Mahna no Varua Ino (The Devil speaks) (Paul Gauguin 10 Traesnit Series) (1893-94; 1921)

Paul Gauguin

woodcut on paper

Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London

Mahna no Varua Ino (The Devil speaks) (Paul Gauguin 10 Traesnit Series) (1893-94; 1921)

Photo credit: Trustees of the British Museum

Classification:

Print, Portfolio

Materials:

Ink, China paper

Physical Object Description:

Figures gathered around a fire at night. Signed in pencil 'Paul Gauguin fait' and 'Pola Gauguin imp', and numbered 3.

Technique:

Woodcut

Dimensions:

20.2 x 35.3 cm

Accession Number:

1925,0314.62.4

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 1925

Scheme:

Prints and Drawings Fund (1919 - 1954)

Ownership history:

Purchased by Campbell Dodgson (1867-1948) for the Contemporary Art Society, 1923; presented to the Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London, 1925

Relationship:

Campbell Dodgson Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London

The Paul Gauguin 10 Traesnit series is in its original card portfolio, on the front cover of which is printed the artist's monogram taken from an electrotype of the top left corner of Kornfeld 21 (Te Po). There is a separate printed title sheet [in Danish]: 'Paul Gauguin 10 Traesnit, trykt med original platerne ved Pola Gauguin. Hos Chr. Cato København. Trykt i 100 numererede eksemplarer. No.3'. This edition was published in Copenhagen in 1921. Each print is on a thin China paper, which is tipped down along one edge to a brown backing sheet, and each is signed and numbered. The artist's son Pola Gauguin (1893-1961) printed the blocks so as to bring out every nuance of cutting on them, and achieved an effect diametrically different from the one that Gauguin had intended in the impressions that he printed himself in 1894.

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