From the conference by Christian Jamet, art historian, September 12th, 2023
Adapted by Karin Jean Leslie
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) lived in Orléans between 1855 and 1862 and during the academic year 1864-1865 (Fig. 1). It appears he hardly ever returned except to attend uncle Isidore's funeral and the reading of his will in September 1893, only a few days after sailing back from Polynesia. Could the fact that he never painted here explain most art historians' lack of interest for the nine years young Gauguin's spent on the banks of the Loire?
Fig. 1 - View of Orléans seen from quai Neuf, on the south bank of the River Loire,
now quai de Prague
And yet the biographical research I conducted in 2013 (Gauguin à Orléans, ed. La Simarre) and the monograph I published in 2020 (Gauguin: Les chemins de la spiritualité [Paths of Spirituality], Paris, Cohen & Cohen), suggest the importance of these long Orléans years, during which Gauguin completed the majority of his studies from 1855 to 1865 (1). As shown in much of his artistic work and some of his writings, the religious education he received at the Petit Séminaire (2) of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, had a profound influence on him.
It therefore seems necessary to further examine Paul Gauguin's life in Orléans via a trail that leads from his home on quai Neuf (3) to the Petit Séminaire at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin and finally the Lycée Impérial, rue Jeanne-d'Arc. But first, the reason why young Gauguin left Lima for Orléans must be considered, and more significantly, his paternal origins examined.
The Orléans branch of Paul Gauguin's family tree
Paul Gauguin's maternal family history, which included the last viceroy of Peru and Flora Tristan, pioneer of feminism and social activist in the 1840s (4), is undeniably more illustrious than that of his father, Clovis Gauguin, whose family had been firmly anchored in Orléans for at least five generations.
I “come from Orléans"
In Before and After (1902-1903), Gauguin's last written work, the artist records, among other memories, an anecdote he says occurred at Berbère (actually Cerbère) near the Spanish border, where he was in April 1884: “In Berbère I am drawing on the beach, on the frontier. A police officer from the South of France who suspects me of being a spy, says to me, who comes from Orléans: Are you French? - Certainly.” (5)
"... to Me, who comes from Orléans": what better testimony of Gauguin's awareness of belonging, on his father's side, to an old Orléans family, most likely originating from a hamlet in the Loiret named Les Gauguins? Many inhabitants of the Loiret still bear this patronym, particularly in Orléans, even if a good number are only loosely linked to the painter's genealogy.
Going back in time, at the end of the XVII c and the beginning of the XVIII c, in the heart of Faubourg Saint-Marceau, south of the Loire River, lived Guillaume Gauguin, a wine grower born around 1677. The elder Guillaume was father of three sons: Pierre, Guillaume and Étienne. The younger Guillaume died around 1848 without issue. Étienne is at the origin of a branch still largely represented in Orléans and the surrounding areas, but it is from Pierre Gauguin (1742-1781) that the painter descends.
Married to Françoise Proust, Pierre had three daughters and two sons: Guillaume Gauguin (1758-1845), himself father of another Guillaume who fathered Clovis Gauguin (1814-1849) father of the painter and his brother Isidore (1819-1893), Paul's uncle. Guillaume, paternal grandfather of the painter, was a grocer until 1838. His shop, at n° 5, place de la Croix-Saint-Marceau (Fig. 2), offered a wide variety of imported produce brought to Orléans via the Loire River.
Fig. 2 – Orléans, place de la Croix-Saint-Marceau (between avenue Dauphine
and rue Saint-Marceau), postcard. In the centre, Guillaume Gauguin’s home and shop.
Clovis Gauguin, father of the painter
Clovis Gauguin was born at the family's La Croix-Saint-Marceau home on April 17th, 1814. Little is known about this man, and even less about his younger years in Orléans. After spending 15 months in Cairo, he may have travelled to Greece then Italy. His studies, of which no trace has been found, brought him to the field of journalism.
