Original subtitles

On a 19th century South Sea island,

very far from the bleak midwinter,

one of the strangest representations

of the birth of Christ was set down.

It is a nativity like no other.

The Madonna is always a figure of grace and beauty

and is always beautifully posed.

To have her lying there exhausted after labor

is a very provocative choice to make.

The provocative artist was Paul Gauguin,

and the model for his Madonna is also easily identified.

She was the 14-year-old Tahitian mistress

of the 48-year-old painter.

Anyone in Tahiti looking at the painting would say,

oh my God, that's Paura,

and the title being Child of God,

that makes God Gauguin.

Gauguin's Mary was no virgin.

She was, in fact, pregnant with the artist's child

as she posed for the painting.

And the baby was expected at a time of year

loaded with significance.

His obsessions with Christ were swirling about in his head,

and then he's having a baby,

and the baby's due at Christmas, for heaven's sake.

Of course he felt compelled to produce some special art about it.

But this Christmas was to bring no blessings to the couple.

It is certainly not a joyous birth with angels in the sky and trumpets.

At that time, in that place, childbirth was always a dangerous moment.

The painting was shipped 10,000 miles to Europe.

Despite the artist's best efforts,

it found no buyer and not even a favourable review.

Narrowly saved in the Second World War from Allied bombs

and the Nazi art police,

the painting survives as testament to a unique vision

of art, of religion, and of sexuality.

God's child impresses us with its novelty, with its daring,

obliges us to think of the Nativity of Christ

in the most incredibly different way.

The island of Tahiti in the South Pacific.

Today, a holiday destination famed for blue skies and clear waters.

Here, the well-to-do can cruise on a boat

named after the artist who created God's child.

But even viewed on the island where it was painted,

a Tahitian nativity can be a difficult scene to take in.

She's Mary, and the baby is Jesus.

And where would we see the baby?

The baby's not here yet?

We're not accustomed to seeing dark-skinned virgins.

Are there three wise men over there someplace that I don't see?

Ah, okay.

See the wings, the green?

That's probably Joseph or somebody.

Actually, it looks like you got a halo around the woman there.

It's a Mary thing and the baby, yeah, that's what it is.

First, I thought she was sick, but clearly, just given birth, yeah, yeah.

I would say, give the woman a break.

If she did just have a child, who wouldn't be exhausted, I mean?

To think that Jesus maybe could be born here is interesting.

Thank you for coming.

Munich's Neuer Pienakothek, or New Gallery,

is a treasure trove of some of the best 19th-century art in the world.

Here among the water lilies and the sunflowers,

the peasant farmers and the seascapes,

is a painting that conjures its own unique world.

A dark-skinned woman lies exhausted on a bed,

a baby held by a shadowy nurse,

suggests that we are witnessing the moments after a birth.

But a closer look reveals that the baby and mother have halos,

and the figure in the background is winged like an angel.

So this, the viewer reasons, must be the birth of Christ.

The painting's title seems to confirm it.

The Tahitian Te Tamari no Atua means God's child.

Quite clearly what he's trying to do is paint a modern religious picture

where you are the spectator.

You are, if you like, you're one of the three kings

who's turned up at the scene at exactly the moment that counts.

The painting is dominated not as is traditional by the infant Christ,

but by the chunky figure of the young mother.

She lies bathed in the vivid yellow glow of the bed sheet,

which recalls the golden straw of the Christ child's manger.

If this is a nativity, if that's the son of God, as we're led to believe,

then he is very insignificant.

The halo behind Mary's head is the important glow,

but it's extended onto that whole beautiful, rich, yellow bed,

which makes her the focal point of the picture.

The bed itself extends across the full width of the canvas

and occupies almost half of the composition.

Fittingly, it is no ordinary piece of furniture.

The bed here is a complete fabrication.

Tahitians never slept on such beds,

but Gauguin would be hard-pressed

to show a woman in the aftermath of childbirth

lying on a pallet on the floor.

So he, in fact, makes this bed up.

He gives it a kind of beautiful checkerboard decoration

along the bed rail

and creates these carved posts.

The scene unfolds in a mysterious space,

part stable, part bedroom.

The cattle, which lend the nativity its traditional air,

seem to exist in isolation from the rest of the scene.

As well as the woman and her child,

there are two other characters present.

One is a Tahitian-featured angel.

The other is harder to define.

Holding the child, she is to some a midwife,

to others a more troubling presence.

In a painting that mixes cultures and religions,

nothing is quite as it seems.

God's Child now has an honoured place

in the history of European art.

But it was created about as far away from Europe

as one can get,

on the island of Tahiti,

in the South Seas.

Gauguin was never just a Parisian.

