The Gaugin Connection

December 20, 2012

Paul Gaugin is unexpectedly making a second appearance in CFWD this year. That is because today was another rainy day, so we went to the Museum of the InterOceanic Canal in Casco Viejo. There was an exhibit on Paul Gaugin. Why? Because he had a connection to the Panama Canal.  In 1887 he and another French painter, Paul Laval, left Europe to paint. He intended to buy land on Taboga, an island near Panama City, in order to live on fish and fruit. The fact that at the time he had a Danish wife and 5 children at the time was not emphasized in the exhibit (although there were some original letters written to his wife that I could read since they were in French. I noticed that he did sign the letters “I kiss you a thousand times…”). When he arrived at Colon (the Caribbean port) he was broke, so he took a job as a common laborer swinging a pickaxe. He absolutely hated digging in the tropical sun and rain, and complained of being devoured by mosquitoes at night. According to David McCullough’s definitive history of the Panama Canal (The Path Between the Seas) Gaugin was arrested for urinating in public in Panama City. Shortly afterwards he left Panama and sailed for Martinique, having stayed only a few weeks in total.

By the way, the museum is in what was the Grand Hotel of Panama City, built in the 1870s at the time the French were in town. This building was the former headquarters of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique, the French company that financed and directed the unsuccessful first attempt to build the canal. There is  also a museum on the history of the canal, but quite ironically, the "history" only started with the Americans taking over in 1904.