What’s in a name? Well to French artist Charles Camoin it was everything.
This story begins in 1939, when an exhibition of modern French and English art came to Australia. In Sydney, the paintings went on show at the David Jones Gallery. The following newspaper photo shows one of the first paintings to be unpacked; ‘Woman in front of an Easel’. by French artist Georges Braque.
The George Braque painting, which was later purchased by the New York Metropolitan Museum.
Reporting on the Exhibition, the Daily Telegraph mentioned several works by Paul Gauguin. One in particular was singled out;
An equally remarkable work in a different method is ‘La Cabaretiere’, painted in the cafe frequented by himself and van Gogh at Arles. It is a portrait of a woman, with the flesh glowing in the warmth of artificial light. The colour variations in the flesh, from the orange lights to the greenish shadows, are brilliantly studied; and the character of the head, focused in the beady eyes, is wonderfully expressed.
La Belle Cabaretiere (The Beautiful Inn Keeper)
The genius of Gauguin is exampled in La Cabaretiere, which may now be seen in the Daily Telegraph’s Exhibition of Modern French and English Art, at David Jones, in George Street, from which the painting will go to the National Art Gallery. (The Daily Telegraph, December 11 1939)
The picture was purchased by the Gallery for £1,500 from the French born, New York based art dealer Paul Rosenberg.
Source – Wikipedia
As a trustee of the Gallery, it was the artist Lionel Lindsay who initiated the purchase;
I had the honour of proposing to the trustees of the National Gallery the purchase of ‘La Cabaretiere’ for a suggested price and this was accepted by Mr. Paul Rosenberg for his Gauguin. Wahroonga LIONEL LINDSAY (Sydney Morning Herald, June 16 1943)
Source – Wikipedia
In February 1948 came the proverbial ‘bombshell’
In a letter to the French weekly periodical Arts, Camoin says he has just come across a reproduction of his painting in a new book about Gauguin. Camoin, in his letter, asks where he can get hold of the painting so that he can put his signature on it. Camoin says he painted the picture in 1901, in a cabaret in Marnes La Coquette. (Daily Telegraph, Feb. 3 1948)
The artist said that at the time he was renting an attic room above the cabaret. When he was suddenly called up for three years military duty he inadvertently left the unsigned painting behind, and had never seen it again. The book on Gauguin only mentioned that the painting was in a private collection.
Village of Marnes-la-Coquette
Mr Peter Bellew, an Australian art critic then living in Paris, read Camoin’s letter in the periodical. He remembered seeing the picture in the Sydney Art Gallery. When it was purchased, Bellew was the art critic for an Australian newspaper, ‘I remember expressing myself as disappointed by the purchase of this picture which, although excellent as a work of art, had so little resemblance to Gauguin’s characteristic style that it was of no value for showing New South Wales the genius of the painter of whose work there is no other example available there.‘ (Kalgoorlie Miner Feb 9 1948)
The New York art dealer, perhaps worried about a law suit from the NSW Art Gallery over the £1,500 he had charged them, stated that Camoin’s claim was ‘impossible and ridiculous‘ He added; ‘Camoin has never been anything but a minor artist, and now his work simply does not sell. It would appear that he is merely out to obtain some badly needed publicity. If Camoin did paint the picture, why did he not sign it? (Daily Telegraph, March 13 1948)
Charles Camoin was not going to stand for that, responding; ‘..in refusing to recognise this ‘error’ Mr Rosenberg proves he knows nothing of painting. No discriminating or qualified person could justify any affinity of ‘La Belle Cabaretiere’ with authentic works of Gaugin.’ (Daily Telegraph, Feb. 6 1948)
On February 28 the trustees of the gallery stated that they would ask Paul Rosenberg to prove that the painting was a Gauguin. It was also mentioned that it was dated, and initialled P.G.
Was this a genuine signature?
Despite everything, the issue with the painting remained unresolved. In December 1950, the council for the defence of French art took up Camoin’s cause and released a report by Gabriel Goulinat, then France’s foremost authority on art fraud. Goulinat wrote, ‘The picture in the Sydney Gallery is interesting, but expresses exactly the opposite of what Gauguin sought to express…In the background are all types of workmanship which Gauguin never employed. ( Daily Telegraph, Dec. 21 1950)
Another six months went by and Camoin’s wife expressed her frustration. She said letters had been futile;
‘It is more than three years since my husband found a reproduction of his ‘Innkeeper’ in a book of alleged Gauguin paintings. When he discovered, through the Paris correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, that the painting was hung in the Sydney Gallery, he said it was not a Gauguin at all. My husband only wants to put his signature to the painting.’ (Daily Telegraph, July 6 1951)
At one point Camoin even suggested he could come to Sydney and sign the work.
Finally, the awkward truth was acknowledged. The following headline is from the Daily Telegraph on November 6 1951.
Paul Rosenberg offered to buy back the painting for the amount paid in 1939, but this did not occur.
The painting is now labelled as being by Charles Camoin. You can find it on the ground floor of the Gallery’s Naala Nuru building, in the Grand Courts.
But here is a mystery. It is listed by the Art Gallery as ‘Unsigned and Undated’ But what happened to that date of 1888 and the initials P.G.? Surely Lionel Lindsay would not have proposed that an unsigned painting be purchased.
Presumably the disputed signature was removed at a later date, and when I contacted the Art Gallery research department recently this was confirmed by Anne Gérard-Austin; ‘ I haven’t been able to find out when exactly the fake signature and date were removed, but I suspect it was done in the1990s, in our conservation lab.’
If only we knew who put that signature and date there in the first place.
The painting with an interesting story!
The only other work by Camoin in the Art Gallery is a still life of flowers. It was anonymously donated in 1984 and is not on display.
Vase of Flowers by Charles Camoin (Art Gallery of NSW)
Charles Camoin died at his studio in Montmartre in 1965, aged 81,
And does the Art Gallery have any works by Paul Gauguin? Well….no. 😎
TO WATCH A VIDEO ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES CAMOIN, CLICK HERE.
