas Islands where he moved in his final years) in the finished figure, a reflection of his concept of beauty as a harmony between subject and material. For the most part, the sculpture's golden brown surface retains the primitive, rhythmic patterns of the artist's chisels and gouges; only the figure's cheeks, forehead, and jutting chin are filed smooth. Gold paint, used to accent the bishop's eyes, the women, and the inscription, has largely disappeared over time.
More information on this object can be found in the Gallery publication _European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century_, which is available as a free PDF <u>https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/european-sculpture-19th-century.pdf</u>
- Title: Père Paillard
- Creator: Paul Gauguin
- Date Created: 1902
- Physical Dimensions: overall: 67.9 x 18 x 20.7 cm (26 3/4 x 7 1/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
- Provenance: Collection of the artist until his death, 1903; (his estate sale, Tahiti, 2 September 1903, possibly among nos. 60-62); sold to Emile Lévy [1858-1932], Papeete; sold c. 1905 to (Galerie Druet, Paris).[1] Possibly (Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939] Paris);[2] (Etienne Bignou, Paris and New York), by 1928;[3] gift June 1930 to Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York;[4] bequest 1963 to NGA. [1] The standard provenance that identifies Piétri of Papeete as the buyer from the 1903 death sale is based on Jean Loize, _Les Amitiés du peintre Georges-Daniel de Monfreid et ses reliques de Gauguin_, Paris, 1951, 133: "Au dos [of Georges-Daniel Monfreid's notes about Gauguin's death], liste d'oeuvres de Gauguin achetées avant ou après sa mort...Les bois...'Thérèse et l'Evêque' aux mains de M. Piétri, Juge à Tahiti probablement...." This is Monfreid's purely speculative statement, based on information that Loize believes comes from Victor Segalen. The judge is a documented buyer of an inexpensive "tiki" (no. 64 at six francs; in Georges Wildenstein, ed., "Vente des oeuvres d'art, livres et objets ayant appartenu à Gauguin. 2 septembre 1903", _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, 6th per., 47, January-April 1956; published January 1958, 207). However various other references suggest that the pendants went to Lévy, who bought three "tikis" from the sale (nos. 60-62 at 16, 15, and 20 francs (Wildenstein 1956, 207). Segalen himself (_Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, précédées d'un hommage par Victor Segalen_, Paris and Zurich, 1918, 67-68) identified the pendants' buyer at the sale as a merchant (Lévy was a pearl merchant) and Henri Jacquier ("Histoire locale: Le dossier de la succession Paul Gauguin," _Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Océaniennes_, 120 [September 1957], 677) states that Lévy sold the pendants two years later to Edouard Druet. Victor Merlhès (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, correspondence with Anne Halpern dated 14 December 1999, in NGA curatorial files) suggested this alternative provenance and the texts that support it. The Druet ownership is also based on a fragment of a paper label on the underside of the figure, on which is written, in ink, in block letters: [GALER] IE [D]RUET; in lower case: St-Honoré Par[is]/[Gaugui]n/[Paill]ard; and a printed number: 9 6 [996?]. The number could possibly be an inventory number. [2] The provenance that places the work in the collections of Emile Schuffenecker and Ambroise Vollard is found in Christopher Gray, _Sculpture and Ceramics of Paul Gauguin _, Baltimore, 1963: 288. A photograph in the Eitenne Bignou albums at the documentation center of the Musée d'Orsay is annotated with Vollard and Schuffenecker as former owners (copy NGA curatorial files). The Chester Dale papers (in NGA curatorial files) document only Vollard's ownership, and the provenance is recorded twice: "Mr. Bignou got it from Am. Vollard, who had it from Gauguin;" and "Former collection Ambrose[sic] Vollard, Paris, who bought it from Gauguin." Merlhès (as above, note 1) discounted their plausibility altogether. [3] Cited as the lender to the 1928 exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg. [4] The date of Bignou's gift of _Père Paillard_ to Chester Dale is recorded in the Dale papers in NGA curatorial files.
- Medium: painted miro wood
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