the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt six)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

The Fitzgeralds and the Murphys had seen a great deal of one another in Paris in the winter of 1925-26, during which time Sara and Gerald had assumed, more or less unwittingly, the role of friendly guardians. A decade older than the Fitzgeralds, they looked upon Scott and Zelda’s baroque exploits with a mixture of tolerant amusement and genuine concern, and the Fitzgeralds, for their part, often went out of their way to try to shock the Murphys. Scott could not bear to be ignored. If he felt that Sara was not paying enough attention to him, he would do something to upset her. One afternoon in Paris, while riding in a taxi with Sara and Zelda, he pulled out some filthy hundred-franc notes and began putting them in his mouth and chewing them. Sara, whose fear of germs was so intense that she always draped the railway compartments her family traveled in with her own clean sheets, was predictably horrified.

Even in the early days it was an unusual friendship. The two couples had almost nothing in common except their great affection for each other. Neither Scott nor Zelda seemed to have the slightest interest in the art, the music, the ballet, or even the literature of the period; Scott knew the American writers in Paris, and spent a large part of his time that winter getting Hemingway recognized, but he met few Europeans, and he never learned to speak more than a few words of French, which he made not the slightest effort to pronounce correctly. The simpler aspects of the Murphys’ life at Antibes—their cultivation of the life of the senses—never appealed to Fitzgerald at all. He scarcely noticed what he was eating or drinking. He stayed out of the sun as much as possible, and his skin never lost its dead-white pallor. When the others on the beach went in swimming, Scott would get up, take a flat running dive into the shallow water, and come right out again. He never showed any curiosity about Murphy’s painting, which he appeared to consider a mere diversion. Gerald, for his part, was not particularly impressed with Fitzgerald as a writer. He had not cared much for The Great Gatsby (Sara had), and neither of them read the Fitzgerald stories that were appearing—infrequently, just then—in the Saturday Evening Post. “The one we took seriously was Ernest, not Scott,” Murphy said. “I suppose it was because Ernest’s work seemed contemporary and new, and Scott’s didn’t.”

the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt five)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

In the early twenties Antibes was still a sleepy provincial village. The telephone service shut down for two hours at noon and ceased altogether at seven p.m. The local movie house operated only once a week, and had a piano player who performed with a cigarette dangling from his lip; Léger loved the place, which he said “smelled of feet.” There was a new little casino in Juan-les-Pins, where the Murphys and their friends sometimes went in the evenings. The long, quiet days centered on the beach, the garden, and the port, where from 1925 on the Murphys kept a boat. They loved to cruise and had a succession of boats, beginning with a small sloop, the Picaflor, progressing through a somewhat larger one, named for Honoria, and culminating in the hundred-foot schooner Weatherbird, which was signed and built by a member of the Diaghilev ballet troupe, Vladimir Orloff, who had attached himself to the Murphy family in Paris and had come down to live in Antibes when they built the Villa America. Orloff, the son of a Russian nobleman who managed the private bank account of the Tsarina, had seen his father murdered by the Bolsheviks soon after the October Revolution; escaping from Russia, he had made his way to France, where, like so many of the young White Russian émigrés, he gravitated to Diaghilev. He worked for Diaghilev as a set designer, but his real métier, born of a childhood spent on his grandfather’s yachts on the Black Sea, was naval architecture. He designed the Weatherbird along the lines of the American clipper ships, which he considered the most beautiful vessels ever launched. The Weatherbird took its name from a Louis Armstrong record with that title, which the Murphys had sealed in its keel.

the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt four)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

Later on, in August, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald arrived. The Murphys had met the Fitzgeralds in Paris that spring. Scott and Zelda had announced that they were fleeing the hectic social life on Long Island, and in June they settled in St.-Raphaël, where they planned to live on “practically nothing a year.” When they came over to visit the Murphys at the Hôtel du Cap, it was evident that the quiet life had so far eluded them. Zelda had fallen in love with a French aviator. Although Scott had found out about it and the affair had been broken off, both of them were on edge. One night, after everyone had gone to bed, the Murphys were awakened by Scott, who stood outside their door with a candle in his violently trembling hand. “Zelda’s sick,” he said; he added in a tense voice, as they hurried down the hall, “I don’t think she did it on purpose.” She had swallowed a large, but not fatal, quantity of sleeping pills, and they had to spend the rest of the night walking her up and down to keep her awake. For the Murphys, it was the first of many experiences with the Fitzgeralds’ urge toward self-destruction. Later in their stay, when Sara remonstrated them for their dangerous habit of coming back late from parties and then, on Zelda’s initiative, diving into the sea from thirty-five-foot rocks, Zelda turned her wide, penetrating eyes on her and said innocently, “But, Sara”—she pronounced it “Say-ra”—“didn’t you know? We don’t believe in conservation.”

