Paul Gauguin, the French artist renowned for his Tahitian paintings has had his image restored in a new book, based on recently discovered material. Condemned until recently as a French colonialist who spread syphilis to underage girls in the South Seas, it now emerges he never suffered from the disease and was much revered in Polynesia both by the girls he married and the local community for his fight against the corrupt French authorities.
He was born 7 June 1848 10 am Paris, amidst the tumult of Europe’s revolutionary year but was brought up in Peru where his journalist father (later imprisoned for the attempted murder of his mother) took the family. Back in France Gauguin began his career in banking and started painting in his spare time, mentored by Pissarro. When he was in his thirties he moved to Tahiti, then a French colony. During his time there he controversially married three adolescent Tahitian girls with whom he later fathered children.
Doctors have concluded his health problems did not stem from syphilis, but from eczema and erysipelas, aggravated by infected bites of the Simulium buissoni fly.
He had a strong belief in equality between the sexes, much influenced by a grandmother who was a fierce fighter for women’s rights and much admired by Karl Marx. Gauguin cherished her writings and actively encouraged the women in his circle, including his wife, to find fulfilment through independence.
He fell foul of the French authorities after he exposed the corruption and injustice of local French officials and pleaded for fairer taxation and treatment for the Indigenous people. He was sentenced to three months in prison on a charge which on re-examination proved his accusations to be correct but only a few months after his death.
He had a 10th house Gemini Sun square Saturn in Pisces on the cusp of his 8th – perhaps a hint of a strong grandmother. His 10th house creative Venus in Gemini was square a Virgo Moon (on his late Leo Ascendant) opposition Neptune in his 7th. His relationship to women/mother was idealized, confused and the choice of younger partners/brides though normal for the times would also be driven by his Moon Venus = the sexualized mother. The revolutionary year of his birth with its Uranus Pluto in Aries was square Mars in Leo and Jupiter in Cancer – so he would be inclined to fight against authority figures. It also describes an explosive father.
Relocating his chart to Polynesia puts the Sun on his IC, so very much where he felt at home; though a 6th house Moon hinted that it might be less helpful on the health front.
Add On: Gauguin had a brief but famously ‘intense and turbulent friendship’ with Vincent van Gogh, which ended with the mentally unstable Van Gogh cutting off his ear as an over-reaction to being abandoned by his idol and mentor. Although they went in different directions they continued to write each other letters up to van Gogh’s suicide in an insane asylum at age 39.
Van Gogh, 30 March 1853 11am Zundert, Netherlands, had an exceptionally bunched chart with seven planets in his career 10th house. They ranged from an overly-excitable Mars Venus conjunction in Pisces which squared onto Jupiter Moon in Sagittarius opposition North Node in a hurricane-force Mutable T square. Plus an early degree Aries Sun and a later degree Mercury in Aries in a mentally over-loaded conjunction to Pluto which was conjunct Uranus. Although five years younger than Gauguin he was also marked by the revolutionary, status-quo-upending Uranus Pluto conjunction.
Van Gogh’s Pluto was square Gauguin’s afflicted Mars in Leo so it was never going to end well. Gauguin’s Saturn in Pisces was also conjunct Van Gogh’s hyper-active Mars Venus in Pisces for another friction point.
When the ear-cutting incident occurred as Gauguin left Arles, Van Gogh’s Solar Arc Mars was less than a degree over the conjunction to his Pluto for extreme frustration and rage; his Solar Arc Saturn was in a depressed opposition to his Moon; tr Neptune in Gemini was in a confused conjunction to his SA Mercury – and he was one his Jupiter Return.
Thank you for this post, Marjorie.
You say: Van Gogh’s Pluto was square Gauguin’s afflicted Mars in Leo so it was never going to end well.
I had not noticed the Pluto Mars square— Gauguin, a droll Venus, Sun in Gemini, might have felt afraid of Van Gogh’s hard-headed intensity. All that Aries and Taurus in a single house. Although, given his lonely life, there’s a possibility that Van Gogh might have Chiron closer to the DESC, which means that the birth time might be a few minutes off. We’ll never know. But, interestingly, in Placidus, Saturn is in the 11th of friends, with Aries 29 on the cusp of the 11th. I’m increasingly inclined to think that when there is a disparity like this between houses it makes more sense to read the planet not so much in one house but in both. There cannot be any question that Van Gogh’s professional life was hindered by 10th house Saturn themes. Similarly, Placidus puts 15 Gemini 03 on the cusp of the 12th, which puts Gauguin’s Sun in Van Gogh’s 12th, and also puts Van Gogh’s NN in the bad luck and bad heath 12th and SN in the 6th. Also interesting is the fact that the north node in Gemini 23 is conjunct Betelgeuse, for great fame, at 26 Gemini, in the 12th, and that the cut off ear became a world historical incident (NN/SN) because this obscure painter painted his self portrait, still bandaged.
