Autograph letter signed.
8vo. 2 pp. on bifolium.
€ 30.000,00
To Émile Schuffenecker, thanking him for arranging for Gauguin to travel to Paris by train: "Grand merci de votre lettre et de son envoi. Justement j’ai écrit à Bernard mon désir de partir pour Paris donc votre offre pour m’envoyer le voyage tombe à point et je l’accepte de grand cœur. Du reste à Paris je vais me débrouiller pour vendre quelque chose, vous serez donc remboursé je crois en peu de temps. Le 4 ou le 5 je me mets en chemin de fer. Et si je ne réussis pas pour le Toukin je vais tâcher de travailler en dehors de la peinture car il faut tenir la cape pendant quelque temps. Ou bien encore je pousserai le ministre des finances pour me donner en France n’importe quoi. Mais il faut que e sois à Paris pour cela. […]" ("Thank you very much for your letter and for sending it. I just wrote Bernard about my desire to leave for Paris; thus, your offer to send me on the trip comes just at the right time and I happily accept it. Moreover, I will organize to sell something in Paris, and therefore you will be reimbursed within short time, I believe. On the 4 or the 5 I will take the train. And if I dont make it to Tonkin I will try to work outside of painting for some time because it’s necessary to hold course. Or I will rather push the minister of finance to give me something in France. But I would have to be in Paris for that. [...]".
The French Post-Impressionist artist, painter, art teacher and art collector Émile Schuffenecker (1851-1934) was a close friend of Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon, and one of the first collectors of works by Vincent van Gogh. Until the early 1890s when Gauguin and Schuffenecker quarrelled, Schuffenecker gave great support to Gauguin, encouraging him to take up a career as a painter. He also had the idea for the 1889 Exhibition at the Volpini Gallery, a key moment in Gauguin's influence on young painters.
