Lettre autographe signée adressée à Emile Mignard : "[...] Paul Gauguin, l'un des meilleurs Impressionnistes, qui, réfugié aux Marquises, vient d'y mourir. J'ai acquis à bas prix, à la vente publique, d'admirables choses [...]"

Handwritten signed letter from Victor Segalen addressed to Émile Mignard: “Paul Gauguin, one of the best Impressionists, who, a refugee in the Marquesas,
has just died there. I bought admirable things at low prices at the public auction”
Handwritten signed letter from Victor Segalen addressed to Émile Mignard, nine pages written in black ink on two double leaves and one single leaf. Some minor stains on the first leaf, folds from having been sent.

One of the very rare letters from Segalen's Polynesian period and the only one to recount the staggering dispersion of Gauguin's works.
Fundamental letter in which Segalen, newly arrived in Papeete, evokes the dispersion and acquisition of Paul Gauguin's works.
“I just earned 450f including 250 for a rather boring delivery. Of these 450f, I spent 200f on the purchase of paintings, carved woods, sketches, an album, all from the painter Paul Gauguin, one of the best Impressionists, who, a refugee in the Marquesas, has just died there. I bought admirable things at low prices at the public auction: two portraits of him, a large painting where Tahitians parade, carved woods of which I will take proofs, sketches, notes... I had made myself his champion here, because very ungrateful, very isolated, full of hatred even, he was generally hated in the colony. Of course, I only defend the artist, not the man.”

In addition to his reverence for Gauguin's art, this letter – a genuine heartfelt letter – contains abundant details of the young traveler's sensual and sentimental adventures:
“In six months, having experienced the Tahitian woman, the half-White woman, I came to find the White woman; and from that very one, voluntarily, I detach myself. The Tahitian woman? I fundamentally need to know her race. But sleeping with her taught me nothing. I am more attentive, more aware, being liberated by her.”

In his study entitled La Femme et son image dans l'œuvre de Victor Segalen, Laurence Cachot highlights the writer's fascination with women, “a source of beauty and pleasure for man, [or] the primary cause of his ills.” Segalen's attraction to Maori beauty is, in her view, inseparable from his admiration for the Tahitian women painted by Paul Gauguin: “The writing of V. Segalen is, in a way, at the service of P. Gauguin's painting, because the literary paintings are the twin of the pictorial paintings. Even when V. Segalen describes the real women of Tahiti, his descriptions of the body, traits, physical qualities and maintenance of the vahines, owes a lot to P. Gauguin.” (op. cit.)

Surprisingly, the quasi-anthropological observations that Segalen delivers to his friend in this letter are reserved for the other two female categories that he names, “the White woman” and the “half-White woman”: “The half-White woman? See below. The pure white women presented herself, throughout this last month as a tall and “beautiful woman” of 26 years old, formerly debauched by a pharmacist of the colonies, passed next to the successor of this pharmacist who, after having overwhelmed her with jealousy, of scenes, ditched her two months ago leaving her a child of a year and a half, to marry an unlikely widow with 3 children with whom he has just returned to France. His mistress was my very neighbor, our two houses being twins; she offered herself. I took her “in training” – Type of “perfect mistress” and you know how indifferent I am to this type! It would have been the “bread” guaranteed for all my campaign, succulent but bourgeois food! Then, and here is something new for me: she would have cost me dearly: I am leaving her, I have left her even, very amicably; but very resolutely, to the amazement of all of Papeete [...] who infinitely envied my fate. Needless to say, that, in this decision, intellectual reasons take precedence: the freedom to dream of my nights! to my future book, to whatever I want, very humbly but very intensely, to work, I have thoughtfully sacrificed it. I would have only retained the loving side; but there I have my adorable, guaranteed pittance; three little half-white girls, daughters of the German consul, Téraï (Tahitian name), Henriette & Dora (19, 17 and 15 years old) sweet, affectionate, who welcome me like I'm the most cuddled friend... And above all, one by the other, I guard against the danger of specialization. [...] In the same vein, but with more emotion, I take refuge at any moment in the affection of a delicious little girl from Rennes (!) who came here at the age of two – 18 years old, eyes of inconceivable depth, fine, and above all of my race, this one, and you see how sweet the Breton mirage can be through her! [...] All this occupies me without monopolizing me, furnishes me in a warm decor, with good current memories. Most importantly, I do what I want."

Exceptional letter of fundamental importance for the history of art and a unique testimony of the period – and in-situ – of the rescue of Gauguin's works by the one who was the fortuitous architect.

mile Mignard (1878-1966), also a doctor and Brest-born, was one of Segalen's closest childhood friends whom he met at the Jesuit Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours School. The writer interacted with this comrade in an abundant and closely followed correspondence in which he described, with humor and intimacy, his daily life in all corners of the world. It was at Mignard's wedding, on 15 February 1905, that Segalen met his wife, Yvonne Hébert.