You say: When the ear-cutting incident occurred as Gauguin left Arles, Van Gogh’s Solar Arc Mars was less than a degree over the conjunction to his Pluto for extreme frustration and rage; his Solar Arc Saturn was in a depressed opposition to his Moon; tr Neptune in Gemini was in a confused conjunction to his SA Mercury – and he was one his Jupiter Return.
Yes, it seems that his Solar Arc Saturn in a depressed opposition to his Moon (family) activated the T square between his Venus Mas conjunction, the nodes, Moon and Jupiter. With the Moon (the past) Gauguin’s departure likely made Van Gogh re-live family trauma. Van Gogh has the 22 Virgo IC conj asteroid NOT, preventing the formation of a family/home.
Tragically, Van Gogh has Pholus exactly conj. DESC. Pholus died because, his guest, Heracles provoked a stampede of centaurs and then shot them with poisoned arrows. When one of these arrows pricked Pholus as he was attempting to save another centaur, it ended his days. I have a very prominent Pholus, and I can attest to the fact that it seems to hold true that guests can do irrevocable harm to people with this placement. I think the irreversible loss of one ear fits with the story.
It’s interesting that Van Gogh’s Venus/Mars conjunction is conjunct fixed star Scheat, which according to astro-seek was at 27 degrees of Pisces in the mid 1850s when he was born, because when I look at Vincent’s skies I see whirlpools of water, storms, waves and raging seas which reflect to me his inner turmoil and the psychotic states which increased as he approached his final years. One of his final works is ‘Wheatfield Under Threatening Skies’ in which the land itself seems fluid like a stormy sea, along with the dark, turbulent sky with its flock of crows.
Virgoflake: Yes, to a painter, this is fascinating. Venus conjunct Pisces 27, the degree of its exaltation, explains Van Gogh’s extraordinary creativity, and the conjunction to Mars explains his energy, and the incredibly productive life life under the bright hot Sun of Arles. Scheat as the midpoint of Venus and Mars would bring out the worst in both, hence the conflictive temperament. It’s a good thing the painters parted ways. Van Gogh puts his Ixion on Gaugin’s Sun at 16 Gemini. According to Greek Legends and Myths.com, “Ixion’s murder of his father-in-law was regarded by some as the first murder of a relative in the ancient world.”
Was the attempt at friendship between Gauguin and Van Gogh doomed from the start? Gauguin puts his Saturn/South Node in late Pisces on Van Gogh’s Venus/Scheat/Mars, which would make Van Gogh feel stunted, trapped. Furthermore, Gauguin put his Uranus on Van Gogh’s Mercury, which would make Van Gogh feel mentally discombobulated, and given his Sun in Aries, lash out–
But if the had got along, would Gauguin have ended up in Hiva Oa?
Thanks, Lucy. The clash of personalities couldn’t have been more jarring to both men, I suspect. One thing is Van Gogh’s firey personality as seen in his astrology, his Aries Sun vs Gaugin’s Aries Uranus/Pluto. I would imagine, for a Venus/Mars in Pisces that a rather full-on Mars at the beginning of Leo would be horrendous for VG, 1) because Mars isn’t exactly sensitive in Leo and 2) Mars in Leo can be incredibly pushy and competitive.
But also, their approach to painting differed so; VG painted ‘en plein air’, in nature, whereas Gauguin painted from his imagination – you can see that ability in his chart with the T Square on Venus in Gemini and Moon opposite Neptune in Pisces – using flat colour and bold outlines, a technique known as Cloisonnism. Then again, I suspect Gauguin with his Venus in Gemini at the top of his chart could be charming, particularly with women, whereas Van Gogh had a tendency to fall in love with women who did not return that love.
Regarding that Venus/Mars in Scheat, it’s interesting to look at Van Gogh’s mistress, Sien Hoornik, a Dutch sex worker who modelled for him. Though VG wanted to marry Sien, Theo did not approve of the relationship. But the pair had probably been drawn together because they were both lonely souls who felt outside of society. Sien however was not interested in art or painting and VG, not the easiest of men to live with and inevitably they parted. But Sien had once told VG: “It’s bound to end up with me jumping in the water” and indeed in 1904 Sien’s body was discovered in Rotterdam Canal after she had sadly drowned herself. A rather spine chilling detail, given that Scheat is associated with among other things, death by drowning.
Thanks, Vrgoflake
Lots of food for thought here.