Having failed to find any articles signed by Clovis Gauguin, Charles Chassé and Jean de Rotonchamp, biographers of Paul Gauguin, did not deem Clovis worthy of interest: "Clovis Gauguin must not have played a notable role in the press of his time", Jean de Rotonchamp states in his 1906 work on Gauguin. Clovis was, however, a man of conviction and a talented polemist. Garnier-Pages gave him a taste for politics and most likely introduced him to a lawyer friend of Georges Sand's, Frédéric Girerd, thanks to whom he became editor-in-chief of the paper, L’Association, founded in 1840 in Nevers (16 rue des Merciers) by a few left-leaning gentlemen. Clovis left the paper in June 1841 to head Le Pilote du Calvados in Caen where he published particularly harshly worded and controversial articles. Not surprisingly, the young journalist departed for Paris where he became a political columnist at Le National, a republican opposition paper that had since 1836 been directed by Armand Marrast, a politician and later President of the Assemblée Nationale (6) in July 1848. Through the director of his paper in Paris Clovis Gauguin met his future wife Aline Chazal, daughter of a lithographer and Flora Célestine Thérèse Henriette de Tristan y Moscoso, better known as Flora Tristan, from a renowned Spanish family settled in Peru. They were married on June 15th, 1846.
Aline Gauguin, nee Chazal, and Clovis had two children: Fernande Marceline Marie, born on April 25th, 1847, and Eugène Henri Paul, on June 7th, 1848. The children barely knew their father as he died suddenly at Port-Famine, in the Straights of Magellan on October 30th, 1849. He was en route to Lima with his family, where, considering the threat represented by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (future emperor Napoléon III), he had planned to seek exile and found a republican paper. Aline and her two children therefore continued their voyage without him to Peru and lived for a few years in a spacious house in the capital Lima (avenida Emancipación, Cuadra 12), belonging to Aline's uncle, Don Pio de Tristan y Moscoso, former viceroy of Peru. Thus until the age of six, little Paul lived in material comfort and tasted the universe of the presidential palace, as his distant cousin Echenique was president of the Republic of Peru between 1851 and 1855.
Uncle Isidore
Finally, a word about Isidore Fleury Gauguin (Fig. 3), Guillaume's second son, “Uncle Zizi” (according to the painter nicknamed, "because he was called Isidore and was very small"). The author of Before and After speaks of him with affection, his “good uncle from Orléans” whom it seems he hardly set eyes on after leaving Orléans, except in 1884, in Rouen where “Zizi “visited after the family settled there in January.
Isidore Gauguin, born in Orleans on April 5th, 1819, at 9 rue Dauphine (now avenue Dauphine), was a bachelor. For a few years he had a jewellery shop rue des Petits-Souliers (now rue Louis-Roguet) in the town centre. In 1853 he most likely went to live in Faubourg Saint-Marceau, with his father, widowed in 1845. Isidore, who like his brother was a fervent republican sympathiser, narrowly escaped deportation to Algeria after participating in a demonstration in front of the Orléans Town Hall (7) on December 2nd, 1851, at the time of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'État. His participation earned him a year's incarceration in the prison of Orléans in 1852. No doubt sensing it would be best to make himself scarce, he gave up his jewellery shop the following year.
