The legend of the true self could well be rewritten. The first drawing by Paul Gauguin, a watercolour at the age of 17 years, was sold Sunday at auction for 80,000 euro, at a sale in Rouillac at the château d’artigny in Montbazon in Indre-et-Loire.
Signed “Gauguin. P, July 2, 1865”, this watercolor represents a swiss chalet at the edge of an expanse of water and was purchased at a French industrialist living in Switzerland, who took part in the sale by telephone.
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Made with China ink and watercolor on paper Canson, this is the “first known drawing” of Gauguin and his life “upsets the thesis according to which Gauguin would be a self-taught painter”, explained the auctioneer Aymeric Rouillac. This table, 39.5 cm in width and 25 in height, had been made in Touraine in the autumn of 2018 with a client for a expertise. Research conducted by two students of the university of Tours have helped to authenticate the painting.
It has been realized under the direction of Charles Thought, professor at the imperial Lycée d’orléans, where the mother of the painter was trying to curb the urge of Paul to sail to distant islands, according to the research conducted by two students of the university of Tours, which had confirmed the signature of the painter. Gauguin had to fail the entrance examination to the Naval academy, but after this year in Orleans he will engage in the merchant navy.
The taste of malicious Gauguin
Born in 1848, Paul Gauguin spent several years in Orleans, and young, it makes a copy of a drawing that her teacher had made in Switzerland. “It is a work of art, as Gauguin allows changes (…) it allows to completely transform the model by creating a body of water while we are in the alps in altitude, and we find this taste is malicious that will Gauguin throughout his life,” said Valentine of His Morais one of the students in art history who participated in the research.
private Collectors, buyers of museums, about 200 persons had taken a seat in the auction room, followed by telephone and Internet buyers from around the world, including China, United States, England, Switzerland, Israel, Italy and Belgium.
one Hundred and fifty lots were laid out on tables, in a showroom, semi-detached, employees, equipped with white gloves, introducing in turn the objects to the public. Among the lots expected: two panthers in bronze of Rembrandt Bugatti, brother of Ettore Bugatti, the car manufacturer, contracted for a million one hundred thousand euros to a French remained anonymous.
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The record for another couple of panthers had been reached to 750.000 € at Christie’s in Paris in 2016, when the sale Alain Delon. “This is not the first time that the million mark is exceeded, but it is rare (…) in the United States the amounts have already done the double other models which are the tiger and Siberia and the baboon”, said Véronique Cheese expert for Rembrandt Bugatti.
The third room, one of the last ten copies of the first novel of François Rabelais, 1542, has been sold for 490.000€. In this book of 11 cm 7 there are two major texts, Pantagruel and Gargantua . These pranks, written under the pseudonym of Alcofribas Nasier – an anagram of François Rabelais -, were sold in their time by peddlers on the squares of villages.
● Presentation of the “first” Gauguin by Aymeric Rouillac
