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Paul GAUGUIN & George-Daniel de MONFREID

Les odalisques aux mangues. Noa Noa. Epreuve unique du bois dessiné et gravé d'après Paul Gauguin par George-Daniel de Monfreid

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

Les Odalisques aux mangues [Odalisques among the Mangoes] 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 Paul Gauguin.
Print on fine cream laid paper, annotation by the artist in the left-hand margin.
Woodcut drawn and engraved after two different works. The back of the woman is an exact reproduction of an ink from page 92 of the Noa Noa manuscript, while the woman lying down takes up the well-known theme of the woman with mangos, Te Arii Vahine-Opoi, that Gauguin represented in paint as well as with an engraving in 1898.
The final woodcut will serve as the head of chapter V of the first true illustrated edition of Noa Noa, published by Crès in 1924, the first illustrated work from Paul Gauguin and a majestic tribute to one of the precursors of modern art.
Superb and significant engraving uniting two major themes of the Tahitian work, including the central drawing of the Noa Noa manuscript, faithfully engraved by Gauguin's closest friend and executor, the artist George-Daniel de Monfreid.
 
A likely unique proof, part of 17 known test woodcuts from the project to prematurely publish Noa Noa, all made on various fine papers and annotated by the artist.
 
Woodcut engraved from two major original works. By uniting these two vahines with sensual postures, Monfreid brings about a true synthesis of Gauguin's work, all while using the traditional double figure of the artist's paintings.
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).