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All painters have more or less felt the need to
project a still life on a canvass and Paul Gauguin
is no exception, mainly during his “Brittany”
period.
The two stamps issued today represent two still
lifes which, like often with Gauguin, are quite
enigmatic.
The first one, dates back to 1890, and is called
“Still Life with a Maori Statuette” by some
and “Roses and statuette” by others. In fact,
it represents a bunch made of various flowers
planted in a bottle near a woman statuette.
The statuette - undoubtedly made by the
artist himself – happens to be a woman from
Martinique.
The second one, called “Still life with apples”
seems to have been painted before its second
journey to Tahiti aboard the Australien
and it undoubtedly includes several fruits
from Polynesia. It is all the more difficult to
distinguish them as the canvass shows in its
lower right corner a caption « Pas manger li
» (“not eat li”, which does not appear on the
stamp). The purplish hues give a rotten aspect
to these fruits, hence the caption. But the
“l” might in fact be a misshaped “v”, which
would refer to a series of native apples called
“vi” (mangoes, ambarellas, white star apples,
cashew apples…).
C.Beslu
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| Unit price: 660 FCFP (5,53 €) |
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