The Chicago Faun

The Art Institute of Chicago - Paul Gauguin - Faun
Originally uploaded by cerdsp NOT IN FACT A GAUGUIN.

The Art Institute has one of the finest collections of 19th Century art in the world. But it does not have a sculpture by Paul Gauguin. For a brief period it thought that it did have one but this turned out to be a forgery. The object was forged and so was the provenance yet scholars felt able to identify it as the earliest surviving ceramic by Gauguin. They also had knowledge of an authentic drawing -apparently rather slight-which suggested the faun to them (and to the forger). This image can be seen on page 14 of Gray's book on the artist's sculpture and ceramics. It shows the first page of  the Album Gauguin now in the Louvre. This sketchbook is concerned with projects for ceramic work and some of these do survive and are undoubtedly by Gauguin. This  provided clear evidence that Gauguin thought about an image of a faun. So it was possible that a similar ceramic would one day be found. This along with the forged provenance suggested that an unknown work by Gauguin had been found.If you look at the illustration in Gray you will see that the faun's pectoral area suggests femininity as much as  masculinity.I suggest-and it is easy with hindsight to do this-that the Faun looks rather like some sort of fantasy art model.

It is extremely easy to be wise after the event but the Art Institute's advisors should have noticed the poor quality of the modelling  of the faun and compared it with the  early family portrait busts by Gauguin .These show a bland and sophisticated modelling. These works exist as marbles  which must have been realised after the original clays by the artist, realised by a praticien a highly skilled craftsman and not by Gauguin himself. It is of course the case that Gauguin was consciously attempting a  primitivism in his work and that is the reason we admire his ceramics so much. But do look at the modelling of the chest and arms. Gauguin would not have been satisfied with something so slapdash . Primitivism is one thing but incompetence entirely another. Some will say that those who authenticated the work were influenced by the very fact that Gauguin ceramics are not easy to obtain.

It is sad/amusing to relate that at one point Gauguin did offer to work as a praticien. This can only have been in a moment of desperation or fantasy. It is even more improbable than the idea of James Joyce as a cinema manager.You can read more about the perpetrator of this forgery here