the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt three)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

The Murphy’s regular companions that summer were Picasso and his first wife, Olga; their young son, Paolo; and Picasso’s elderly mother, Señora Maria Ruiz. They had come down to visit the Murphys at the Hôtel du Cap and had liked the region so much that they took a villa in nearby Antilles. Olga had been a deuxième ballerina in the Diaghilev company. She was a pretty girl with a button mouth and a thin nose, who agreed with everything prosaic—qualities that Picasso appeared to relish at the time. (Later, when he had left her, she followed him around Paris for three days with a revolver; eventually she went mad.) Señora Ruiz spoke no French at all, only Spanish, but the Murphys got on splendidly with her.

the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt two)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

Murphy loved to describe his first meeting with Cole Porter: “There was this barbaric custom of going around to the rooms of the sophomores, and talking with them to see which ones would be proper material for the fraternities. I remember going around with Gordon Hamilton, the handsomest and most sophisticated boy in our class, and seeing, two night running, a sign on one sophomore’s door saying, ‘Back at 10 p.m. Gone to football song practice.’ Hamilton was enormously irritated that anyone would have the gall to be out of his room on visiting night, and he decided not to call again on this particular sophomore. But one night as I was passing his room I saw a light and went in. I can still see that room—there was a single electric light bulb in the ceiling, and a piano with a box of caramels on it, and wicker furniture, which was considered a bad sign at Yale in 1911. And sitting at the piano was a little boy from Peru, Indiana, in a checked suit and a salmon tie, with his hair parted in the middle and slicked down, looking just like a Westerner all dressed up for the East. We had a long talk, about music, and composers—we were both crazy about Gilbert and Sullivan—and I found out that he lived on an enormous apple farm and that he had a cousin named Desdemona. He also told me that the song he had submitted for the football song competition had just been accepted. It was called ‘Bulldog,’ and of course it made him famous.

Famous, but not entirely accepted at Yale. Although he received the second largest personal allowance of any boy in his class (the largest was Leonard Hanna’s), Cole Porter did not fit easily into the social mold of a Yale man. At Murphy’s insistence, however, he was elected to DKE that year, and soon afterward Murphy persuaded the glee club, of which he was manager, to take Porter in as a sophomore—something that was never done—so that he could sing a new song he had written on the glee club’s tour that spring. The song was the hit of the show. It was a satire on the joys of owning an automobile, and Porter came out in front of the curtain to sing it in the next-to-closing spot, with his hands folded behind him, while the seniors and juniors behind him on the stage went “zoom, zoom, zoom.”

the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt one)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

By the time she was sixteen Sara Sherman Wiborg (she was named for General William Tecumseh Sherman, her mother’s favorite uncle) had learned to speak fluent French, German, and Italian. She was not in the slightest degree impressed by fashionable society, however, and she said just what she thought to everyone. “I love Sara,” Lady Diana said to Mrs. Wiborg. “She’s a cat who goes her own way.” Sara became a great favorite of her mother’s friend Stella Campbell (Mrs. Patrick Campbell), who used to insist that Sara accompany her when she went to buy clothes for one of her theatrical roles. “Sara, darling,” she would say, in her deep, Italianate voice, “does the dress walk? Or does it make me look just like a cigar?” Gerald Murphy said once that although he had known Sara for eleven years before they were married and could hardly relate an incident in his life in which she did not play a part, she had remained so essentially and naively original that “to this day I have no idea what she will do, say, or propose.”

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt eleven)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

We were discussing if Charlton Heston became a saint. “You idealize these people, Storey,” said Hobby. “They’re not so great. Just read the lives of the saints. You’ve find out they’re not so saintly.”

“But maybe they are so saintly.”

He looked at me sideways, askance, with those blue eyes. “You worry me. Look. Nine out of every ten people are crumbs.”

