Paul GAUGUIN - “La Tueuse is an exceptional piece”

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Autograph letter signed to Ambroise Vollard

Two pages in-4°. Slight traces of folding.

Tahiti. April 1897.

“It seems to me that my large ceramic statue of the Slayer is an exceptional piece that no ceramist has made to date. »

Important letter from Gauguin to his dealer Ambroise Vollard – the first sent from Tahiti – detailing the extent of his artistic work and praising the exceptional beauty of his Slayer , one of his most famous works, the Oviri sculpture.

“Dear Mr. Vollard, I received your letter with many requests, many offers, but I am unable to unravel its true substance. I don't have any old drawings here , I left everything to Chaudet who is in charge of my business, and new ones.. I haven't yet found the trick of sales drawings like Mauffra. If I'm lucky, I'll send them to you. Why is it impossible to make prints on transfer paper? On the contrary, I believe that it is the most practical thing from Tahiti to Paris. As for the retouching on stone, Séguin would do it very well, especially since in this matter like any other I do not seek and find perfection of workmanship (there is no shortage of makers of own lithography ).

So if you feel like it, send paper and money: these are risks and advances, I know. But I can't always work in advance, especially since during my stay in Paris I did trial work, prints, engravings and all without any financial results. So I'm right to be skeptical about this. You also want carved wood, bronze models, etc. For four years all these objects have been in Paris without any sale; or they are bad and then those that I make again will also be unsaleable, or they are objects of art – why don't you sell them?

However, it seems to me that my large ceramic statue of the Slayer is an exceptional piece that no ceramist has made to date and that, moreover, in bronze (unretouched and unpatinated) it would be very good. Which means that the buyer would also have a bronze edition . And the savage head mask, what a beautiful bronze that would make and inexpensive. I'm sure you would easily find 30 amateurs at 100 f. which would be 3000 f. after deduction of costs 2000 f. more the rest. So look at that. While waiting for the pleasure of hearing from you, I send you my best regards. P. Gauguin. Some bad attempts at wood engraving; but my eyes get very bad for this kind of work. I don't have good wood and print!!! no press. »

Oviri. The killer. In the winter of 1894, Gauguin brought to life Oviri (“Wild”), a large ceramic in the shape of a vase, depicting a hallucinated woman slaying a wolf lying at her feet. The Slayer, as he called her, was one of his greatest prides as a creator. “I was the first to launch ceramic sculpture,” he wrote. The clay test remains the dearest to him, to the point of wishing that it watches over his last sleep. It is ultimately a bronze version of the work which adorns his tomb in the Marquesas. Oviri was exhibited in Paris during the major Gauguin retrospective of 1906, and would have had a strong impact on Picasso, who would have been inspired by it for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Despite the acid tone of this letter, Vollard was for Gauguin a source of income that he could not do without. The year following this letter, the gallery owner organized an exhibition of Gauguin's works in his Parisian gallery where he showed for the first time the artist's most famous painting: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going ?