Fig. 3 - Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Isidore Gauguin, c. 1884, oil on canvas, 27 x 18 cm, Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art
From Orléans to La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin
The family home on quai Neuf
The Orléans residence in Faubourg Saint-Marceau where Paul Gauguin spent several years of his youth is still standing today at 25 quai de Prague, formerly quai Neuf, sometimes called quai Tudelle. Having married Marie Élisabeth Juranville, native of Sandillon (Loiret) in 1813, Guillaume Gauguin, Paul's grandfather, bought a house with a garden at 25 quai Neuf (formerly 31) by arbitrage, on August 8th, 1835, in Orléans. A few years later, in 1847, Guillaume inherited, from his father, a retired vegetable grower, the little house at the back of this property located at the far end of an adjoining garden, the façade of which was 10 rue Tudelle - now 16 - . (Fig. 4 and 5)
Fig. 4 - Orléans, quai Neuf. Gauguin’s home
Fig. 5 – Layout of the Gauguin property (25 quai Neuf and 10 rue Tudelle)
How did Paul, his mother Aline and his sister Marie, come to settle in Orleans? As it happens, in 1854, the political atmosphere in Peru was declining: Echenique's situation was becoming critical. In contrast, reassuring news from France reached Madame Gauguin. She was assured that the atmosphere was improving under Napoléon III, the economy flourishing and the Empire less menacing than the deceased Clovis had predicted in his now forgotten articles in Le National. Meanwhile, in Orléans, old Guillaume Gauguin wished ardently to see his “little Peruvians” before dying. In 1853 he had his land and property divided. He was to keep the usufruct (8) of the properties, but the ownership was divided between Isidore and Clovis' offspring, Paul and Marie, who, following a draw, found themselves owners of the two houses on quai Neuf.
According to Gauguin's biographers, Aline and her two children arrived in Orléans late 1854 or early 1855. Perhaps they first lived in the small house 10 rue Tudelle (since Isidore and his father Guillaume lived in the main house, quai Neuf). It is likely they moved to the more spacious house on the Loire after Grandfather Guillaume died on April 9th, 1855, only a few months after they arrived. It seems Isidore then went to live in the small house, rue Tudelle. The garden shared between the two houses allowed him to enjoy his family. In December 1858, however, he moved a few streets away perhaps for greater independence.
After six years of provincial life, in 1861, Aline and her daughter left for Paris where Madame Gauguin opened a couture house at 33 rue de la Chaussée d'Antin. Paul was sent to boarding school at the Petit Séminaire of La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin.
The young boy had many cousins in Orléans, namely Jenny Meunier, born August 20th, 1839, whose mother Anne-Justine's maiden name was Gauguin. She lived close by, at 21 (formerly 27) quai Neuf. It was she who cared for Paul and gave Isidore a helping hand after Aline left for Paris. However, Paul may have had to overcome a language barrier as, on returning from Lima, he spoke Spanish with only a smattering of French. His primary schooling (9) and the linguistic environment played their part, but it is said that uncle Isidore had helped him master the French language by, as a good republican, having him read some pages of Rousseau. At a family reunion on April 20th,1855, Isidore became subrogate tutor (10) for his nephew, Paul, and his niece, Marie.
Put up for sale on Paul's majority in 1869, the property (25 quai de Prague) was sold on March 31st, 1870, for the sum of 14,000 French francs, according to the notarised bill of sale. Gauguin, a sailor based in Toulon at the time, had given power of attorney to his cousin Auguste Dupuis living at 51 quai Tudelle to represent him at the sale.
In the pages of Before and After dedicated to his formative years in Orléans, Gauguin notes a few memories of the garden in his home quai Neuf: “My good uncle in Orléans […] told me that when I came back from Peru we lived in my grandfather’s house. I was seven years old. Now and again, they used to see me in the big garden stamping and flinging the sand all about me… Well, little Paul, what’s the matter with you? And I stamped all the harder, saying Baby is naughty […] On other occasions they found me, motionless, in silent extasy under a hazelnut tree which, side by side with a fig tree, adorned the corner of the garden. What are you doing there, little Paul? - I am waiting for the nuts to fall.”
Louis Pasteur's parents-in-law's home at Saint-Pryvé-Saint-Mesmin
Aside the "big garden" mentioned by the painter, we can imagine the games little Paul played there and on the banks of the River Loire that lead to Saint-Pryvé-Saint-Mesmin, three kilometers from Orléans.
