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Paul GAUGUIN & George-Daniel de MONFREID

Diane et Actéon aux Marquises. Noa Noa. Epreuve unique du bois dessiné et gravé d'après Paul Gauguin par George-Daniel de Monfreid

s.d. (1924), 93x78mm, autre.

Diane et Actéon aux Marquises. Noa Noa. Unique proof of the woodcut drawn and engraved after Paul Gauguin by George-Daniel de Monfreid

Original proof, likely unique, of this intermediate state of a woodcut drawn and engraved by George-Daniel de Monfreid after two works by Paul Gauguin. Print on Japan silk, annotation by the artist in the left-hand margin.
 
Woodcut drawn and engraved after two works, the man holding a branch being a reproduction of a watercolor on page 37 of the Noa Noa manuscript, while the full-length woman originally observed by this browser, is presented here in bust with her hand to her face, model reproduced on a woodcut engraved by Gauguin on page 4 of the manuscript (and his original sketch pasted on page 51), evoking a similar scene.
The final woodcut will serve as the head of chapter IV of the first true illustrated edition of Noa Noa, published by Crès in 1924, the first illustrated work after Paul Gauguin and a majestic tribute to one of the precursors of modern art.
 
Superb engraving synthesizing a watercolor from the original Noa Noa manuscript, inspired by the myth of Diana and Actaeon, engraved by Gauguin's closest friend and executor, the artist George-Daniel de Monfreid, heir to the album he would offer to the French State in 1927.
A likely unique proof, part of 17 known test woodcuts from the early project to publish Noa Noa, all made on various fine papers and annotated by the artist.
Woodcut engraved after a watercolor reinterpreting the myth of Diana, surprised in the bath by Actaeon. In the engraving, Monfreid took care to preserve the typical of deer antler shape of the branch seized by the indiscreet, which evokes its metamorphosis by the goddess.
 
A very rare work by Gauguin mixing ancient mythology and island exoticism, whose subversive power seems entirely carried by the vahine Diana's expression of feint surprise.



It is from the original illustrated manuscript of Noa Noa, brought back from Tahiti by Segalen on the artist's death in 1903, that Monfreid began producing this fundamental work from as early as 1904. This is the second version of this “to read and look at” notebook. The first manuscript, written on the return of his first voyage and entrusted by Gauguin to Charles Morice in 1893, responded to a different project. Gauguin had composed only the text, interspersed with blank pages for Morice's poems. But after several years without news, Morice preferred to publish a version entirely rewritten by himself in 1901. Gauguin, therefore, copied his manuscript and illustrated it during his second stay in Polynesia, with sketches, watercolors and collages. This album, that the artist enriched and safely preserved until his death, is preserved today at the Musée d'Orsay.

 
It is, therefore, from this manuscript, the only one illustrated, that Monfreid composed the edition of Gauguin's Noa Noa. However, although Monfreid's publication was forward, it took more than twenty years to complete, in part due to a copyright dispute with Charles Morice who wanted to be co-author of the forthcoming edition and whose poems would eventually be preserved.
 

The result of several years of reflection and work, the 1924 edition is both faithful to the watercolors and woodcut engravings illustrating the precious manuscript, and to the whole of Gauguin's Tahitian work, who died in indifference. Monfreid thus engraves several drawings from the original notebook and enriches it with woodcuts made from other works of which he is the custodian. Some of these compositions combine several paintings, while scrupulously respecting the artist's line, transforming the work into a true journey through the painter's works. The very choice of using wood engraving is a tribute to this technique prized by Gauguin, who, in Pont-Aven, produced 10 woodcuts to illustrate his manuscript between his two Polynesian stays. The intermediate woodcuts, until then unknown, testify to the slow work of composition to restore the artistic richness of Gauguin's work by his most faithful artistic companion and first champion: “When I saw Gauguin for the first time, I was greatly disconcerted by the details of art that radiated from his works as well as from the conversations of this extraordinary man... You immediately felt that he was the Master” (in L'Hermitage, 1903).