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Description
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GAUGUIN, Paul (1848-1903). Autograph letter signed ('Paul Gauguin') to Daniel [de Monfreid], n.p. [Tahiti], November 1895, 31/2 pages, 4to, bifolium (some staining and browning). HIS NEW HOUSE IN TAHITI, SEXUAL RELATIONS AND MONEY TROUBLES. Since his return to Tahiti (in September), Gauguin has done little painting ('je n'ai pas encore touche un pinceau si ce n'est pour faire un vitrail dans mon atelier'), but he has built a Tahitian-style house with which he is delighted, and which he describes in detail. Another distraction has been the local girls who 'invade my bed', though he is now resolved to settle down and work more seriously: 'Toutes les nuits des gamines endiablees envahissent mon lit; j'en avais hier trois pour fonctionner. Je vais cesser cette vie de patachon pour prendre une femme serieuse a la maison et travailler d'arrache pied'. As for his ex-wife, she has remarried, meaning Gauguin was obliged to cuckold her husband when last in Paris ('Mon ancienne femme s'est mariee en mon absence et j'ai ete oblige de cocufier son mari, mais elle ne peut pas habiter avec moi, malgre une fugue de 8 jours qu'elle a faite'). The letter continues with a sequence of complaints about Gauguin's money troubles and his lack of correspondence, entrusting Monfreid with various tasks. News of his friend's divorce prompts reflections on the futility of marriage, 'this stupid institution' which he fears is about to afflict their friend Aristide Maillol, and the letter concludes with a display of contemptuous bravado with regard to family ties, and an invocation of Michelangelo: 'Que d'ennuis on se cree fatalement avec le mariage cette stupide institution ... Que ma famille se demerde toute seule car s'il n'y a que moi pour l'aider!!! ... Ah oui je suis un grand criminel, qu'importe -- Michel-Ange aussi et je ne suis pas Michel-Ange'. Georges-Daniel de Monfreid (1856-1929) was Gauguin's most faithful friend and correspondent during his last years in the Pacific, receiving 84 letters from the painter during this time (Lettres a Daniel de Monfreid, ed. Annie Joly-Segalen (Paris, 1950)).
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