GAUGUIN, Paul, & Charles Morice.

£15,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Noa Noa ("Fragance"). First edition thus, number 22 of 80 copies of the deluxe issue, rarely found with the portfolio, which includes a previously unpublished original woodcut. This fine facsimile of Gauguin's autobiographical tale of his first two years in Tahiti (1891-3) was based on the Louvre manuscript and "represents an important project in book-making by this major artist" (Garvey).Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti coincided with the funeral of Pomare V, the last king, "a symbolic marker of the demise of 'authentic' Polynesian culture. This overlap is enough to make Noa Noa apparently irresistible as a source of information about his life in Tahiti: through a series of intimate cross-cultural encounters, it provides the script of his attempt at 'going native' … He may have initially intended the publication of Noa Noa to coincide with the exhibition of his Tahitian work that was held at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris, following his return to France in 1893 … [but] it remained incomplete when the exhibition opened [in November 1893] … At some point before returning definitively to Polynesia in July 1895, Gauguin enlisted Charles Morice, who had written the catalogue essay for his exhibition, to help develop the project, and their collaboration led to the version that is now known as the Louvre manuscript" (Goddard, pp. 64-8). The conceit was that Gauguin and Morice would alternate chapters, although the exact division of labour remains unclear. "What is clear, however, is t

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