His story is famous: brash Parisian banker-turned-artist leaves family to paint vivid scenes of indigenous people in Tahiti. Yet Paul Gauguin has been overlooked by the art world in recent decades. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections, which accompanies a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, remedies this omission with lively overviews of his travels and innovative working methods, and more than 200 reproductions of his paintings, drawings, prints, and wood carvings. Gauguin's fascination with "primitive" cultures and blocky, simplified figures began during sojourns to Brittany in the late 1880s. A visit to Martinique whetted his appetite for tropical settings, and in 1891 he set sail for the South Pacific. Numerous excerpts from Gauguin's self-aggrandizing letters and other writings reveal the intense pleasures he found far from home: "I muse on violent harmonies amid the intoxicating fragrances of nature."

SPONSOR'S STATEMENT

DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO

LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS COLTA IVES, SUSAN ALYSON STEIN

NOTE TO THE READER

GAUGUIN'S PORTS OF CALL C/)LTA IVES

 Introduction

 Gauguin in Paris and the Ile de France

 Gauguin in Brittany: Pont-Aven, 1886, 1888-90, 1894

 Gauguin in Martinique, 1897

 Gauguin in Arles, 1888

 Gauguin in Brittany: Le Pouldu, 1889

 Gauguin in Tahiti: 1891-93, 1895-1901

 Gauguin in the Marquesas: Hiva Oa, 1901-3

FROM THE BEGINNING: COLLECTING AND EXHIBITING

GAUGUIN IN NEW YORK SUSAN ALYSON STEIN

GAUGUIN'S PAINTINGS IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART:

RECENT REVELATIONS THROUGH TECHNICAL EXAMINATION

CHARLOTTE HALE

GAUGUIN'S WORKS ON PAPER: OBSERVATIONS ON MATERIALS

AND TECHNIQUES MARJORIE SHELLEY

 Table: Analysis of Certain Materials Found in Gauguin's Works on Paper

 Examined for This Study SILVIA A. CENTENO

Works in the Exhibition

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Photograph Credits