Paul GAUGUIN

Lot Essay
'Imagine very low reliefs, with full forms, printed handsomely, with sober notes of red and yellow to break the monotony of the blacks and whites. He [Gauguin] extracts from these the powerful effects that are the secret of the artist’s temperament’ (Julien Leclercq, February 1895).

In this extract from a review written for the journal Mercure de France in February 1895, the symbolist poet and art critic Julien Leclercq describes a series of ten woodcuts by Paul Gauguin, exhibited in his studio at 6 rue Vércingetorix in December 1894. Known collectively as NOA NOA ('Fragrant Scent') (see lots 70-74), Gauguin had created the woodcuts upon his return to Paris to accompany an essay about his sojourn in Tahiti for an exhibition of his paintings at Durand-Ruel in November 1893. Roughly cut, gouged and scratched using a knife, needle and sandpaper, the blocks were initially proofed by Gauguin himself, using his hands instead of a press to selectively apply pressure while printing and varying the inking for each impression. He then commissioned the Breton artist Louis Roy to print an edition of 25-30 impressions of each block. The Durand-Ruel publication was never realised, but the following year Gauguin displayed both his own proofs and impressions from Roy’s edition, alongside paintings and wood carvings, in his own studio, with the prints simply tacked to the walls. For many of Gauguin’s close circle of friends and admirers, amongst them Julien Leclercq, the woodcuts were amongst the highlights of the show. Writing in Le Soir, the poet Charles Morice effused: ‘I would say that Gauguin’s current effort will tomorrow provoke a complete revolution in the art of engraving and in that of watercolour’. With their modest scale and muted palette, these dark and mysterious prints - full of allusions to Tahitian mythology and art - powerfully declare Gauguin’s urge to create a new aesthetic, unfettered with European notions of form and tradition.
Julien Leclercq had met Gauguin at the home of his neighbours on rue Vércingetorix, the composer William Molard and the Swedish sculptor Ida Ericson, his wife. A gathering place for French and Scandinavian artistic circles, Ericson's and Molard's acquaintances included many eminent contemporaries such as Grieg, Munch, Strindberg, Bonnard and Vuillard. Leclercq, who would later marry the Finnish pianist Fanny Flodin, was a regular visitor. As an art critic, Leclercq was a passionate advocate of modern French painting, and an early champion of Vincent van Gogh. He had written an obituary for van Gogh in Mercure de France in September 1890. As an important impressario of French art, he organised the first major exhibition of French Impressionism in Norway, which opened at C. W. Blomqvist’s in Kristiania in 1898.
Following the artist’s return to Tahiti in 1895, Leclercq moved into Gauguin’s studio, where he was later joined by Flodin after their marriage in 1898. They remained living there until Leclercq’s untimely death in October 1901. The following four woodcuts from NOA NOA (lots 70-73) come by direct descent from the couple's collection, yet at what point prior to Leclercq's death they were acquired is not known. As all four sheets have pinholes in the corners, it is tempting to think these prints were in fact the ones exhibited in Gauguin's studio in 1894. It seems likely that they remained tacked to the studio walls in the months following the exhibition, and were inherited by Leclercq with his occupancy of the apartment after Gauguin’s departure in June 1895. What we know with certainty is that the woodcuts were part of the property left to Leclercq's young widow. Prior to her return to Helsinki, Flodin sold the majority of the collection, including works by Van Gogh and Gauguin, but kept the woodcuts and took them with her to Finland. They have remained in the family ever since.
As NOA NOA was never formally published in Gauguin’s lifetime, complete sets printed by Louis Roy are almost unattainable. Although individual plates do occasionally appear at auction, it is a rare occurrence for five impressions, including two rare trial proofs, to be offered simultaneously.

Of the 25-30 impressions recorded by Mongan, Kornfeld & Joachim, nine are in public collections.