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Titre pour 'Le Sourire', Number 6, January 1900: (The Smile). by Paul Gauguin

Titre pour Le Sourire, Number 6, January 1900: (The Smile). by Paul Gauguin

Titre pour 'Le Sourire', Number 6, January 1900: (The Smile).

Paul Gauguin

Title

Titre pour 'Le Sourire', Number 6, January 1900: (The Smile).

 
Artist

Paul Gauguin

 
Year
1899 /1900 printed later 
Technique
woodcut 
Image Size
3 7/8 x 5 7/8" image size 
Signature
unsigned, as usual 
Edition Size
not stated 
Annotations
titled in the block "Le Sourire" 
Reference
H. 103; L. 150; Guerin 81; Kornfield 62 
Paper
cream laid 
State
published 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
22451 
Price
SOLD
Description
Le Sourirewas a monthly periodical Gauguin printed and published himself between his travels to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands.

Title for Magazine, "Le Sourire", January, 1900: Contours were cut with a knife and some areas were corrected with a narrow burin; patches were hollowed out with a flat burin about 5 mm in width. The right edge [of the block] has crumbled away and was partly gnawed away by rodents. The artist's printing process caused the rounding-off of the edges.

Le Sourire (The Smile) was a satirical publication modeled in part off of the more successful Parisian periodical, Le Rire

, illustrated by artists such as Toulouse Lautrec. Gauguin illustrated the publication with his drawings using a mimeograph, and carved a different woodcut for each header. He said of his process in a letter to Daniel de Monfreid, "I created a newspaper...using the Edison mimeograph, and it's all the rage... Unfortunately, people borrow from each other and I have sold very few copies."

In total nine editions were printed during August 1899 and April 1900 while he lived in the tropics. Exactly how many copies of each were printed is not known, though it was likely fewer than 30. Gauguin was financially strapped and, due to the fact that they were hand printed, the quality of the reproductions was often poor and blotchy; he used cheap glue to bind the leaves to the paper. However, they are admired by art critics and historians today, in part due to their ephemeral nature.