Paul Gauguin: French Symbolist
Early Works
The Artist's Home,
Paris,1881
National Gallery Oslo
Landscape at Le Pouldu,
1890
National Gallery, Washington
Breton Girls Dancing, 1888
National Gallery, Washington
Breton Village in the Snow
Musee d'Orsay
Britany Landscape
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Calvary, 1887
Royal Museums of Fine Arts,
Brussels
Portrait of Van Gogh
painting, 1888
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
La Belle Angele, 1889
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Les Alyscamps (Arles),
1888
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Les Alyscamps (Roman
cemetary), Arles
Self-Portrait (les
Miserables), 1888
Self-Portrait with Yellow
Christ, 1889
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Ia Orana Maria, 1891
Metropolitan Museum, NY
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? 1897-98

Paul Gauguin: D'ou venons nous? Que sommes nous? D'ou allons nous? (where
do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?), 1897-98, Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston.
Late variants of "Where do we come from, What are we, Where are we going?"
Te pape nave nave,
1898
1903
National Gallery, Washington
Jean Delville (1867-1953): Belgian Symbolist
Jean Delville - an introduction:
Jean Delville was born in Louvain in 1867 and died in 1953. He headed the
Brussels branch of the Rosicrucian revival, and organized Salons de l'Art Idéaliste
in imitation of Joséphin Péladan's Parisian Salons de la Rose+Croix. These Salons
commenced in 1896.
The Salons d'Art Idéaliste were intended to continue the grand tradition of
idealistic art, which Delville traced back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.
Delville rejected a long list of popular subjects, including:
"...history painting (except synthetic, or symbolic history), military
painting, all representations of contemporary life, private or public,
portraits, if it is not iconic, scenes of peasant life, seascapes, landscapes,
humorous scenes, picturesque orientalism, domestic animals or sport
animals, paintings of flowers, fruits, or accessories."
-- J. Delville, quoted in J. Dujardin, L'Art Flamand, vol. 6, 1900, p. 190,
translation mine.
Delville had considerable academic success: he won the Prix de Rome in 1895,
and was a professor at the Glasgow School of Art for a number of years in the
early 20th century. He admired the great artists of the Italian Renaissance,
especially Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, and tried to imitate them. He
emphasized content over form, preferring a mediocre painting of a spiritual
thought to a great painting of a realist scene.
As a mystic strongly influenced by Neoplatonism, Delville believed that visible
reality was only a symbol, and that humans exist in three planes: the physical (the
realm of facts), the astral (or spiritual world, the realm of laws), and the divine
(the realm of causes). These higher planes of existence were the only significant
ones. Materialism was a trap, and the soul had to guard against being trapped by
its snares. The human body he considered to a potential prison for the soul.
Rejecting Darwinism and evolution, Delville refused to believe that humans had
come from animals, nor did he believe that people could degenerate to animals.
He considered humans to be the highest development of terrestrial beings, though
at a mid-point between animals and angels. Reincarnation was to provide the path
to the highest level for those who perfected their will and spirit through initiation
and magic. He reconciled his interest in the occult with Christianity by
considering Catholicism to be in harmony with magical laws: the external forms
of devotion concealed occult truths. Above all, however, Delville considered art
to play a key role in uplifting people from their blindness. The true artist was an
initiate who would present images which would teach and transform human
nature. Artists were to become priests and prophets:
"It is necessary to speak clearly and precisely of the civilizing mission of
art... It is also necessary to speak of the moral effect which a work of art
produces on people, on the public, the moralizing strength of Art, [which
is] more salutary, more pacifying than that of Politics."
-- J. Delville, La Mission de l'Art, Brussels, 1900, p. 88, translation mine.
Jean Delville, The School of Plato, 1898. Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
Delville also emphasized the perils of materialism and sensuality in an image of
souls ensnared by the tentacles of Satan: The Treasures of Satan, 1894, Royal
Museums of Art, Brussels. In this work the voluptuous sinners are not so much
being punished as they are being trapped at a low level of spiritual evolution. The
depths of the sea corresponds to their low development. They are trapped by
being fixated on material treasures: jewels, pearls, and sensuality. They are also
the "Treasures of Satan," being trapped by him. Satan, although handsome and
graceful, is himself a low-level being, as revealed by his tentacles. His physical
form reveals his spiritual nature.
Jean Delville, The Treasures of Satan, 1894. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of
Belgium, Brussels.
Other paintings by Delville, such as The God-Man, 1895 (5 meters by 5 meters,
Groeninge Museum, Bruges), contrast this bondage with the vision of
enlightened, pure souls ascending to heaven. This painting represents the merciful
figure of Christ, the great initiate, towering over the bodies of souls striving for
union with the divine.193 The dominant blue color is a symbol of spirituality, just
as red was a symbol of materialism and sensualism in The Treasures of Satan.
These works are complementary, in that they represent the poles of human
destiny.