The confrontation between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin revives the war of images of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
2. The studio in the south
A predictable drama
Paul Gauguin arrived in Arles in October 1888 and taught Vincent his method. The comparative formal analyses of their Alyscamps and Harvest reveal their mutual incomprehension.
Cathechism and its influence
An analysis of Paul Gauguin's Vendanges, Eves and Vision after the Sermon reveals an unexpected resonance between the most iconoclastic of modern painters and the traditional Catholic faith taught by Bishop Dupanloup.
4. The religious paintings of Bernard and Gauguin
A vertigineous gap and misunderstanding
Vincent van Gogh did not accept the religious drift in the work of Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard in 1888-1890. Gauguin was anticlerical, but his painting was steeped in Catholic culture; a Catholic influence that would later guide the conception of Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?.
Reading Debora Silverman, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000 https://vangoghletters.org/vg/ La correspondance de Paul Gauguin, Victor Merlhès, Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1984
Iconigraphic study