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BCN-28
FRANCE-ART-AUCTION
‘Touching’ Gauguin masterpiece to go under hammer in Paris
PARIS, Feb 14, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – An early masterpiece by artist Paul
Gauguin — which has only been seen in public twice in nearly 140 years —
will be auctioned in Paris next month.
“Pissarro’s Garden” is a touching tribute to the older Impressionist
master, Camille Pissarro, experts say, who Gauguin called his “dear teacher”.
It shows a figure hidden under an umbrella outside an old country cottage
near Pontoise, which is now a suburb of Paris.
Sotheby’s, which is selling the rare painting from 1881 which has two
self-portraits of Gauguin on the back, said Pissarro “often painted beneath
an umbrella, as portrayed in many works and images showing the artist in
Pontoise.
“This is more than a landscape, it is Gauguin’s homage to his teacher…
and is a testament to the friendship between those two great figures of
modern art,” it added.
Gauguin often stayed in Pontoise with Pissarro as he learned technique
from the old master, who also helped launch his career.
Christophe Duvivier, who heads the Pissarro Museum in Pontoise, said “with
Pissarro Gauguin learnt to see landscape and summarise it”.
The painting has been in the same family collection since the 1920s,
Sotheby’s said, and has only been seen twice in public: once in France in
1964 and in a hit US show at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2015.
BSS/AFP/HR/1440