Before you read this, this is a bunch to read, so be ready! :)
Arles 1888: Vincent van Gogh paints sunflowers. He is obsessed with the colour yellow, seeing it as uplifting. Over and over he produces still lives of sunflowers, all in an attempt to lure Paul Gauguin into coming to Arles. Van Gogh dreams of an artistic colony, a place where artists could paint without any restrictions from bourgeois Paris, and sees Gaugin as the perfect partner.Paul Gauguin is not keen on moving in with the socially awkward and shy Van Gogh. He finally reluctantly agrees only because of a deal he makes with Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother. Theo would finance their entire livelihood, including Gauguin’s journey down to Arles, for an exchange of one painting per month. Gauguin goes, never with the intention of staying for a long time, though certainly not anticipating a fight that would mark one of the biggest myths of the History of Art.
Tahiti 1901: Gauguin has exiled himself to French Polynesia and now paints sunflowers himself. Vincent has been dead for 11 years, yet Gauguin cannot seem to bring himself to forget him. He mentions him over and over in his autobiography “Avant et Après”. Though he is condescending in his appraisal of van Gogh’s artistic talent, claiming that it was he who had first started experimenting with the colour yellow, there is an element of melancholy in the description of his peer. Gauguin mentions that thinking of van Gogh helps him in times of depression, as he knows no matter how much he is suffering, van Gogh suffered double.
Van Gogh and Gauguin are an odd pair in the History of Art. They share so many similarities and were still the complete opposite in character; their friendship seems one of the most ill-matched and yet most perfect in the way they stimulated each other’s creativity.
Both were self-taught, who had turned to art at a relatively late age- Vincent at the age of 27, Paul at the age of 33. Both were disgusted with Paris Bourgeois society and their taste in art and were united in their interest in the exotic and their wish to travel. They were both fascinated by Japanese prints, incorporating elements of them into their art.
Despite all this, they could not have been more different. Paul Gauguin was born into a privileged family, raised in Lima, Peru, by a wealthy uncle and having travelled the world as a young man due to his joining the Navy. He had been a very successful stockbroker before becoming an artist, was married and had 5 children. The exchange from a settled bourgeois life for a bohemian artistic one had been deliberate.
Vincent van Gogh, on the other hand, had been born into a deeply religious Dutch family, perhaps not poor, but certainly not as well off as Gauguin’s family. Just like Gauguin, van Gogh worked in other professions first, first as a bookseller, then as a pastor. However, he had never been successful with either.
Character wise, Paul Gauguin seemed to be the funny, charismatic, aggressive and masculine one, whom the ladies adored and who had no problems finding models to paint. Van Gogh was the odd one, shy, direct, a mixture between socially awkward and extremely stubborn. It had happened more than once that van Gogh had lost an employment or been asked to leave a place because he made its inhabitants uncomfortable.
Artistically, though interested in similar things, they were always at odds with one another. While van Gogh loved painting out of doors and capturing the light, taking landscape artists like Jean-François Millet as his role model, Gauguin preferred painting from memory and inside his studio, twisting his works into what he wanted them to be, and adoring the straight lines of Jean-Dominique Ingres and being fascinated by Raffael. Their mutual stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise made it very difficult to find common grounds. Accounts remain from both sides telling in detail about the arguments they were having, the most famous being the last one on the night of 23 December 1888, which caused Vincent to slice his ear off and Paul to hastily get back to Paris
Adios! :)