Paul Gauguin
Portraits of Meyer de Haan and Mimi, c. 1889
black crayon, brush and black wash on woven paper
16.2 x 19.1 cms
6 3/8 x 7 1/2 ins
6 3/8 x 7 1/2 ins
14900
Certificate from the Wildenstein Institute, dated 30 May 2006. This work will be included in the forthcoming addition to the Paul Gauguin catalogue raisonné, prepared by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute....
Certificate from the Wildenstein Institute, dated 30 May 2006. This work will be included in the forthcoming addition to the Paul Gauguin catalogue raisonné, prepared by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.
Gauguin made three trips to Brittany between 1886 and 1890. During his third trip, the longest and themost prolific - from April 1889 to November 1890 - Gauguin stayed at Le Pouldu, a few miles awayfrom the touristic Pont-Aven, with his friend Jacob Meyer de Haan, depicted here at the right andeasily recognisable with his skullcap. Arriving in Paris from Holland in 1888, Meyer de Haan hadmoved in with Theo van Gogh who introduced him to Paul Gauguin. The two friends, Gauguin and deHaan, then settled at Melle Marie Henry's Inn, who let the artists decorate the main room with painting and sculpting the walls and doors. Gauguin’s influence helped Meyer de Haan free himself from academic processes and he increasingly explored his synthetic tendency, leading to the development of the cloisonnist style. Meyer de Haan is here depicted by Gauguin from profile, with a very interesting play of double portraits, using a shadow of him. The child on the left is the first daughter of Marie, Léa (nicknamed Mimi), and whom Gauguin sketched in her Breton cap (“beguine” in French), at the left of thecomposition. The profile of Gauguin's Mimi could be related to de Haan's painting of her, ca. 1889 and now at the Van Gogh Museum, and which was actually, as the present drawing, in the sale of Mimi collection, in 1959. Marie Henry later had a child with Meyer de Haan, called Ida, in June 1891. But already by the end of 1890, de Haan’s brother, who did not approve of his relationship with an unmarried mother, ordered his brother to return to Holland. De Haan returned to Paris in 1891, and organized a banquet for Gauguin, who was planning his first trip to Tahiti. In June, Marie Henry gave birth to Ida, but de Haan only saw her a few times, his family threatened to disown him, and so he returned definitively to Holland.
Notes:This work will be included in the forthcoming addition to the Paul Gauguin catalogue raisonné,currently being prepared by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.
Gauguin made three trips to Brittany between 1886 and 1890. During his third trip, the longest and themost prolific - from April 1889 to November 1890 - Gauguin stayed at Le Pouldu, a few miles awayfrom the touristic Pont-Aven, with his friend Jacob Meyer de Haan, depicted here at the right andeasily recognisable with his skullcap. Arriving in Paris from Holland in 1888, Meyer de Haan hadmoved in with Theo van Gogh who introduced him to Paul Gauguin. The two friends, Gauguin and deHaan, then settled at Melle Marie Henry's Inn, who let the artists decorate the main room with painting and sculpting the walls and doors. Gauguin’s influence helped Meyer de Haan free himself from academic processes and he increasingly explored his synthetic tendency, leading to the development of the cloisonnist style. Meyer de Haan is here depicted by Gauguin from profile, with a very interesting play of double portraits, using a shadow of him. The child on the left is the first daughter of Marie, Léa (nicknamed Mimi), and whom Gauguin sketched in her Breton cap (“beguine” in French), at the left of thecomposition. The profile of Gauguin's Mimi could be related to de Haan's painting of her, ca. 1889 and now at the Van Gogh Museum, and which was actually, as the present drawing, in the sale of Mimi collection, in 1959. Marie Henry later had a child with Meyer de Haan, called Ida, in June 1891. But already by the end of 1890, de Haan’s brother, who did not approve of his relationship with an unmarried mother, ordered his brother to return to Holland. De Haan returned to Paris in 1891, and organized a banquet for Gauguin, who was planning his first trip to Tahiti. In June, Marie Henry gave birth to Ida, but de Haan only saw her a few times, his family threatened to disown him, and so he returned definitively to Holland.
Notes:This work will be included in the forthcoming addition to the Paul Gauguin catalogue raisonné,currently being prepared by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.
Provenance
Marie Henry (later Mme Mothère),Le Pouldu Léa “Mimi” Mothère (by descent from the above) Her sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 16 March 1959, lot 111
Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, (1959)
Benjamin Sonnenberg, New York His sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 9 June 1979, lot 1424
Private collection, New York (ca. 1980)
Christie’s, London, 8 February 2007, lot 525
Private collection, USA
Exhibitions
London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, XIX and XX Century European Masters: Paintings, Drawings,Sculpture, summer 1959, p. 10, no. 24 (illustrated, p. 23).New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, Artists and Writers: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Portrait Drawings from the Collection of Benjamin Sonnenberg, May-July 1971, p. 29, no. 26(illustrated, pl. 26).
Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano, Paul Gauguin: Artist of Myth and Dream,
Literature
M. Sharp Young, Letters from New York: Artists and Writers in Apollo, vol. XCIII, no. 112, June 1971, p. 517Gauguin’s Nirvana, Painters at Le Pouldu, 1889-90, exh. cat., New Haven and London, 2001, p. 29 (illustrated, fig. 34b)