In a May 1892 letter sent from Tahiti to his wife Mette, who lived in Copenhagen, the painter writes about the games he played with Jean-Baptiste the son of Louis Pasteur (11), and inquires: "Regarding Pasteur, ask his son if it wasn't him I knew in Orléans. The Zévor (sic) and Pasteur sons played with me in St-Mesmin. That was a long time ago." That spring, Jean-Baptiste Pasteur had purchased one of her husband's paintings from Mette. During his childhood, Jean-Baptiste occasionally stayed with his grandparents Laurent, the scientist's parents-in-law, in the little hamlet "Saint-Nicolas" (8 rue Claude-Joliot) at Saint-Pryvé-Saint-Mesmin (Fig. 6). In 1855 Monsieur and Madame Laurent had bought a country house in that hamlet close to the Château des Feuillants, 18 rue Claude Jolliot, today's Carmel de Micy (12), formerly owned by Marie Pasteur's uncle and aunt, Danicourt.
Fig. 6 - The Laurent family home, 8 rue Claude-Joliot at Saint-Pryvé-Saint-Mesmin
Madame Pasteur and her children were staying at Saint-Pryvé-Saint-Mesmin in autumn 1856, almost a year after Aline Gauguin settled her family in Orléans. Perhaps it was at this time that Paul, Jean-Baptiste Pasteur and his cousin Edgar Zévort played together for the first time, but there were certainly other occasions. Can this friendship be explained by a possible family connection? Madame Pasteur's cousin, Louise Danicourt, had become Madame Cribier. The name Cribier comes up in Gauguin's genealogy: Marie Magdeleine Élisabeth Cribier, spouse of Louis Juranville, was the maternal grandmother of Clovis Gauguin, the painter's father.
The Petit Séminaire at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin
If a major step in young Gauguin's life as an Orléanais is to be mentioned, it is without doubt the Petit Séminaire at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, a Catholic boarding school about six kilometres west of Orléans. The years spent in this prestigious establishment left a profound and lasting imprint on the painter's frame of mind and his work, influencing his theological writings as well as his painting and sculpture.
Founded by Monseigneur Fayet, Bishop of Orléans between 1842 and 1849, the Petit Séminaire opened on October 5th, 1846. Young Gauguin was enrolled in 1859 at the age of eleven. At this time, Monseigneur Dupanloup presided over the Diocese of Orléans, therefore over the religious boarding school at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin. He had the building enlarged by adding wings to the central section and two chapels to accommodate a growing number of students (Fig. 7). The school was open to all, with no distinction regarding the student's professional future, but with an all-pervasive vocational orientation towards the priesthood.
Fig. 7 – The Petit Séminaire at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, postcard
In March 1859, Aline Gauguin sold some property belonging to her children to finance their studies. She wanted the best and did not hesitate to enrol Paul in this renowned institution, where bourgeois and nobility from France and abroad alike were to be his classmates. For example, the future Albert I, Prince of Monaco, studied at this prestigious school, between 1864 and 1865, shortly after Gauguin. Ferdinand d'Orléans, Duc de Montpensier, Infanta of Spain, grandson of Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, was also a boarder in the 1870s (13).
For three academic years - 1859-1862 (14) -, Paul Gauguin excelled, mainly in the first two years as recorded on the list of prizes distributed to students for excellence. The honours list of July 28th, 1862, found only recently, bears no mention of the name Gauguin. His mother's departure for Paris, as noted earlier, and his ambition to leave Orléans to prepare the entrance exams for the naval academy might explain his less distinguished results.
Along with a solid scientific and literary education, catechism was fundamental at the Petit Séminaire. It could be said that it was the keystone of the educational system, accompanied by daily religious practices: mass at 5:45 am, recital by heart of evangelical verses at the beginning of morning classes, Angelus prayer, Grace before meals in the dining hall, and the evening spiritual reading and prayers. How could such an education laced with Christian spirit not have a lasting impact on the students? It did in Gauguin's case provide a constant source of inspiration through figures and biblical tales engraved in his memory, but it also remained for him an abiding spiritual and moral reference. The art historian, Debora L. Silverman, in The Search for Sacred Art (15), rightly observed that the painter's vigorous anticlericalism and rejection of religious practices co-existed with a frame of mind, indelibly marked by the religious foundation and values that moulded his formative years.
