Paul Gauguin

Francisco Durrieu de Madron (Paco Durrio)
Charles Gillet, Lausanne
Galerie Prouté, Paris
Marie Matisse, Paris 
Sale: Martinot & Savignat, Pontoise, December 15, 2001, lot 217
Thomas Gibson Fine Art, London
Acquired from the above

Paris, Grand Palais, Salon d'Automne, 4ème exposition: oeuvres de Gauguin, 1906, no. 118 (possibly)
London, The Leicester Galleries, The Durrio Collection of Works by Gauguin, 1931, n.n. (possibly)
Perpignan, Salle Maillol, Palais des congrès, 1894-1908: Le Roussillon à l’origine de l’art moderne, 1998, n.n. 

Executed on cream wove paper which has not been laid down. It has been hinged to the mat at all four corners. There is some light uniform time darkening to the paper, with a band of lighter paper around the periphery previously hidden by an earlier mat. There are some light spots of foxing in the upper right background and lower right corner. There is minor surface dirt in the background on the left of the figure. There is a light stain to the lower left corner. The right edges have a series of tiny nicks to the paper where the sheet has been detached from the notebook, these are intrinsic to the work. The pigments are fresh and strong. The work is in largely very good condition.
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The subject of this exquisite drawing is a sympathetically rendered young Tahitian woman at ease, seemingly unaware of being observed. Most likely drawing from life, the artist has depicted her in the traditional pareu, a unisex garment knotted at the waist, and a simple white sleeveless blouse. Gauguin was a prolific draughtsman, making sketches and more highly finished drawings throughout his career. He considered these masterful works on paper extremely personal to his artistic practice and rarely shared them with outsiders. Instead he drew on them extensively for various projects, adapting elements and simplifying compositions to suit his needs.

Tahitienne assise likely once formed part of a sketchbook and was executed circa 1891 soon after the artist’s arrival in Tahiti. The world he found on the Pacific island was a mixture of the unspoilt exoticism he sought when he departed on his ambitious voyage, combined with the sobering influence of European culture and encroaching Christian missionaries. The figure’s simple and modest dress is particularly indicative of this Western influence on the local population. The artist spent his days keenly observing his new surroundings and making many drawings in monochrome and watercolor, most of which he would return to years later and incorporate into his work.

Gauguin uses this figure, albeit reversed, in a monotype pasted to the back of folio 65 of his travelogue Noa Noa, published in 1901. Most significantly, he placed her, only slightly modified (her skirt is now plain blue but still bordered with white), into the left middle ground of one of the most important multi-figure compositions of his second Tahitian voyage, Nave Nave Mahana (or Jours délicieux) in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (see fig. 1).

The watercolor’s first recorded owner was Basque sculptor Francisco Durrio (1868-1940). Durrio assembled a large and important collection of works by Gauguin, beginning in 1894-95 when Gauguin was clearing out his Parisian studio and preparing for his return to Tahiti. The present drawing is thought to have entered the Durrio Collection at a later date since Gauguin seems to have had this work with him during his second Tahitian sejour and while he worked on Nave Nave Mahana in 1896. Durrio was a close friend of Picasso's and this work may well have contributed to the Spanish modernist's appreciation of Gauguin's work.