[GAUGUIN Paul]. PALAUX Léon. THE PAINTER PAUL GAUGUIN AND HI - Lot 103

[GAUGUIN Paul]. PALAUX Léon. THE PAINTER PAUL GAUGUIN AND HIS FRIENDS. Some Illustrious Guests at Le Pouldu. AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT SIGNED. 15 pages large in-4 in ink (some wetness). Doctor Léon Palaux devoted his life to the history of the commune of Clohars-Carnoët, collecting extensive documentation on writers and painters. Visits to hotels and boarding houses, and consultation of registers, enabled him to compile a unique and vital topography of the painters of the Pont-Aven group. ... "In June 1886, he [Gauguin] arrived in Pont-Aven, staying at Marie-Jeanne Gloanec's guesthouse... Ill, he was hospitalized for the month of December, then frequented the Montmartre studios, where he made friends with the Dutch painter Van Gogh. The capital rejected him. In April 1887, to escape his misery and driven by a need for exoticism, he embarked with his friend Charles Laval at Saint-Nazaire for Panama and Martinique, where they both contracted malaria and dysentery. By mid-January 1888, they were back in Paris, sick and penniless. Gauguin took in fellow artist Schuffenecker, a former bank clerk like himself, who had given up his job to devote himself to painting. In March 1888, with his inseparable Charles Laval, he moved back to Pont-Aven: "It was from Le Pouldu that Gauguin's genius took flight", as de Monfreid proclaimed: "My friend never spoke to me about Pont-Aven, he always repeated: When I was in Le Pouldu". In 1893, it was the good life for him in Montmartre, where he met a black dancer, Annah la Javanaise, whose name was neither Annah nor Javanese. He took her to Le Pouldu in the spring of 1894, accompanied by her guenon and a parrot... In 1895, after a sale of paintings at Hôtel Drouot, Gauguin left France for good, settling in Tahiti... In 1933, there was talk of erecting a monument to the painter in Le Pouldu. A committee was formed and the project fell through". This exceptional document provides a precise and sometimes little-known account of Gauguin's life at the historic seaside resort of Pouldu.