Fig. 8 - Paul Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives, 1889, oil on canvas,
73 x 92 cm, West Palm Beach (Florida), Norton Gallery of Art
In his theological writing The Catholic Church and Modern Times which later became Modern Thought and Catholicism, Gauguin attacked Catholic dogma and what was supposed to be a "literal" interpretation of the sacred texts by the Roman Catholic Church. He, nevertheless, remained deeply attached to the Gospel and Jesus Christ. Undoubtedly influenced by Renan's Life of Jesus, Gauguin saw Him not as a God but as a wise man, an exceptional being, a model for humanity. He recites from memory, verses from the Gospel learned by heart during his childhood, never using a precise reference. Moreover, he represented Jesus in several paintings, even portraying Him in his own image (Fig. 8).
Fig. 9 - Paul Gauguin, The Last Supper, 1899,
oil on canvas, 60 x 43,5 cm, Paris,
Katia Granoff collection
Fig. 10 - Paul Gauguin, Te nave nave fenua (Delightful Land), 1892, oil on canvas, 91 x 71 cm, Kurashiki,
Ohara Museum of Art
Through the people he met, his theosophical readings and the study of comparative religion, the painter evolved towards a very personal form of Deism, rejecting all simplistic images of what he calls l'insondable mystère (the unfathomable mystery) adhering to neither recognised dogma nor form of worship. Observe, however, a painting like his Last Supper, 1899 (Fig. 9) where one finds three religions, present in a spirit of syncretism. The moon (top right) is the symbol of the Goddess Hina of the old Māori religion; she also seems to appear on the central pillar where she is represented with Taaroa and Fatou, two other Māori gods. One of the figures in the foreground, sitting in the lotus position, suggests Buddhism. Nevertheless Jesus, radiant in gold, illuminates the composition of The Last Supper, as if to underline the importance of His message.
The figure of Eve, another childhood memory of catechism - probably rekindled by Milton (16) -, is in any case an omnipresent biblical character in Gauguin's painting and sculpture (Fig. 10). She symbolizes the “paradise lost” that haunted him to the end and left him nostalgic for a world without sin, in which carnal love, in particular, was perfectly innocent. Hence, among other reasons, including his rejection of Western culture, the longing for Rousseau and his quest for the "savage", he reinvented the images of this paradise through his art, in a Polynesia more imaginary than real.
Fig. 11 - Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ, 1890-1891, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay Gauguin between matter (symbolized by the sculpture on the right) and spirit (symbolized by the Yellow Christ on the left)
Despite his recriminations against the Roman Catholic Church, Gauguin, both libertine and mystic, owes his spiritual awakening to his religious education. This spiritual part of his paradoxical being - between matter and spirit, as shown in the Self portrait with the Yellow Christ (Fig. 11) - resides in a desire for the absolute, infinite, as so many critics have noted, but it is also visible through a constant metaphysical interrogation, echoing Monseigneur Dupanloup's teaching, notably in the title of the famous painting: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Fig. 12)
Fig. 12 - Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1897-1898,
oil on canvas, 139,1 x 374,6 cm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
Return to Orléans: the Lycée Impérial, rue Jeanne-d'Arc
Searching for Gauguin's footsteps in Orléans also leads to what was formerly the Lycée Impérial (now a business school), rue Jeanne-d'Arc, in the town centre where young Paul spent the academic year 1864-1865, after two years in Paris unsuccessfully preparing for the naval academy entrance examination (Fig. 13).
One could ask why Gauguin did not return to the Petit Séminaire, when he concedes, in Before and After that the education he received there allowed him to make "very rapid progress" and largely contributed to his "intellectual development". But he promptly adds that there he also learned "very young, to hate hypocrisy, false virtues, denunciation; to rely on everything that was contrary to his instincts, heart and reason". More precisely, the positive experience of this excellent education was compounded by another, evidently largely negative, in which the origin of the painter's deep-rooted anticlericalism can be perceived.