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt ten)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Nuts call up on the sports radio channel and they say, “Chris, I’ve had it. But I’m in the Rotisserie League, and I’ve made a trade—Strawberry, McReynolds, and Darling for Tim Raines.” Then the announcer says, dead serious, “Really? How’s it working out for you?” etc. etc. and they get in long conversations about it.

So what is going on in my Rotisserie League? Well, I’ll tell you. My team is the New York team, with the listless manager. In my team, he was not fired. Listless, but stalwart, elegant, not a coward, can do the job. Then, a player from last year who agonized over his retirement because he was aging, thirty-six, and then was traded away, who had been known as the heart of the team, who was dashing and glamorous and dark, with a mustache, came back as the first-base coach—we are grooming him to be the manager. The players are elated about it. Strawberry talked to him for hours. As they chain-smoked in the dugout. My dugout is vice-ridden but I like it that way. And I’m the owner, see? Everyone chain-smokes, they play cards, they drink bourbon, they’re allowed to, it’s fun, my manager doesn’t enforce discipline, he doesn't have to, because the players respect him, like a father, and he may be listless, but he is stalwart, and gets the job done.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt nine)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Actually they did have baseball in New Orleans once. It was about fifty years ago. They were the Pelicans, a minor-league team. Hobby’s father used to go to the games as a boy. His uncle would take him. Hobby’s father was shocked because in the box next to theirs was a priest who smoked cigars, drank beer, and cursed. Mostly, he cursed.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt eight)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Some people say it is a more antiquated, droll or quaint sport than football, say, being more representative of a sort of bygone era. Football for its violence is more beloved in the South, where they don’t have baseball. Whereas I would think that baseball would suit the South, being rather courtly. But it is more mental or cerebral, than football, say, and that does not suit the South. But even if baseball is more cerebral, everyone is certainly an emotional wreck by the end of the season, agonizing over it all.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt seven)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

New Orleans is very beautiful and very painful. New York is not that beautiful and not that painful. It is just a normal American town. Whereas New Orleans has a caliber of beauty among the massive oaks, at times a vision of paradise, but there is an unvarnished truth about it, and there are your memories and those held dear. I miss the society of my beloved father. I am pursued by my memories. I might be on the midnight train from Penn Station populated by wino lunatics on my way to Orient through the summer crowds, but in my mind’s eye I must set my sights on that white white house beside the palm tree in New Orleans, with its sweet gaiety. I must find my way back.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt six)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Hobby and I had left the office late, to go out that night to the ball park, which had been named, oddly enough, for a pitcher from Louisiana, Sportsman’s Paradise. It was a glamorous night in New York. The temperature was ninety degrees. I take a perverse satisfaction in the heat because the Northerners can’t stand it, they’re not used to it, whereas the Southerners are. Also it was humid and the sky was a thick cobalt blue as night fell.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt five)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

He was telling me about a pitcher who thought it was his day off and took LSD. He happened to hear on the radio that his team was playing that night in Chicago—which he had forgotten. So he hopped on a plane to Chicago tripping on LSD and pitched a no-hitter.

Later he was on trial and told the judge that when you’re on LSD in a ball game, it makes the ball look like a grapefruit when it’s coming at you so it’s easier to hit.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt four)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

Friday evening after work, the young men go to the baseball games, in their suits and ties and sunglasses, having plain American fun. It touches my heart, because they don’t have plain American fun where I come from, it is too exotic and remote for that, it is the dark side. They don’t have baseball in New Orleans. It’s not normal enough to have baseball.

In New York I learned quite a bit about baseball as to many a Northerner it is his great love. But what interested me about it was not perhaps the same thing that interested them. I like how all the ball players have marital problems and personality problems and need sports psychiatrists, and especially in baseball where you don’t have to be that athletic or it’s not as strenuous in a way the players are all dissipated wrecks with drug problems, chain-smoking. That would maybe work in New Orleans. Baseball would maybe work in New Orleans because all the players are dissipated wrecks with troubled relationships with their fathers, chain-smoking. But they are tough guys. Except for when they retire, then they cry. The whole thing is an emotional roller coaster, at least for me, trying to keep up with their problems. That’s what I like about it.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt three)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

There were ancient unpainted houses crumbling on the Gulf beside huge palms, and plaques on the houses designating their old age with French heraldry—it being a French town, near to Mobile. Mardi Gras was begun there one midnight by some drunk young men who later brought it to New Orleans.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt two)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

It was hurricane season. There was the ceaseless news of hurricanes coming up from the Gulf Coast. Born-again Christians raved on the radio. There was a hint of disaster. The palm trees were slightly awry in the storm, leaning dangerously toward the old hotel, in the black night.

