?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
PAUL GAUGUIN Leda (Projet d'assiette).
Lithograph on simulation Japan paper, 1889. 220x205 mm; 8 5/8x8 1/8 inches. Edition of 50. From Études Lithographiques, one of 11 lithographs made by Gauguin for the Café Volpini exhibition, Paris. Published by Vollard, Paris. A very good impression of this extremely scarce, early lithograph.
Both Gauguin (1848-1903) and his friend Émile Bernard made a series of lithographs for the seminal 1889 exhibition of paintings at Volpini's Café des Arts, Paris, under the name "Groupe Impressioniste et Synthétiste." The show was organized under Gauguin's supervision after fellow artist Claude-Émile Schuffenecker had found exhibition space for their work at the Volpini Café des Arts on the grounds of the Exposition Universelle.
Gauguin who had returned to Paris during the winter of 1889, before the Exposition Universelle and directly after his ill-fated sojourn with Vincent van Gogh in Arles the previous fall, executed 11 lithographs--including the current subject and 10 others that would be exhibited at the Volpini show--which constitute his first efforts at printmaking.
Boyle-Turner notes that, "Desperate for money during this period, according to Bernard, Gauguin tried to sell his prints even before they were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle. He may well have seen these prints not only as an intriguing experiment with a new technique but also as a way to generate interest in his paintings and to earn a little money. They were almost a prospectus showing the variety of images he had produced over the years. The motifs he chose reveal his own preferences for at least some of his paintings," (The Prints of the Pont-Aven School, New York, 1989, page 36).
Despite Gauguin's efforts to promote the Café Volpini exhibition and sell his first lithographs, the exhibition was a financial failure. Not a single one of the 100 plus works exhibited by any of the artists was sold. Gauguin produced only two further lithographs after the Volpini series, opting instead to turn to woodcuts in 1894. Kornfeld 2.
