Living in poverty
When Gauguin made this painting, Clovis and his younger brother Jean were living with their father in Rouen, while their mother and the other children stayed in Copenhagen. When the painter settled in Paris a year later, he took his beloved Clovis with him. Father and son lived there in poverty, but despite the hardships, Clovis was, in Gauguin’s words: ‘very sweet and [he] plays all alone in his little corner without tormenting me.’
Although he was unable to pay the fees, Gauguin left Clovis at a boarding house in 1886. Gauguin himself headed to Pont-Aven to focus fully on his art. While there, he produced many paintings that would later be counted among his masterpieces.
Gauguin and Van Gogh
When Gauguin met Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) in Paris at the end of 1887, he had become a prominent Symbolist artist. The two painters developed a close but complex friendship.
In October 1888, Gauguin went to live with Van Gogh in the Yellow House in Arles. They worked closely together, but had very different ideas about art. Gauguin worked from his imagination, while Van Gogh painted what he observed. Tensions quickly mounted. Following a major clash, after which Van Gogh cut off his ear, the artist friends parted ways and never saw each other again in person.
They did continue to correspond, and had a lasting influence on each other. Vincent and his brother Theo van Gogh (1857-1891) also collected Gauguin’s work. Due to this remarkable history, the artist’s work is central to the Van Gogh Museum’s collection.
Clovis died of sepsis in 1900, just a few days after his 21st birthday; he had not seen his father for many years before then. Gauguin had been in Tahiti, on the other side of the world, since 1895.
