GAUGUIN Paul (1848-1903)

Lot 270
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Estimation :
7000 - 8000 EUR
GAUGUIN Paul (1848-1903)
Signed autograph letter addressed to his wife METTE Lutèce, "20 Fructidor an 91" [7 September 1883], 2 pages in-12 in ink. (Traces of folding). "Dear Madam, It is important for you to know if September 7 is a feast day; perhaps you have forgotten it [...]. On this date, relations between Gauguin and his wife Mette, née Sophie Gad (1850-1920), were indeed particularly tense. They met in 1872, when Gauguin embarked on a career as a stockbroker on the Paris stock exchange. The comfortable bourgeois life they first share collapses in 1882, when Paul announces to Mette that he is giving up his job to devote himself to painting. The family quickly fell into poverty, leading the couple to take refuge in Denmark with Mette's parents, then to separate in 1885. "... Your children are the young shoots that a ray of sunshine revives and strengthens, you are a year younger but one child older...". In September 1883, when Gauguin wrote this letter, Mette was pregnant with Paul Rollon, known as Pola Gauguin, who was born three months later, on December 6. Pola was the couple's fifth child, after Emile, Alice, Clovis and Jean René. "...] I know your rascal of a husband, he only dares to tell you today that Sept. 17 reminds him of a famous birth ...". The letter testifies to the delicate feelings that Gauguin will keep to his wife for a very long time. "If life sometimes has its setbacks next to this grumpy Paul, on the other hand, happiness is where one loves; in the husband there is severity; ask his heart and he will answer you (I elske) [I love, in Danish]. The tone of this letter in which Gauguin speaks of him in the third person is rather unusual.
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