Explore "Paul Gauguin" by John Gould Fletcher on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The exhibition at the Cafe Volpini brought notoriety to Gauguin. Various young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art" -- the phrase is Gauguin's -- which they were being taught in the ateliers of Paris, took the road for Pont-Aven. Among these were Paul Serusier, Chamaillard, and the Dutchman, De Haahn.
Acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of Serusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with Neo-Platonic mysticism, Gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite doctrine. Hitherto he had been an artist of the type of Ingres, working purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. But his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create.