Gauguin's "Two Children"

[Guest]

I was standing in front of this painting (big Gauguin show,Tate Modern, late last year) and not having read the blurb was surprised when what I had taken to be a child on the left and a doll perched on the bed were meant to be "two children" and said so (..out loud, people shuffled away....). I let it be for a few months but then the staring blue eyes and the claw-hands niggled me and I googled a bit and found at least one doll expert who opined it could be a doll so I e-mailed the Director of the Art Gallery in Copenhagen where the painting normally lives but it was on loan to the Musée d'Orsay and he (while not rejecting my suggestion) said he would get back to me when the painting returned and he has not done so. I am not averse to being in a minority of one, well it's usually not just me, it's me and the band of good souls who write my letters to the Times for me (E.S.P. in action) and I can see the admission that a painting has been incorrectly titled for a long time is hard to swallow by the art world. .........and yet, could this in fact be a french/breton bisque doll belonging to the child. What do you think???

http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/Gauguin-Two-Children-15.jpg

P.S. sorry, I tried to get the pic up in the text but failed, if there's a host who can help out, thanks, CBH

[Belgrove]

The catalogue that accompanied the Tate show is not very helpful, the almost parenthetic discussion surrounding the painting being used to buttress a rather vague thesis of the author. However, the painting is apparently also known as 'Paul and Jean Schuffenecker'. Gauguin also painted the 'Schuffenecker Family',

http://gauguin-art.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/schuffenecker-family.html

and the two children can be seen at their seated mother's feet. The girl shares features visible in both paintings.

So the second figure is most likely a child, but I agree, it looks pretty doll like.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

not sure i agree Clive but i see what you mean ..

[doversoul1]

The figure on the bed looks very much a living infant to me. Its face is too un-pretty and imperfect to be a doll and it is actually looking at you rather than staring at nothing in particular as those porcelain dolls do. You could almost tell that it (Paul?) is about to howl out for attention. Would anyone have bought a doll like this? As for the claw-hands, you only need to look at an infant’s hands. Their fingers are never nicely spread out.

I’ve just survived a babysitting duty (Phew).

[clive heath]

Thank you all for your interest. I am a little persuaded by the ugliness argument but if we agree that the girl is Jeanne (b.1882) then her brother, Paul, was born two years later and is presumably the child with auburn hair tenderly held by his sister in the Schuffenecker family portrait whereas the painting under discussion shows the "brother" with blond hair and you would be hard put to claim an age of two/three years younger. Of course, "two children" does not imply brother and sister although the alternative title specifically defines the two as such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisque_doll

will take you to an engraving of a not-very-pretty 19th century bisque doll and an unclothed doll of whose claw hands the left one bears a remarkable similarity to that of the suggested non-child!!

[french frank]

Intriguing. Probably a bit of artist's licence at work. I'm not sure that one child is blond - just fairer than the other which is what you see in the later picture:



The girl could be almost three years older than her brother (if she was born in 1882 and he was born in 1884). The "doll" couldn't be much more than 12 months old, but the girl at a pinch could be four. My mother used to paint portraits and said it was always difficult to make children look young enough.

[charles t]

While living in the Hyde Park section in Chicago there was this character wearing 'sandwich' boards that said:

I am Paul Gauguin's son. Feed Me!

Apparently so...

"Emile Marae a Tai [Gauguin], illiterate and raised in Tahiti, was brought to Chicago by French journalist Josette Giraud in 1963 and became an artist of note." Wiki

[clive heath]

The Schuffenecker family portrait turns out to live in the Musée d'Orsay where the "Two Children"? was on loan. The Museum's web site has some unpleasant things to say about the Schuffenecker parents and gives the dates of the painting as: begun October 1889, finished the following spring. This puts the eldest child's age at about 7 so her brother would about 5. I submit that the girl's companion in the picture could not possibly be her brother. "Two Children" is also dated as completed 1889.

ps thankyou, calum, for doin' the thing

[Osborn]

Like doversoul, I think it almost inconceivable that a commercial dollmaker would produce a product wiith a double chin, surly expression, uneven eyebrows and eyes that have no sparkle or life in them. Such a 'doll' would be virtually unsaleable and probably ridiculed. It's equally inconceivable that Gauguin saw a pleasant doll and decided to make it look ugly.

Incidentally, the figure on the bed is surely not blond - he seems to have brown or black hair (see the forelock) - and is wearing a wig or bonnet?

[clive heath]

Thankyou all for allowing me to give this topic an airing. I am not yet convinced I am wrong as a perusal of all the other Gauguin paintings of youngsters shows nothing anywhere near as ugly as this character.

Shuffenecker himself painted his son

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Claude-Emile-Schuffenecker/Le-Petit-Roux-%28paul,-Fils-De-L%27artiste%29.html

who turns out to have blue eyes and is very unlikely ever to have looked like the possible child in "Two Children"

He also painted a scene in a park

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Claude-Emile-Schuffenecker/The-Square-At-Luxembourg-Park.html

which seems to be a mother, child (interesting hair colour) and I wonder what/who is sitting on the ground with arms akimbo and a kind of double-sided neck-piece?

Lastly you will find blue-eyed dolls with chubby faces here

http://www.rubylane.com/shop/preciousrosey/ilist/,c=Antique_Dolls,cs=Dolls:Antique,page=1.html

[handsomefortune]

i think both figures in your message 1 are pretty wooden tbh clive heath, though their outfits are better painted. (both the pink carpet, and chair give an odd sensation spatially ....perhaps)?

notoriously, small children (and animals) make lousy subjects, unless they're asleep, (which is how victorians got round their problems in figurative painting as far as a child sitter was concerned). no one can expect a baby to sit and keep still.....and afaik gaugin wasn't crazy about spontaneous quick sketching....he did seem to love oodles of sticky paint.

imo gaugin may well have resorted to dolls...presumably in order to get the painting completed quickly, satisfy his friend, and paint do/be some where else that suited his real loves. for me, personally, i believe his real love was colour - rather than objective portraiture. that is, he didn't mind representing the human form - but strictly on his own terms.

i also notice that the shuffeneker pics are quite conservative in comparison to gaugin's (and many others artists' work of the era), ie shuffeneker is of its time, retrospectively - diligently executed, attractive, finished-looking in a way that didn't satisfy the main players, that were to take painting somewhere else entirely.

imo the sketch of shuffeneker's son looks victorian in style, wistful, sensitive, fine pencil marks and his lowered eyes, gazing downward.

gaugin otoh was 'somewhere else' as a painter, and geographically - his fame was largely on account of his extra ordinary paintings of tahitian people, and gaugin's interpretation of their 'exotic' way of life. (the latter having attracted much discussion).

a healthy attitude, and half of the fun of visiting galleries is in questioning what we are required to accept from curator's notes and pointers, in order to convey us around a particular set of works... perhaps it's worth bearing in mind, collectively if ever placed in a room together, curators may actually agree about very little!

could this in fact be a french/breton bisque doll belonging to the child. What do you think???

i think it is possible! (but why is the child wearing a judge's wig)?