El Museu Hyacinthe Rigaud inaugurated "Under the Sun of Gauguin"

On June 25, the Hyacinthe Rigaud Museum in Perpignan opens the doors of its new temporary exhibition entitled Sous le soleil by Gauguin, which can be visited until November 6 this year.

A total of 100 iconic works by George Daniel de Monfreid (1856-1929) will be exhibited as well as works by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) which were decisive for his career. It will be presented in the temporary exhibition halls of the Hyacinthe Rigaud Museum of Art and will allow the exhibition of the hundred works according to a scenographic device deployed in 400m2.

Visitors will be able to discover the most emblematic works by George Daniel de Monfreid, most of them unpublished, as well as the 13 works by Paul Gauguin that made up his collection or marked his creative process. This exhibition is based on the acquisition policy carried out by the municipality of Perpignan in favor of the Hyacinthe Rigaud Museum of Art, which, since 2020, has been committed to the elaboration of this project, enriching its collections with large purchases. .

Some of the most outstanding works in this exhibition are: The self-portrait with the white jacket of the Volpini exhibition, h / t from 1889; The portrait of Olymp Rollet, m / t from 1912 (former Victor Segalen collection); The 26 engraved forests that reproduce Gauguin's works, intended for the printing of the publication of Gauguin's Noa Noa manuscript, published by Éditions Crès, in 1924, by George Daniel de Monfreid; The 96 daily notebooks written by the artist throughout his career.

George Daniel de Monfreid (1856-1929) is a prominent painter of the art world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who divided his life between Paris and his family residence in Corneilla de Conflent, in the Eastern Pyrenees. . An unconditional friend and promoter of the work of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), of whom he will be the custodian during his stays in Polynesia, George Daniel de Monfreid is also one of the artists who presides over the birth of a modernity stimulated by primitivism. de Gauguin.

His relationship with Gauguin was one of the most important events of his life. His affinities were immediately manifested on the occasion of the Volpini exhibition, organized by Gauguin in 1889 for the Paris Universal Exposition, where Monfreid exhibited a self-portrait called "with the white jacket." A true manifesto of an artistic personality who seeks his way, George Daniel de Monfreid, divided between Impressionism and Divisionism, appears at the dawn of a career that will dye its promises and whose exhibition wants to restore both the evolution as quality. Thus, the course will bring the artist's work closer in its monographic and retrospective dimension, to the rhythm of four sections that will reveal: his fondness for the landscape and still life; the subtle dialogue he maintained with Gauguin through his work; his family and his artistic entourage through his practice of portraiture.

The impact of the meetings of George Daniel de Monfreid with Victor Segalen (1878-1919) and Gustave Fayet (1865-1925) will also be developed, as well as the permanence of the relationship that the children of George Daniel de Monfreid, Agnès Huc de Monfreid and Henri de Monfreid, had to keep up with their father's work and history.

96 diaries in digital version

As part of a program that develops digital tools for research and the public, this year the Rigaud Museum is proposing to publish in digital version the 96 diaries kept by the artist during his career.

These diaries were acquired by the museum, with the help of the heritage fund, in 2020, these manuscripts leave to posterity the story of the life of an artist of everyday life, for the period from 1896 to 1929. These documents represent an important historical source for knowledge of Monfreid's work, but also for the French artistic context of the periods covered. These notebooks will be available for consultation and download on the Rigaud Museum website from 25 June and will be the subject of a specific mediation integrated into the exhibition route. Visiting hours for this exhibition are from 1 June to 30 September from 10:30 to 19:00, although the departure is closed from 18:30.