In October 1898, Gauguin wrote to his friend and fellow artist, Daniel de Monfried:
I would like you to send me some tubers and flower seeds. Simple dahlias, nasturtiums and various sunflowers that can stand a hot climate. I should like to embellish my plantation, and as you know, I adore flowers.
Seven months later he wrote again explaining that his seeds had begun to sprout and that alongside the Tahitian plants around his house was to become a ‘veritable Eden’. ‘If I have no more imagination I shall do some studies of flowers’.
Gauguin often asserted that, unlike the Impressionists, he preferred imagination over observation. In 1900, his Paris dealer, Ambroise Vollard requested more still life paintings with floral arrangements, a genre that sold well. Gauguin responded that Tahiti was not ‘really the country of flowers’ and that his work ‘happens in my mad imagination’, not through direct observation.
Still life with Hope is a painting from 1901 that uses both observation and imagination. If you look closely you can see that the bouquet of sunflowers spills over a carved Tahitian bowl with two figures, while on the wall behind is Gauguin’s rendition of the French artist Puvis de Chavannes’ 1871-72 painting titled Hope. Below it is an image of a work by Edgar Degas, another artist much admired by Gauguin; both men supported one another’s work, and Degas owned another of Gauguin’s flower paintings.
In the middle of this work is a sunflower with an almost eye-like centre. This ‘eye’ recurred in his depictions of sunflowers at this time. Gauguin admired the work of French symbolist Odilon Redon, and often referred to Redon’s 1883 lithograph titled There was perhaps a FIRST VISION attempted in the flower, which depicts a flower-like form with a central eye and long eyelashes for its petals. As early as 1888 Gauguin depicted sunflowers with eye-like qualities with his portrait of Vincent van Gogh titled The painter of sunflowers.
Still life with Hope is laden with symbolism. The sunflowers, alongside the Chavannes’ work symbolising hope in the face of adversity, convey Gauguin’s memories of van Gogh and their dashed dreams ‘the studio of the south.’ In 1902, when Gauguin again wrote de Monfried, it was to say that he dreamt of leaving Hiva Oa to settle back in the south of France where he had worked side-by-side with van Gogh.
