Gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the sums he had saved. As for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well known to sell. It was necessary, above all things, to gain time. So he decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought with the proceeds of his career on the Bourse, in order to support himself. The list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly the direction of his tastes at this period. It included a Manet, several Renoirs, some Claude Monets, two Cézannes (still life and landscape), an early Pissarro, together with examples of Guillamin, Sisley, Jongkind, Lewis Brown and, most significant of all, two designs by Daumier.
Whether it was that Gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not know. Nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an appreciable sum or not. Probably the amount was small, for the Impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. In any case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. He had ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in Paris. He found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the place of Bertin's. So it was Madame Gauguin's turn to act. She decided on a removal to Copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their influence in obtaining a position for her husband.
Once in the Danish city, however, the basic difference between husband and wife showed itself in violent form. The atmosphere of rigid Protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the passionate southern temperament of the painter. He discovered that he hated everything in Denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of Parisian Bohemianism—everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! And he took no pains to conceal his hatred. He defiantly persisted in maintaining his Parisian freedom of speech and manners. One day, walking on the road that overlooks the bay of the Sund, he chanced to look down. Each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin for bathing. It is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately and entirely naked. Gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment when the wife of a Protestant minister was stepping into the water. Instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the nude. The daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her mother to return. The lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. But Gauguin continued his inspection. Next day there was the inevitable scandal.
Such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. Gauguin would yield nothing to the prejudices of the Danes, nor would his wife's family change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. A separation between husband and wife was inevitable. In 1885 it came about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. To the painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. We shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that Gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into which he entered with various women. He was probably more affectionate with his children, particularly with his daughter Aline, than ever with his wife.
It was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than accompany him to Paris, whither he was determined to return. Madame Gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the Parisian art-world. And so in 1885 Paul Gauguin returned to France once more to try his fortune.
V
He was now thirty-seven years old. Hitherto the events of his life had been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more consciously to be the master of his own destiny. It is therefore necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual equipment.
Gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of strong physical development. His hair, which later grew thinner and lost much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. The eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color—the eyes of one who has spent many years at sea. The nose was large, thick and aquiline. A thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. The chin was pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted beard similar in color to the mustache.
After Gauguin's return from the Antilles in 1887 it is the testimony of all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an Indian's, and that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. Even his excessive devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his health, had something sailor-like in it. Gauguin rolled his own cigarettes in the Spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. His hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman—coarse, square and red. Altogether he was in appearance curiously Creole; he did not resemble a Frenchman of France. The dark tint of his skin and the formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and hair.