Paul Gauguin

Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin and London
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1960)
Thence by descent to the present owner

This work has been recently cleaned and conserved by Marjorie Shelley. The treatment included cleaning of stains and dirt, filling and inpainting of losses at lower left and at left center through the figure's knee, and filling of small losses and tears at edges and upper left corner. The work was also lined with minogami tissue and retouched in a horizontal area intersecting the figure's foot and the lower area of paper. (Full treatment report available for interested parties.)
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Disillusioned with the artificiality and conventions of bourgeois life in France and nearly destitute, Gauguin set sail for Tahiti in April of 1891, hoping that exile in the tropics would bring about a reversal of his fortunes and recognition of his genius. After acquiring a hut in the rural village of Mataiea, he settled in among the natives, studying their faces and customary postures, and the lush, mysterious splendor of his new surroundings. During his first period in Tahiti, which lasted until 1893, Gauguin executed a group of paintings inspired by the paradisical beauty of the landscape and of the young native women inhabiting it, creating a fabled body of work which has in large part defined our image of the artist.

This exquisite charcoal drawing is a study for the young woman seated to the right in Pêcheuses Tahitiennes (Tahitian Fisherwomen), a painting signed and dated in 1891 which is now in the collection of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Wildenstein, no. 429). With its sensitive portrayal of the single, becalmed figure lost in thought, the present work captures something of the haunting silence of the island and its natives, which Gauguin described in a letter to his wife shortly after his arrival there: "Always this silence. I understand why these individuals can rest seated for hours and days without saying a word... " (Quoted from The Art of Paul Gauguin (exhibition catalogue), Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1988, p. 231.)

Gauguin had an almost worshipful appreciation of Polynesian women, who for him embodied the mysterious forces of life, innocent from modern civilization's ills. He wrote, "Their beautiful bodies, without any whale bone to deform them, move with a sinuous grace under their lace and muslin chemises... Their feet, on the contrary, which are wide and sturdy, and wear no laced boots, offend us but only at first, for later it is the sight of laced boots that would offend us." (P. Gauguin, Memoirs, 1902-03; quoted from The Lure of the Exotic. Gauguin in New York Collections, exh. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002, p. 95).

Fig. 1 Paul Gauguin, Pêcheuses Tahitiennes, 1891, oil on canvas, Nationalgalerie, Berlin