.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
La maison blanche was painted during Paul Gauguin's stay in Dieppe during the Summer of 1885, at a pivotal moment in his life and his career. This was an incredibly productive period, a final flush of Impressionism, coming only the year before his first stay in Brittany, which would soon see him take a very different path and move towards his Synthetist aesthetic. In this light, it is only too appropriate that La maison blanche may have appeared, under the title Le château de l'Anglaise, in the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition - the first in which Gauguin had shown his work. It seems all the more likely that this picture was shown then if, as Richard Brettell suggested, the other contender for that title, which appears to show the same building in the background, was in fact exhibited as Près de la ferme; that work was formerly in the Portland Art Museum (see R. Brettell & A.B. Fonsmark, Gauguin and Impressionism, exh. cat., Fort Worth & Copenhagen, 2005, p. 264; also D. Wildenstein, Gauguin, Prémier itinéraire d'un sauvage, Catalogue de l'oeuvre peint, vol. I, 1873-1888, Paris, 2001, p. 221).
Gauguin went to Dieppe shortly after his return to France after the debacle of his stay in Copenhagen, where he had gone with his Danish wife Mette and their family. While in Copenhagen, tensions between the artist and his wife, her family and their acquaintances had come to a head, marking the beginning of a permanent rift between them. Gauguin had little money and took recourse to selling pictures, both his own and those of the artists he so admired which he had collected over the years during his time as a patron of Impressionism. Looking at La maison blanche, the importance of the works in his collection appears clear in the relationship between this composition and those of Paul Cézanne, several of whose works he owned. This is especially the case in the broken screen of trees through which the white house of the title, apparently typical of the locality, appears.
In September 1885, Gauguin wrote to his great mentor Camille Pissarro: 'I'm just back from Dieppe where I spent three months with a friend who put me up. Of course I did a lot of work but there were lots of obstacles given that it's a long way from the countryside which means motifs were rather lacking' (see ibid., p. 213). It is unknown why Gauguin made such a mystery of his movements in Dieppe during his campaign there, which lasted from June or July through to September. In the catalogue raisonné of his work, it has been suggested that the Englishwoman after whom one of his pictures, probably this one, was named may have played some role in his life or accommodation. He may have obfuscated the details of his hosts because they played some part in the conflict between him and his wife, or between other members of Mette's family (see ibid., p. 213). Nonetheless, during his time in Dieppe, Gauguin painted with incredible variety and enthusiasm, including a number of daring vertical landscapes such as La maison blanche, and exhibited several of these works at his first showing alongside the Impressionists, marking his own approval of them.
Gauguin went to Dieppe shortly after his return to France after the debacle of his stay in Copenhagen, where he had gone with his Danish wife Mette and their family. While in Copenhagen, tensions between the artist and his wife, her family and their acquaintances had come to a head, marking the beginning of a permanent rift between them. Gauguin had little money and took recourse to selling pictures, both his own and those of the artists he so admired which he had collected over the years during his time as a patron of Impressionism. Looking at La maison blanche, the importance of the works in his collection appears clear in the relationship between this composition and those of Paul Cézanne, several of whose works he owned. This is especially the case in the broken screen of trees through which the white house of the title, apparently typical of the locality, appears.
In September 1885, Gauguin wrote to his great mentor Camille Pissarro: 'I'm just back from Dieppe where I spent three months with a friend who put me up. Of course I did a lot of work but there were lots of obstacles given that it's a long way from the countryside which means motifs were rather lacking' (see ibid., p. 213). It is unknown why Gauguin made such a mystery of his movements in Dieppe during his campaign there, which lasted from June or July through to September. In the catalogue raisonné of his work, it has been suggested that the Englishwoman after whom one of his pictures, probably this one, was named may have played some role in his life or accommodation. He may have obfuscated the details of his hosts because they played some part in the conflict between him and his wife, or between other members of Mette's family (see ibid., p. 213). Nonetheless, during his time in Dieppe, Gauguin painted with incredible variety and enthusiasm, including a number of daring vertical landscapes such as La maison blanche, and exhibited several of these works at his first showing alongside the Impressionists, marking his own approval of them.