But the news of the hurricanes only made it more exciting, adding a certain dark gaiety, while the storm lashed against the palms.

the last book I ever read (Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann, excerpt one)

from Sportsman's Paradise: A Novel by Nancy Lemann:

“Guess what?” he said shyly. “There’s a continent called Nuttin and they make nuts there.”

“Oh really? Well, there’s a certain continent I know of called Europe, with a certain country called France, and a certain person that I know of forgot the whole entire thing.”

“Do you like cole slaw?” Al said urgently. “I don’t.”

Conversation with a three-year-old involves wide leaps among a disparate variety of subjects.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt sixteen)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

When the light of day had faded and he could no longer see the paper to write, Gauguin would get up to sit at his harmonium, playing into the dark. Ky Dong was sad to see his friend Gauguin depressed, spending long days peering through his spectacles to write down obsessive thoughts and seeming to have given up on making pictures. Ky Dong was no artist, but one day he took up a position at the easel and started, or pretended to start, to make a portrait of Gauguin.

This had the desired provocative effect of launching him from his bed to grab the brush from Ky Dong, take up a mirror and finish the portrait himself. It was his last self-portrait. Innovative as ever, Self-Portrait, 1903 looks forward, as well as back. Forward to his own death, back to the Graeco-Roman mummy portraits from Roman Egypt that he had seen decades ago in the Louvre, and that now he was referencing while he forged another link in the chain. He portrayed himself to the funerary formula: full face, limited colour palette, short Roman haircut, antique tunic, exaggerated highlights on forehead, cheek and throat. His temples are grizzled; his eyes behind the wire-rimmed spectacles are thoughtful and calm, as though fixed on another world. He gave the picture to Ky Dong.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt fifteen)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

Nothing gave Gauguin greater pleasure than de Monfreid’s report of a running duel in the salesroom between Degas and the collector Stanislas-Henri Rouart bidding against each other for Gauguin’s pictures. De Monfreid further reported that Degas had requested to be alerted in good time when shipments of Gauguin’s paintings were expected in Paris. ‘Write to him,’ said Gauguin. ‘I have always been afraid to do so, and with good cause. He would only think I was doing it for a purpose, and I know him. If he can, and wants to help me, he will do it more easily and more gladly of his own volition than if I were to ask him.’

Gauguin was starting to feel secure that a market in his paintings, though small, was steady. So it came as a shock when, in 1899, after receiving 1,000 francs from de Monfreid in January (half of which came from the sale of Nevermore to the composer Frederick Delius, a great devotee of Edgar Allan Poe), no money arrived throughout the rest of the year. By June, he was getting desperate.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt thirteen)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

But his heart had not killed him. He must take matters into his own hands.

‘I went into the mountains where my body would be devoured by ants. I had no revolver, but I had arsenic which I had saved up while I was so ill with eczema. Whether the dose was too strong or whether the vomiting counteracted the action of the poison, I don’t know; but after a night of terrible suffering, I returned home.’

It was the ultimate failure: he could not even manage to kill himself. Before the suicide attempt, when he had been lying in bed writing his religious testament, he had not had the strength or the will to paint, but now he felt an urgent need. Words were not enough to leave behind; he would paint his spiritual creed and confession. He gave it the title: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt twelve)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

For the first time in his life, he owned the land he lived on. It was a significant moment. This time, he would not build himself a draughty birdcage. He’d had enough of drenching rain driving in between the bamboos, enough of living beneath a plaited roof that blew away at a gust of wind when you needed it most. He commissioned a wooden house, or, rather, two houses. One for living and one for working. Consciously or not, he laid it out to resemble Rue Vercingétorix. The main house, the dwelling house, measured about nineteen metres by eight. It was raised up on metre-high piles to keep it clear of rodents and other marauding creatures, and to lift it above the waters when they rose in the rainy season. It was connected to the studio by a veranda commanding the sunset view. The walls and floor were constructed of sawn wooden planks. Wood was a very expensive material in Tahiti because most of it had to be imported from America. He had already paid 700 francs to purchase the plot. The cost of construction was so high that he had to put off paying the workmen in full.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt eleven)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

