To: Gauguin who wrote (42921 ) 11/28/1999 9:35:00 PM From: Ilaine Read Replies (2) | Respond to
I saw something very sad today. We went to Baltimore, to the Walters and the Baltimore Museum of Art ~ at the BMA is a show of Impressionist portraits, excellent, I need to go back to see it again, some really good stuff. The thing that made me sad was Gauguin's portrait of his son, Clovis. I didn't realize that the stockmarket crashed when Gauguin was just getting started as a painter, and he was left destitute (you knew he was a stockbroker, I am sure). And his wife moved back to somewhere in Scandinavia, Denmark, or something, with all the kids, and Gauguin went too, but less than a year later moved back to Paris with Clovis, his favorite. And apparently they were very hard up. The sad thing was a bit of a letter he sent his wife, saying something like "Clovis is such a hero! When we sit down to a supper of a crust of bread and a little relish, he is no longer greedy as he used to be. He doesn't ask for anything else, and afterwards he doesn't ask to play, he goes right to bed!" After reading this, I hate Gauguin. Sorry. He had money for paint, but not to feed his family properly. I am sure that to an artist, a painting is worth any number of children, which is why I will never be an artist, I guess. But now I love Rousseau more than ever, he ran a train station, and I don't think his children ever went hungry.
