Paul Gauguin is famend for his revolutionary work, however he additionally created some astonishingly daring and imaginative ceramics. Considered one of these, the Cleopatra Pot (winter 1887-88), rapidly grew to become linked to Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo—and the fabled Sunflowers.
Two days after Gauguin joined Van Gogh on the Yellow Home in Arles in October 1888 he wrote to his Parisian artist buddy Émile Schuffenecker: “We’re right here in a small, reasonably charming little home, and I want to have some pottery to have a look at”. Schuffenecker, who was taking care of a few of Gauguin’s results, despatched him two ceramics, together with the requested Cleopatra Pot.
Two months later got here the tragic incident during which Van Gogh severed his ear, through the night of 23 December 1888. By this time relations between him and Gauguin had deteriorated. On Christmas Day, Vincent’s brother Theo arrived by prepare from Paris to go to him in hospital, and that night time Theo and Gauguin returned to Paris collectively.
Quickly afterwards Gauguin introduced the Cleopatra Pot to Theo, who was an artwork seller in Paris, partly to thank him for having mounted an exhibition of his work a number of weeks earlier. On Theo’s loss of life in 1891, the ceramic remained along with his widow Jo Bonger.
{Photograph} (winter 1925-26) of Jo Bonger’s bed room in her Amsterdam condo, with the Cleopatra Pot on the piano—and a element Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Basis)
Within the winter of 1925-26, the pot seems in {a photograph} of Jo’s bed room, on the piano and containing a bunch of flowers or grasses. Appropriately, three of the images hanging on the wall behind are flower nonetheless lifes by Adolphe Monticelli and Georges Jeannin, artists whom Van Gogh admired and picked up.
Jo had died in September 1925 and the condo was about to be cleared. Above the piano’s closed keyboard is a portray of her (subsequent to a portrait of her younger grandson, Theodoor), presumably positioned there in reminiscence on the instrument that she would by no means play once more.
Seductive image
The fascinating story of the Cleopatra Pot has been revealed by Joost van der Hoeven, a researcher on the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—and it has simply gone on-line. Gauguin had crafted the glazed stoneware pot within the winter of 1887-88, together with a gaggle of ceramics that he made within the Paris workshop of Ernest Chaplet.
The entrance of Gauguin’s Cleopatra Pot, with a reclining determine representing the Egyptian queen, behind her (on the best facet) a black sheep and with the PGo signature Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Basis)
On the pot’s entrance is a nude determine representing the legendary Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Van der Hoeven factors out that within the nineteenth century she was thought to be “a vivid image of magnificence, seduction and need”. Her bare physique provocatively sits close to the rear of a black sheep (the glaze of its head has now chipped off), an animal that at the moment might be seen as symbolising sin. Paul Gauguin signed the entrance “PGo”, a monogram that in French appears like “pego”, a slang phrase for penis. The reverse of the pot is embellished with two pigs, which Gauguin thought to be standing for lust.
The again of Gauguin’s Cleopatra Pot, with two pigs Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Basis)
The determine of the reclining Cleopatra was taken straight from a portray by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Hope (1871-72), which Van Gogh and Gauguin had each admired when it was displayed in Paris in November 1887. Gauguin then reworked the girl in Hope into an allegory of seduction.
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ Hope (1871-72) Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Together with the Cleopatra Pot, Gauguin additionally gave Theo an much more vital work, the image Vincent van Gogh Portray Sunflowers (December 1888). As Van der Hoeven explains, the 2 items could have been made to console Theo or “out of emotions of guilt”, as a result of Gauguin had performed an element within the circumstances that led to Vincent’s mutilation of his ear. Gauguin additionally wished to maintain on the best facet of Theo, who was then his seller and had simply mounted an exhibition of his work.
Gauguin’s Vincent van Gogh Portray Sunflowers (December 1888) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Basis)
Since Van der Hoeven’s account was posted, we now have been capable of set up when the 2 items have been most likely introduced to Theo. In a letter from Gauguin to Vincent, dated between 8 and 16 January 1889, he mentions that he had simply visited Theo. Gauguin commented: “At your brother’s house I noticed your Sower, which is excellent, in addition to a yellow nonetheless life, apples and lemons. Your brother gave me a lithographed replica of an outdated portray of yours.” This was Van Gogh’s lithograph of The Potato Eaters (April 1885). One other letter suggests the go to befell on 2 or 3 January.
Gauguin presumably turned up at Theo’s condo bearing his two items, the Cleopatra Pot and Vincent van Gogh Portray Sunflowers. Theo would possibly then have felt he ought to reciprocate, which he did by presenting the extra modest lithograph.
Recent mild on the Sunflowers
The newly established hyperlink between the items offers a captivating perception into Gauguin’s try to amass one among Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. In Van Gogh’s letter to Gauguin of 21 January 1889 he wrote that he had heard (from Theo) that his buddy would love “a canvas of mine, the sunflowers with a yellow background”. (By coincidence, this letter is happening show in Arles, see Different Van Gogh Information, under).
Extract from Van Gogh’s letter to Gauguin, 21 January 1889: “You discuss to me in your letter a few canvas of mine, the sunflowers with a yellow background—to say that it could offer you some pleasure to obtain it. I don’t suppose that you simply’ve made a nasty alternative—if [Georges] Jeannin has the peony, [Ernest] Quost the hollyhock, I certainly, earlier than others, have taken the sunflower.” Musée Réattu, Arles; {photograph} Hervé Hôte
Gauguin was usually wily in his dealings with associates, and one suspects that his reward of Vincent van Gogh Portray Sunflowers and the Cleopatra Pot was motivated by a need to amass the Sunflowers. If that was certainly his intention, it failed, since plainly Gauguin by no means owned one of many yellow Sunflowers.
The Cleopatra Pot is at the moment on show in a Van Gogh Museum touring exhibition in Japan, now on the Tokyo Metropolitan Artwork Museum (till 1 December) after which going to the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Artwork (3 January–23 March 2026) in Nagoya. Contemplating Japan’s nice custom of ceramics, Gauguin’s imaginative pot shall be a lot appreciated there.
Different Van Gogh information
A French rural put up field (1882), on show in an Arles exhibition of artists impressed by Van Gogh’s letters © Photograph: Musée de La Poste, Paris/La Poste; {photograph} Thierry Débonnaire
The Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles is about to open an exhibition entitled To Vincent, A Winter’s Story (30 November-21 April 2026), that includes artists impressed by Van Gogh’s letters. These embrace Rineke Dijkstra, Gustave Fayet, Anselm Kiefer and Wolfgang Tillmans. Two Van Gogh work are coming from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum: Head of a Girl (December 1885) and Sunflowers Gone to Seed (August-September 1887). Additionally on present shall be Van Gogh’s letter to Gauguin of 21 January 1889, on mortgage from the Musée Réattu in Arles.
Martin Bailey is a number one Van Gogh specialist and particular correspondent for The Artwork Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions on the Barbican Artwork Gallery, Compton Verney/Nationwide Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.
Martin Bailey’s current Van Gogh books
Martin has written numerous bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Evening: Van Gogh on the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are additionally now out there in a extra compact paperback format.
His different current books embrace Residing with Vincent van Gogh: The Properties & Landscapes that formed the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which offers an outline of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Buddy Van Gogh/Emile Bernard offers the primary English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).
To contact Martin Bailey, please electronic mail vangogh@theartnewspaper.com
Please observe that he doesn’t undertake authentications.
Discover all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh right here
