Paul Gauguin as far as I am concerned was a great artist. He was highly original and was a wonderful painter of many portrait styles. His paintings can seem brittle and a little cold, because of the application and the colour selection. He was not as intense or as suffering as his friend Vincent van Gogh. Side by side you would probably think that Vincent's work would appear more profound. However, Gauguin had a special quality of ironic romanticism in his paintings. They were haunting in a way, and he deliberately distorted nature by enclosing broad, flat areas of colour with heavy contours. In his paintings, Gauguin idealized the peoples of the South Sea islands. He portrayed them as gentle and passive, moving as if in a dream. In this painting, he applies the rich tropical setting in brilliant pure colours. His work takes you to where he was, in an unsettling rhapsody. They strongly appealed to the collector Samuel Courtauld, which is why some of his best works are currently in London – the show is in the Courtauld Gallery, London, from 20th of June until 8 September 2013.
Andrew Ioannidis
Andrew Ioannidis
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