August Strindberg was still enlivening life in Rue Vercingétorix with his eccentric musical recitals and extravagant amateur theatricals that included a South Sea musical with ‘decorations’ by Gauguin and dances choreographed by the artistic director of the Folies Bergère. Strindberg was also the group’s expert on photography, a subject that had interested Gauguin since Nadar and Arosa’s pioneering collotypes. Gauguin bought a big box camera. Knowing his dislike of realist art, it is not surprising to discover that he did not use it for any serious purpose at all, certainly not in relation to his art, but simply to take jokey photographs of the bohemians dressing up and having fun. Mucha had also bought a camera, which he did use to more serious purpose, photographing the poses of models and using the photos as source material for his pictures.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt ten)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

It was a colourful party of eight that sunny breezy day in May. The artists Roderic O’Conor, Armand Séguin and Émile Jourdan brought their mistresses; Gauguin brought Annah and Taoa, her little monkey. A lovely long walk along the beach took them to the mossy bridge of roughly dressed stone connecting the mainland to the Ville Close, the medieval fortified island in the middle of the harbour. In Pont-Aven, where dressing up was a competitive game, the noisy group would not have turned a head, but in Concarneau’s stolid fishing community, exotic apparitions were not appreciated. A group of boys started following them, laughing, pointing and making rude gestures and obscene remarks. The party ignored them until a boy picked up a stone and threw it at them. Séguin went over to remonstrate; he pulled the boy’s ear. At a nearby café table a group of about fifteen men witnessed the incident. The group included the boy’s father. Rising to their feet with unmistakeable purpose, they made a rush towards the artists. The drumroll of their wooden clogs on the cobbles sent a white flurry of gulls screaming into the air. Annah’s parrot beat her wings in fear and panic. Séguin ran away from the advancing mob and jumped fully clothed into the harbour. Gauguin had not forgotten his boxing skills. With one blow he sent an attacker flying into the harbour. This was exciting. He dispatched several more into the water. And then he fell. Agony shot up his leg. It was impossible to get up. The thugs thundered towards his prone body to give him a kicking. He thought he must have fallen into a hole but in fact what had happened was that one of his assailants’ wooden clogs had shattered his shinbone and splintered several small bones in his ankle. They continued to kick him as he lay there. He put his arms up to shelter his head. All he could hear was stamping on the cobbles like pistol shots. The arrival of the gendarmes prevented Gauguin being kicked to death. He was lifted insensible on to a cart and taken back to Pont-Aven. The shinbone was sticking out of his leg through the skin. In the hospital they gave him morphine and set the leg as best they could.

He moved from the hospital to the Pension Gloanec as soon as was feasible. Through the months of August and September Gauguin lay there in bed in terrible pain, in a haze dulled by morphine. Taoa, the little monkey, cheered him; she was his playmate, companion and alter ego, and had even used to follow Gauguin into the water when he went swimming. But she ate the white flower of a yucca plant, poisonous to her kind, and she died. Soon after Taoa’s death, Annah left for Paris.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt nine)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

When, in July, Gauguin had written a letter encouraging Vincent to expect him, Vincent had spent one frenzied week in August painting the Sunflowers series for which he is so famous. Six Sunflowers, Fourteen Sunflowers, Fifteen Sunflowers. All achieved between 21 and 26 August. All for Gauguin. All composed of complementary colours. To hang in Gauguin’s room like a huge welcoming bouquet, as he wrote to Theo.

On one level, the Sunflowers are composite portraits of both men. They stand for Gauguin because they were the symbol of the Inca sun god of Peru and, following the return of the Spanish conquistadores in 1532, they had become the symbol of Peru in European iconography. But they were also a metaphorical self-portrait of Vincent himself. In Christian iconography, they hold a double significance, standing both for Christ as the light of the world, and for the questing soul that turns to the light to seek out the divine, just as the sunflower turns its head throughout the day to follow the sun on its journey through the heavens. This fused the meaning of sunflowers into a unified soul-portrait of both men.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt eight)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

Vincent’s psychotic episodes and mood swings had long been a problem for his family. His ups often took the form of religious mania. His downs, depression and masochistic religious guilt. Vincent’s first ambition had been to become a clergyman like his father, but the Church had rejected him as unfit. A spell as an itinerant evangelist bringing the Gospel to coal miners in Belgium came to an end because he frightened the children, who threw things at him, while the adults thought him a fanatic and a ‘lunatic’. For a period, Vincent had managed to work at the international art-dealing firm Goupil et Cie, where his uncle, a partner, placed both Theo and Vincent until eventually Vincent’s mental problems became too great. Their despairing father decided that Vincent should be committed to an asylum. When Vincent refused, Theo had taken on responsibility for him. By 1888, he had been lodging with Theo in Paris for two years, turning his life and his apartment upside down. It came as a great relief to Theo when Vincent conceived the plan of moving to Arles. The cost of renting the Yellow House and paying a monthly allowance to both Vincent and Gauguin came cheap at the price, if it got his brother out of his hair.