Fig. 13 – Orléans - The Lycée Impérial, rue Jeanne d’Arc. Postcard
At the time Gauguin à Orléans was published, all that was known about this new year in Orléans was an anecdote in Before and After without any indication of the location. Later, Jean de Rotonchamp, who knew the painter well, situated the scene at the Lycée Impérial in Orléans: "One of the assistant masters at my school, Father Beaudoin, was a grenadier who had survived Waterloo. He was a great hand at seasoning pipes. In the dormitory, with our shirts half lifted, we would say disrespectfully. Attention! Present arms! And the old man, a tear in the eye, would remind himself of the great Napoleon. The great Napoleon knew how to make them die: he also knew how to make them live. “
An important element has come to light, since Gauguin à Orléans, adding to our understanding of the little-known year the painter spent at the Lycée Impérial on rue Jeanne-d'Arc. Following the discovery of a drawing signed "Paul Gauguin" dated July 2nd, 1865 (Fig. 14), a study conducted by art history students at the University of Tours established that it was an authentic work by the young Paul Gauguin. It was done at the Lycée Impérial in Orléans under his teacher, Charles Pensée (1799-1871), a talented watercolourist who painted street scenes of Orléans. Pensée travelled widely and especially in Switzerland, where he went on three occasions, in 1855,1858, and 1863, with a particular liking for the canton of Bern. Alas, many of his works have not come down to us, notably one of a chalet in Erlenbach im Simmental, the painting the student Gauguin copied shortly before summer vacation, in July 1865
Fig. 14 - Paul Gauguin, Swiss Chalet on the Banks of the River Loire, July 1865,
chinese ink and watercolor on paper, 25 x 39,5 cm, private collection
Here is, so to speak, a "Gauguin before GAUGUIN," a scholarly exercise comparable to what would be an essay by a young Victor Hugo, years before Les Misérables. This Swiss chalet is, nonetheless, indicative of the young artist's talent. In this work young Paul's hand, well trained by Abbot Dumontel at the Petit Séminaire, and by the preparatory classes for the Naval Academy (where drawing accounted for a high coefficient at the entrance exam), bears witness to his talent
So it seems Gauguin was not entirely self-taught before his lessons with Pissarro and his Orléans years certainly contributed to his training. Yet, another thought occurs pertaining to this study by the young Gauguin. Doesn't transferring a Swiss chalet to the banks of the Loire, showing a little mariner dreaming in front of a gabarre (17), leaving the sweet company of young girls (Fig. 15), reveal something of the future host of la Maison du Jouir (18) which will let his "folle imagination" spring forth, through a powerful and innovative work?
Fig. 15 - Paul Gauguin, Swiss Chalet on the Banks of the River Loire, details
Sold at auction in June 2019 at the Château d'Artigny - Indre-et-Loire, near Tours - (19) for 80,000€, the drawing was purchased by a French national living in Switzerland. The happy owner has promised to bequest it to a Swiss German museum. Thus, this first known work by Gauguin, ignored by the city of Orléans, has irrevocably left France.
A conclusion to this journey
Fig. 16 - Paul Gauguin, Clearing I, 1873 or 1874, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, Orléans, Musée des Beaux-Arts
The Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans (20) is home of two paintings by Gauguin. The first, a landscape dated 1873 or 1874, one of the two versions of La Clairière, acquired in 1965, is an early work in the Barbizon style, painted at the time when Gauguin, a foreign exchange broker, was still, despite his talent, a "Sunday painter". (Fig. 16)
The second, the famed Fête Gloanec (Fig. 17), was painted in Pont-Aven (Brittany) in 1888, and given to Marie-Jeanne Gloanec, inn keeper, for her Saint's day. To avoid criticism, Gauguin signed the painting "Madeleine B." (Émile Bernard's sister). He clashed with the hostility of conservative painters led by Guy de Maupassant's father, but no one could criticise a young girl freshly come to Pont-Aven with her mother. This major work could thus be hung in the dining room of the Gloanec inn. It then passed to painter Maurice Denis, co-founder of the Nabis.
