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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Paul Gauguin

Lilacs

1885
Oil on canvas.
34.9 x 27 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.2000.4
)
ROOM F
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
The year 1885 was a critical one for Gauguin, both for his personal life and the direction of his art. During the first months of that year, he lived with his family in Copenhagen, his wife Mette's native city. Although Gauguin was registered in the town census as a travelling salesman, he was increasingly devoting his time to painting and through the Society of the Friends of Art of the Danish capital he was able to exhibit and even sell some works. He also wrote some Synthetic Notes which reveal Neo-Romantic sensibilities (for example, in his repeated comparison between painting and music) and a clear intention to go beyond the ideas of Impressionism. In June, after a heated argument with his wife's parents, Gauguin set out for Paris, taking with him one of his children, his young son Clovis. Eventually, this separation from his wife became permanent. In Paris, Gauguin experienced serious economic difficulties that he tried to resolve by asking Durand-Ruel to buy back a Renoir and a Monet from his own collection. We know that during the month of June he lived in the house of his friend Schuffenecker and his family, at number 29 of rue Bolard. It was at this point that he painted this Vase of Flowers.

The choice of objects for this still-life-the Neo-Classical vase of porcelain with a mythological figure, the flowers, the coloured shawl and the half-hidden book-suggest a refined, albeit slightly conventional taste. The design is more naturalistic and less simplified than in other still-lifes painted in the same period, such as the Still-life with a Vase of Japanese Peonies and a Mandolin (Paris, Musée d'Orsay). Compared to other works of the same period, the present composition has a fresher, less abstract character and a spontaneity that is more impressionistic. Such features are undoubtedly due to the fact that, more than a painting, it is a life-size study, evident in its small format.

Particularly notable is the dense texture of the paint in the background, achieved through the use of parallel strokes. This is a technique derived from Cézanne, whom Gauguin met in the circle of Pissarro. The sombre and dramatic harmony of the colours, based on the contrast between the light and luminous touches of the flower and the greens and dark blues of the background, is also comparable to the dark Romanticism of Cézanne's early work. In a famous letter to Schuffenecker, written in Copenhagen just a few weeks earlier, Gauguin evoked the example of Cézanne, in whose painting "the colour is grave like the character of the Orientals."

Guillermo Solana

19th Century19th Century - French paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Paul Gauguin - Diez maestros de la Colección Carmen Thyssen

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Lilas. Paul Gauguin
Lilacs
Paul Gauguin

©

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Lilas. Paul Gauguin
Lilacs
Paul Gauguin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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