During the preliminary skirmishes, Vincent had suggested to Gauguin that they exchange portraits. ‘For a long time, I’ve been touched by the fact that the Japanese artists very often exchanged works with one another. It shows that they loved and supported each other and that a degree of harmony prevailed among them; they lived precisely a sort of fraternal life, naturally, and without intrigue. The more like them we are in that respect, the better we will feel.’ An exchange of portraits would seal the brotherly bond.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt seven)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

The meeting with the Van Gogh brothers was a decisive turning point. Theo became Gauguin’s agent. He would work hard to sell Gauguin’s work over the next two years, managing to sell several ceramic pieces and eleven paintings for a total of 4,450 francs of which Gauguin received 3,315 francs. By way of comparison, Theo was selling works by Monet for an average of 2,200 francs each and Degas for an average of 3,200 francs, so it was not a fortune, but it was money, and it was coming in steadily. Theo also showed Gauguin’s paintings in the gallery he managed. In January, they caught the eye of the critic Félix Fénéon who had been the chief promoter of Seurat, with his meticulous frozen dots conveying a petrified state of monumental calm. Now he praised Gauguin for the opposite: his barbarism, irascibility and the force of his brushstrokes that fell ‘like a rainstorm’. Octave Mirbeau described his pictures as very odd, very noble and very barbaric all at once. Gauguin was seen as a new force: original, intriguing, colouristically sumptuous, and more than a little transgressive in the way he was prepared to jettison technique in order to loosen the strings of the imagination. Jaded Parisian critics, craving change from scientific analysis of colour and light, were ready for Gauguin’s dreamy suggestiveness. Fénéon picked out Conversation (Tropics) for special praise and Theo van Gogh held out for a good price for the picture. A year later he sold it for 300 francs to a collector friend of Degas, who held on to it until his death. ‘Poor Gauguin,’ Degas is supposed to have said, ‘way off there on his island. I advised him to go to New Orleans, but it was too civilised. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home.’

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt six)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

He was also pondering the wider questions: what actually is painting, and what is its relationship to the other branches of art? This was the sort of thing he would have hammered out at the café table with the Manet gang over a glass of absinthe, or with Pissarro during their painting trips, but now he had to come up with the answers on his own. He found the writings of the composer Richard Wagner helpful on the nature and philosophy of culture. Unsurprisingly, Wagner named music as the supreme art. Music was not concerned with physical limitations, not busy creating images of the phenomenal world. Rather, it roamed the abstract, speaking the language of the Wille (soul, sensation or spirit) directly. Music was art as pure spirit, untethered from physicality. Only music could open the gate to complete spiritual experience; the gate to completeness, making all the senses vibrate in harmony.

This resonated with Gauguin, who (like Wagner) experienced synaesthesia: an interconnection of sensual experience. When Gauguin heard music he saw coloured images that vibrated. Seeing a painting containing the mysterious magic that was ‘art’, his thoughts appeared before his eyes, and he saw them written in sentences. In time, he would write words on his paintings, a forerunner of Modernist practice; his contemporaries often found this irritating.

the last book I ever read (Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux, excerpt five)

from Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux:

Gauguin’s first major painting to survive, Working the Land, is dated 1873. It shows a flat, panoramic landscape in the environs of Paris. Two small figures are working patchwork green and yellow fields. A few trees provide verticals. The land is well observed, if dully painted. The sky is a disaster. A bank of cotton wool cloud presses down heavily, squashing the earth. Corot is the major influence, along with the other Barbizon painters that Gauguin was so familiar with from Arosa’s walls. There is nothing Impressionist about it, but the compositional similarity to the overdoor Spring in Pissarro’s Four Seasons is striking. The other pictures that survive from this couple of early years are similarly cautious landscapes.