Fig. 17 - Paul Gauguin, Still Life, Fête Gloanec, 1888, oil on canvas, 38 x 53 cm, Orléans,
Musée des Beaux-Arts
This vibrant, flamboyant still life demonstrating the influence of Degas as well as Japanese art, was purchased by the museum in 1964, under the post-war reparations plan “Dommages de Guerre” (21). It is a milestone in Gauguin's work in that it inaugurates his use of Cloisonnism (a Post impressionist technique using flat forms separated by dark contours as in cloisonné enamels, stained glass and Japanese prints). This period will bring Gauguin to Synthetism (cerebral painting detached from any need for realism): "I close my eyes to see", the artist would say. The modern style of La Fête Gloanec will open the path for the Nabis and the Fauves. This oil on wood travels regularly worldwide as despite its modest size, it is an essential work in Gauguin's artistic evolution as it is for art history.
Notes
1. Between 1855 and 1862, Gauguin studied in Orléans (elementary school and The Petit Séminaire at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin). He studied in Paris between 1862 and 1864 (Pension Loriol). He returned to Orléans during the academic year 1864-1865 (Lycée Imperial, rue Jeanne-d’Arc).
2. The Petit Séminaire: Catholic primary and secondary boarding school for boys. In 1858-1859, Monseigneur Dupanloup also opened a higher course of study after the 8e, “classe de Philosophie” (current “Terminale”).
3. Now quai de Prague
4. Flora Tristan is known as the "Mother of feminism and of popular communitarian socialism”. Sowerwine, Charles, 1998: “Socialist Feminism and the socialist women's movement from the French Revolution to World War II", in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, Boston,
Houghton Miffen Company, pp. 357-388
5. Paul Gauguin, Before and After, translation The Courtauld Gallery, London. All quotations of this work were graciously provided by the Courtauld Gallery, London, online translation.
https://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/the-collection/prints-and-drawings/discover-avant-et-apres/turn-the-pages-of-avant-et-apres-by-paul-gauguin/
6. https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/histoire-et-patrimoine
7. The Orléans Town hall:
Hôtel Groslot https://www.francethisway.com/places/hotel-groslot.php
About Isidore Gauguin at the Town Hall: Christian Jamet, Gauguin à Orléans, 2013, p. 17, 18.
8. Usufruct: right to enjoy the use and advantages of another's property.
9."They sent me as a day-pupil to a school in Orléans. The master said, that child will be either an idiot or a man of genius. Il have become neither the one nor the other. " (Before and After)
10. Subrogate tutor: legal substitute for another person.
11. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Pasteur
12. Carmel de Micy: https://divinebox.fr/carmel-micy-orleans/
13. Alumni of the Petit Séminaire: Christian Jamet, Quelques anciens du Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, Orsud, May 2024
14. School years: 6e, 5e and 4e ( from the 6th Grade, USA, or Year 7, UK, to the 8th Grade USA, or Year 9, UK)
15. Debora L. Silverman, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art, published by Farrar and Straus and Giroux, Gordonsville Va. USA 2000
16. Paradise Lost by John Milton (1608-1674)
17. Gabarre: a flat boat used on rivers and in ports to carry goods, to load or unload ships.
18. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/maison-du-jouir-15286
19. https://francetoday.com/accommodation/chateaux/chateau-dartigny-loire-valley/
20. Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans:
https://www.orleans-metropole.fr/culture/musees-expositions/le-musee-des-beaux-arts
21. Dommages de Guerre: French post-World War II compensation plan.
We should like to thank all those who contributed to this effort: Karin Jean Leslie, Dr. Peter Geller, NYC, KC Congedo, Alain Clavaud-Daubigny, Jean Chollet, The Courtauld Gallery (London), the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, the Archives départementales du Loiret.
© Christian Jamet, August 2024