PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903)

Once settled in Tahiti, Gauguin became more involved in local politics and contributed to, and later became editor of, Les Guêpes (The Wasps), a local satirical journal critical of the colonial administration. At the same time, Gauguin decided to publish his own newspaper, Le Sourire (The Smile), first bearing the subtitle 'journal sérieux' and then 'journal méchant'. Gauguin's original intention was to publish weekly, but Le Sourire finally appeared monthly, from August 1899 to April 1900, for a total of nine issues. About 30 copies of each issue, comprising two to six pages of manually written text and occasional drawings, were printed using an Edison Mimeograph machine. Gauguin created 18 original woodcuts for the newspaper, but not every copy contains all the woodcuts: some appear in one or two copies only. Illness, hospitalization, and distraction by other projects eventually led Gauguin to terminate the publication.