Paul GAUGUIN (France / 1848-1903) - Lot 24

Lot n° 24
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Estimation :
150000 - 200000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 220 500EUR
Paul GAUGUIN (France / 1848-1903) - Lot 24
Paul GAUGUIN (France / 1848-1903) Paris, the rolling bridge along the Seine and the Quai de Grenelle, ca. 1875 Oil on paper mounted on canvas On the reverse of the sheet, handwritten note attributed to Mette Gauguin, wife of the artist: "Cette oeuvre est faite par Paul Gauguin en 1876 à Paris / M Gauguin / 29.09.05" [This note is hidden by the marouflage]. 35.5 x 49.2 cm Bibliography: - D. Wildenstein, "Gauguin, Premier itinéraire d'un sauvage. Catalog de l'oeuvre peint (1873-1888)", Ed. Wildenstein Institute and Skira, Paris and Milan, 2001, vol. I, p. 21, no. 20 (the present work mentioned in the entry for "Pont roulant au bord de la Seine": "This is one of the first large-format works that Gauguin painted. [...] We voiced our suspicion that it was a montage of several earlier studies, and so it has proved; the central component, a previously unknown oil study on paper of the travelling crane, has since reappeared"). Provenance : - Louis Bausil (1876-1945), Perpignan (Louis Bausil was a painter and friend of Gauguin). - Albert Bausil (1881-1943), Perpignan (brother of the former, by inheritance before 1943. Albert Bausil was a writer and journalist). - Charles Trenet (1913-2001), Paris (probably a gift from the previous owner, Charles Trenet was a singer and composer). - Sale, Hôtel des ventes de Douai (maîtres Declerck Beghin), March 24, 2002, lot 32. - Private collection, Switzerland (acquired during this sale). A certificate of inclusion in the Catalogue Raisonné of Paul Gauguin from the Institut Wildenstein / Sylvie Crussard no. 01.11.19/8232/C14C dated November 19, 2001 will be given to the buyer. A certificate of inclusion in the Catalogue Raisonné of Paul Gauguin from the Institut Wildenstein-Plattner no. 24.09.30 / 21646 dated October 3, 2024 will be given to the buyer. * This work is sold as a temporary import with a 5.5% fee in addition to the hammer price. In 1875, while Gauguin was still working as a stockbroker - in which he enjoyed some success - painting became an increasingly important part of his life. His subjects diversified. Since January, he has been living at 54 rue de Chaillot, a ten-minute walk from the Seine, and has to cross the Pont d'Iéna to get home. An avid sailor (he had tried unsuccessfully to enter the Ecole Navale), Gauguin became an attentive witness to Parisian river activity, from the Pont d'Iéna to the Pont de Javel. The artist painted the banks of the Seine on at least a dozen occasions, the Seine becoming the most important subject of Gauguin's Parisian landscapes, and one into which the present work fits. With "Le pont roulant", Gauguin chooses to paint Parisian modernity as few of his contemporaries did, and demonstrates the formidable independence of spirit that characterizes him as an artist. Here, Gauguin focuses on the architecture of a mobile crane, unloading goods from barges at the Cail metallurgy works, whose smokestacks can be seen in the background, between the Pont d'Iéna and the Pont de Grenelle. Aesthetically close to a Jongkind, a Boudin or even a Stanislas Lépine of the same period, the young Gauguin broke new ground by depicting the everyday life of a developing, working-class and industrial Paris, far removed from conventional picturesque representations. Rediscovered in the early 2000s, "Le pont roulant" is an accomplished study for one of Gauguin's first monumental canvases, "Le Pont roulant au bord de la Seine", painted in 1875. The sober, naturalistic treatment of the final canvas offers a striking contrast with this first thought, painted on the spot and in front of the motif with much greater freedom, and a chromatic freshness typical of the most innovative Impressionist works. It also reveals Gauguin's growing artistic ambition, as he paints this subject with the idea of exhibiting it at the Salon, which he does the following year with "La Seine au pont d'Iéna" from 1876.
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