Word: gauguin
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Last week the results of this largess were on view in Paris' Pedagogical Museum. Among some 300 childish works done by boys and girls in France's Pacific possessions were nine drawings of special interest: they were done by six of the eight grandchildren of Paul Gauguin and Tehura. The most promising talent among Emile Tai's children was that of eleven-year-old Adolphe, whose dark browns and blues could, by only a slight stretch of imagination, be made to recall his grandfather's mastery of color. But the real tear-squeezer of the show...
...responsible critic in France would get far enough out on a limb to credit any of Gauguin's Tahitian grandchildren with having inherited their grandfather's genius.* But France-Soir, yielding to a temptation to sentimentalize, proclaimed that the children's efforts "revealed striking gifts that only heredity could explain...
When Paul Gauguin, seeking escape from the rigors of civilization, arrived in Tahiti in 1891, he fell in love with the island and its people. One Tahitian in particular intrigued Gauguin: a golden-skinned girl of 13 named Tehura. Gauguin, who had left a lawful wife and five children in Europe, settled down with Tehura to a South Pacific existence: "Happiness inhabited my home. Each morning it rose radiant with the sun; the golden hue of Tehura's face filled the house with joy and light . . . and [she] gave herself to me ever more loving and docile...
This Elysian union in time produced a son, Emile Tai, who grew up like the other native children. He never learned to read or write, took a native wife, settled himself as a vegetable dealer in the village of Punaauia, seven miles from Papeete. All that Gauguin's son knew of his father (who died in 1903) were vague stories told him by his mother. For almost 50 years, the outside world paid little attention to what had happened to Gauguin's native family...
This year the Salon set up a special section in commemoration of its birthday, called Satte 1903. The organizers tried to get together as many as possible of the works displayed in 1903. Among the souvenirs: a Rouault clown and a Tahitian painting by Gauguin. A better showing was made in the section called Hommage aux Ainés (homage to the elders), in which were displayed the works of now-famous artists who have shown at the Salon through the years. Among les Ainés: Matisse, Dufy, Utrillo. Picasso, Vlaminck, Braque, Chagall...