Chapter 3

EARLY PAINTINGS

           There is a room in the Maillol Museum in Paris where the tableaux Maillol painted around 1890 are gathered.  Maillol was in his late twenties when he painted these tableaux.  Walking into the room, one would feel as if the room were filled with the light and the breeze of the first day of the summer.  Girls and young women are looking into their inner self.  The world is silent.  The time is stopped.  We are facing the eternal now. 

           Creative activities of Maillol recorded a sudden surge in 1889: “A crown of flowers” (1889, previously at the Josefowitz collection), “Portrait of Jeanne Faraill” (1889-1890, private collection), “Miss Faraill wearing a hat” (1890, Maillol Museum), “A crowned child” (same), “Head of a woman” (same), “Two young girls” (same), “Young girl wearing a black hat” (same), “Profile of a woman” (1890, Hyachinthe Rigaud Museum), “Bust of a country girl” (1891, Reims Museum).

           This explosion was ignited by the encounter with works of Gauguin at the “Impressionist synthetist painters’ exhibition” at the Café Volpini in May 1889. 

 

“Gauguin’s painting was a revelation to me.  L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, instead of leading me to the light, had led me away from it.  When I looked at Gauguin’s pictures of Pont-Aven, I felt inspired by the same spirit which had prompted his work.” (Rewald 1939, p.10)

“It was Gauguin and Maurice Denis who, after I left the school, opened my eyes.  Thanks to them, I succeeded to clear the first hurdle.” (Cladel 1937, p.33)

“My advice to the beginners has always been, ‘Start by copying masters.’  In the period when I was at a loss, one day I said to myself, ‘I shall do a Gauguin.’  And I worked in Gauguin’s way.  This gave me an idea, you know.  This made me get out of mumbling.  It is necessary to have an aim.  Then, one would forget it and start doing something else on one’s own.  But an idea on what is the art remained with me.”  (Frère 1956, p.221)

The year before, 1888, was the year Gauguin saw Van Gogh cutting an ear, the year the denial of Impressionism suddenly emerged in Gauguin’s tableaux.  Gauguin had just met Gauguin himself.  In his later letter, he recalled, “At that time, I was trying to try everything and liberate a new generation.” (Gauguin 1946, p.294-295)  Gauguin intended to liberate a new generation, and Maillol did felt he was liberated by Gauguin.

The tableaux of Maillol at this period have some common elements with those of Gauguin:  luminous colours, flat and decorative composition, etc.  However, while tableaux of Gauguin look embedded with a complex philosophy, those by Maillol look utterly lyrical.  What one would sense behind Gauguin’s tableau is a man of middle age with a difficult and troublesome ego, while stood behind Maillol’s tableau is a child playing by himself on seashore.  Later, Gauguin said to Maillol, “You have a heart of gold.” (Rewald 1939, p.11)  Octave Mirbeau said of Maillol “He has a clear soul, clear as the soul of a person who has never been troubled by bad desires.” (Mirbeau 1921, p.24)   Maillol’s tableaux show us what these words meant.

“At that period I painted several female heads.  They were good but most of them were lost.  I do not know where they are now.  Among them, a painting of a young woman with a flower crown on her head was, if I am not mistaken, good.” (Kessler 1961, p.562)

Maillol’s interest moved to tapestries around 1892 (around the age of 30), and in his paintings he started to focus mainly on designs for tapestries.  Nevertheless, he painted two tableaux with earlier lyric style after this change: “A seated woman with a parasol” (Maillol Museum) in 1895 (at the age of 33) and “A woman with a parasol” (Orsay Museum) in 1900 (at the age of 38).  Standing in front of them, one would feel the solitude of a young woman staying amid the silence in the afternoon of a clear sunny day.  These works, which mark the end of the period of his early paintings, already contain something common to the solitude of La Méditerranée. 

Gauguin left France in April 1891 for his first stay in Tahiti.  Thanks to the introduction by a painter Daniel de Monfreid, Maillol could meet him before the departure.  Gauguin was at the age of forty-five, and Maillol thirty-one.  Maillol was a dedicated follower of Gauguin, believing “What I was doing would be satisfactory if Gauguin were to approve of it.”(Rewald 1939, p.10)  Gauguin, however, seems to have kept certain distance to Maillol.

When Maillol was hospitalised, Gauguin urged all of their common friends to visit Maillol, but he himself did not go.  Nevertheless, Maillol chose Gauguin as the first person to visit after he had left the hospital.  Gauguin in his second stay in Tahiti often wrote to Daniel de Monfreid referring to Maillol: “You have not written on Maillol recently.  Is he still producing masterpieces of tapestries?” (May 1899)  “It is deplorable that poor Maillol is suffering from his extreme poverty.  He is an artist, a man of gold heart.” (August 1899)  “I am deeply pleased with the success of the first one man show of Maillol, who is an excellent artist.” (October 1902)  Gauguin often concluded his letters by saying “Please give my best regard to Maillol.”  However, it does not seem that Gauguin wrote to Maillol himself.

Maillol once said on Gauguin, “He was as gentle as a lamb, speaking very little.” (Rewald 1975, p.10)　　

This remark is in sharp contrast with what van Gogh told in his letter to his brother.  “The arguments between us two are like terrible electricity.  Sometimes we get out of our arguments with exhausted minds, as exhausted as batteries which discharged all their electricity.”

           Why did Gauguin maintain certain distance to Maillol?  It might have been because the two were different in age and personality.  It might have been because Gauguin left for Tahiti soon after they had come to know each other.  One might also speculate that Gauguin had some hesitation due to his bitter experience in the past.

“Some of my friends, who were very intimate with me and often had discussion with me, somehow happened to go insane.  It was the case with Gogh brothers. People, with or without malign intention, blamed me for this.  What childish blame.  True, some may exert certain influence on others.  Driving someone insane, however, is another matter.”

           Just a while before Gauguin met Maillol, Vincent van Gogh had committed suicide and his brother Theo van Gogh had died in a mental hospital.  Strindberg was also in an abnormal mental condition.  In one of his plays, Strindberg narrated a story of a professor driving a painter mad by intensive discussions, but what Strindberg was afraid of might have been the case of a professor driven mad by a painter.