Paul Gauguin Gallery
Oil on canvas. 73x92 cm. 1901
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
In 1901, when this painting was produced, Gauguin was still living in Tahiti and nearing the end of his life. Yet the subject dates back to the time of his friendship with van Gogh, in whose work the sunflower motif, a symbol of the sun, occupied a special place. In 1888, both artists worked together at Arles in Provence, and van Gogh painted a number of now famous still lives with sunflowers. Gauguin took to growing these flowers in Oceania from seeds sent specially from France. The artist's fantasy turns reality into mystery, the eye which takes shape in the centre of the flower in the background creating a mystical mood, recalling the "all-seeing eye" which is often found in Christian churches. The face in the window also has much in common with the blank features of Buddha. Thus the exotic land of Oceania was combined with nostalgic reminiscences of the Europe the artist had left behind.
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| Ancestors of Tehamana |
| Day of the Gods |
| Haere Mai |
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Sunflowers |
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Gauguin was born in Paris but lived with his mother in Peru (1851-55). In 1871 he entered the firm of a Paris stockbroker. He painted on Sundays. Gauguin met Pissarro in 1875 and initially Gauguin’s work was close to the Impressionists in subject matter and color scheme. He exhibited with the group five times. By 1886 he had abandoned small, visible brush marks in favour of large areas of flat color and introduced an innovative color scheme that suggested a sense of heightened reality. Gauguin called this technique Synthetism and declared that he hoped painting would return to exploring the “interior life of human beings”. Starting in 1883 Gauguin had devoted himself solely to painting. His travels to Brittany in 1886 and, a year later, to Martinique and Panama, had led him to be inspired by primitive arts and he looked for ideas in Buddhist temple sculptures, Japanese prints, medieval tapestries, folk art and the architecture of Breton Churches. His work became concerned with dreams, myths and visions, influenced partly by his time in Tahiti, where he moved in 1891.
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