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Misères
Humaines
Guérin
69, Mongan, Kornfeld, & Joachim 49
woodcut, 1898-99, on fine ivory Japon laid paper, the only known
state, a superb impression* printed in greyish-black by the artist
himself, and numbered "3" in ink lower left beneath
the monogram, from the sole edition of about 30, with wide margins
(somewhat irregular to the left), a few small printing creases,
traces of pinkish pigment visible upper left in transparency
and on the reverse, a small piece of brown wrapping paper stuck
to the upper right corner, otherwise in very good condition
B. 195x296mm., S. 250x372mm.
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Provenance: the G.-D.
de Monfried collection**, and subsequently the Henri M. Petiet
collection, with the HMP wetstamp on the reverse (not cited in
Lugt)
Executed during his second
stay in Tahiti, and sometimes subtitled "Souvenirs de
Bretagne" ("Recollections of Brittany") as
if to link the two extremes of the artist's career, this is one
of Gauguin's last prints, and takes up a motif that obsessed the
artist since the late 1880s, of which a half dozen variants are
known, including an 1889 zincograph from the Volpini suite.
The despondent woman,
here with Polynesian features, and with two French farmwomen in
a dreamlike background, is one of the most hauntingly expressive
of his late period.
* This impression cited
by Mongan, Kornfeld, & Joachim.
** Having first met in
1887, Daniel de Monfried became a close friend of Gauguin's and
one of the first collectors of Gauguin's prints.