You say: But also, their approach to painting differed so; VG painted ‘en plein air’, in nature, whereas Gauguin painted from his imagination – you can see that ability in his chart with the T Square on Venus in Gemini and Moon opposite Neptune in Pisces
Fascinating. I am a painter, and I hadn’t seen the relationship between painting from the imagination and the T-square. What I saw was this: There can be an enigmatic quality to Gauguin’s images, a Twilight Zone-quality, that I imagine has to do with how close the Virgo (critical thinking, rationality) Moon, on the the ascendant (I), opposes Woo Woo Pisces Neptune (you, thou), and how this artist resolves this opposition at the apex of the T square, Venus (women), and the in this synthesis (Venus, Art) he appears to create/ describe a meta-rational universe where I is gaze, and you is unknowable, no matter how quotidian the scene, say, his wife having a bit of rest in bed, wearing a dress stamped with flowers.
But I like what you write very much. Generations born with a conjunction of Uranus and Pluto are the Gen X of their time: people who look at reality, art and design from a completely new perspective, that will become, in time, part of the vernacular. Given the dominance of painting as Proto-Kodak, and painters as people who depicted immortalized the possessions of the wealthy, it is kind of incredible for a man who used to be a banker to leave the order of wealth extraction (Venus in the 10th) to go to a remote island to find a way to depict the dimension of the magical-irrational every day life. It’s interesting that Saturn (structure, materialization) rules his 5th house. It’s not just that he starts painting later than most painters, –think of Picasso, who’s copying Velasquez from the time he was 4–, but that Gauguin incarnates, in painting, something that is absolutely new.
Hi Lucy, yes Gauguin’s Uranus/Pluto on the cusp of the 8th and 9th tie him into the zeitgeist’s artistic flowering in the mid to late 1880s and culminating during the Fin de Siècle, which was heralded by the conjunction of Neptune and Pluto at the beginning of Gemini in the late 1880s and which would have been transit and conjunct Gauguin’s Venus at the time. The so-called YBAs of the late 1990s, (Young Britsh Artists) were far more businesslike than Gauguin’s generation and have the conjunction in earthy Virgo).
He was a trailblazer, at the forefront of the French Symbolist movement, a literary and artistic movement which followed Post-Impressionism, heavily influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’, a compilation of poetry published in 1857, parts of which were censored at the time. Whereas Impressionism was concerned with the shifting light and colour of the natural world, the Symbolists were more focussed on the inner world of human experience, suffering, relationships and orginal sin, decadence and eroticism. Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic horror was also influential on the Symbolists and this is reflected in Gauguin’s ‘Nevermore’ of 1897, which depicts Gauguin’s Tahitian wife, Pahura reclining nude on a bed with two mysterious figures in the background while a raven watches ominously from its perch. Neptunes conjunction with Pluto in 1888 had huge ramifications for humanity, the first popular awareness of Psychology and the writings of Freud, the technological advances made under this conjunction and it just happened to land on Gauguin’s Venus, the very focal point of his T Square.
It’s curious that when Gauguin left his wife in 1885, due to irreconcilable differences, transit Chiron was exactly on his Venus. His transition from conventional stockbroker to unconventional, nomadic artist broke his marriage for good. And yes, at the time there was almost romantic notion of the artist as a rootless wanderer, an outsider figure living an unconventional life, a philosophical concept which was championed by a painter of a previous generation, Gustav Courbet.
Artists always r outcasts and revered at times centuries after their death by society…society fears what doesn’t fit in its boxes and to hide that fear, brandishes one as insane…in poor countries , I have seen women just objecting to adultery dumped in insane asylums till death, mostly of politiicans and reputed men of society despite having psychiatrist daughters in rich continents, they r outcastes.
Uranus is futuristic so present generations cannot understand it and hence label it as mad to hide their incompetence and with uranus pluto..it gets explosive…
It’s impossible to fight and convince society honestly but dishonesty for public is not in all artists except actors.
Somethings defeat Time like social acceptance of different
I was raised by an artist mother who revered Gauguin, wouldn’t hear a bad word about him. Haha, her Sun is exactly opposite his Venus. Now Gauguin’s Saturn returns to its original location and his image is rehabilitated? I have to read this book.
A wonderful post. I had forgotten the link between the 8th house and grandparents. I had strong grandmothers who have led tragic but very positive lives, both models of feminist resilience. One grandfather was a good and kind man entrusted for decades as treasurer of his bus drivers’ union for his integrity. A great-grandafather played a pivotal role in Canadian history as a member of Parliament in the 1920s. Both sides of the family were strong defenders of French-language rights in Ottawa. My father left me a legacy of compassion for indigenous peoples. As a lawyer, one group of natives showed up in my office with a family tree that included my own French ancestors in the 17th century.
I have a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in the 8th, par of a water grand trine, as well as Pluto. Pluto is square Saturn in Scorpio conjunct Black Moon Lilith.
Somehow , with all the drama in his life , I would think moon in Leo would fit better. Also it would be interesting to compare to Van Gogh . They had a very fiery relationship.
A very different personality as had been portrayed in the 1956 movie “Lust for Life”.