In his blood, in his family,

was this real connection to other parts of the world.

Tahiti, where the colours were that much brighter,

the sun that much more brilliant,

very much pushes forward the evolution of his style.

Paul Gauguin was a Frenchman with religion and the exotic at his core.

He was born into a middle-class family from Orléans,

but there was another strand to his childhood.

At the age of one,

he was taken on the gruelling three-month sea voyage to Peru,

where his relatives boasted a bloodline that could be traced back to the Inca.

Gauguin never forgot what he saw as a savage inheritance.

By the age of seven,

he was back in France,

where religion would define his upbringing.

This is La Chapelle Saint-Mémin,

Petit Seminaire,

which was the boarding school where Gauguin was put when he was 11,

and he stayed there until he was 14.

This was a very good religious school.

People like the Jesuits

gave a very thorough religious schooling to people.

Anyone who isn't a Catholic

perhaps doesn't understand

quite what a Catholic education does to you,

staring up at stained-glass windows and smelling incense.

I mean, this stuff gets right into you.

He was taught to be a priest, basically.

The rebellious Gauguin was never destined for the priesthood, though.

First, he travelled the world in the merchant navy,

then set himself to making serious money in a stockbroker's office.

He married an independent-minded Danish woman, Mette,

and soon had four children.

But then he began to paint and sculpt,

and the twin worlds of his childhood,

the sacred and the exotic,

burst to the surface in his art.

Gauguin was an impressionist.

That's how he began his career.

But from very early on,

his work doesn't quite sit comfortably

with the general appearance of an impressionist painting.

He uses the broken brush stroke,

the light touch that Impressionism devised

in order to capture shifting effects of sunlight.

But you very rarely get the sense of where the sun is coming from.

He was striving towards something.

In the summer, 1888, August, September,

he produced this major painting,

one that clearly he regarded himself as a breakthrough.

The painting was the vision of the sermon,

and like God's child,

was a radical reimagining of Christianity.

It was painted in Brittany,

where Gauguin had retreated in search of a purer,

more spiritual culture,

and was the first work in which he transposed a biblical event

to a present-day primitive setting.

The painting terrified the local curate

when he was offered it as a gift for his church.

But Gauguin felt the need to go further,

artistically and geographically.

His admirer and fellow artist, Vincent van Gogh,

had recently moved to Arles in the south of France

with the dream of establishing a colony

of spiritually-minded artists.

Gauguin was invited to join him there.

Things began well,

with the two artists exchanging self-portraits.

But the relationship soon became strained.

Gauguin's increasing tendency to depict himself

as the son of God did not help matters.

He does, over and over again,

identify himself with suffering Christ.

On the one hand,

he did feel himself often to be victimized,

to be hard set upon.

At the same time,

he also saw that it could be quite provocative,

a man who was, after all,

a stockbroker,

laying claim to Christ-like qualities.

Gauguin's unshakable belief in his own genius

led him to push his personal mythology

to ever greater extremes.

The breaking point for Van Gogh

was a painting in which Gauguin chose to portray himself

as Christ on the eve of his crucifixion.

It only made matters worse

that Gauguin had here borrowed his friend's red beard.

The friendship descended into acrimony and accusation,

and Gauguin returned to Paris.

But modern France was beginning to feel corrupt and tainted.

Truly to express his religious vision,

he would have to seek out a pure, present-day Eden.

Inspiration, ironically, was right on his doorstep,

in the shadow of the newly completed Eiffel Tower.

The Paris exhibition in 1889,

known as the Expedition Universelle,

was really a celebration of France's place in the world.

It's quite hard for us to imagine what that was like now.

This was an event that attracted 28 million visitors.

It included a whole variety of things,

from industrial exhibits

to presentations of colonial society.

It was at a cross between a theme park and a museum.

Tahiti was evoked, for the benefit of ticket holders,

by primitive huts,

outside which a group of imported islanders

performed traditional dances.

By night, the Tahitians were staying in a local hotel,

but the fiction was seductive

and backed up by the guidebook's descriptions

of the island paradise.

Of the last remaining paradises,

here is the most delightful of all,

Tahiti,

where springtime is eternal,

like the love of a Tahitian woman.

Her almost excessively full lips

and her magnificently white teeth

make her look so sweet

and innocently voluptuous

that it is impossible not to succumb.

It was just such a Tahitian woman,

or rather girl,

who would be the model for the central figure

in God's Child.

By 1891,

Paul Gauguin was on a boat

out to the far side of the world.

The journey took in the Suez Canal and Australia

and lasted two months.

Finally, in June,

Gauguin stepped off the boat

into the sultry tropical heat of Papayate,

the capital of the island

that was to inspire God's child.

Five years later,

he would find himself living in a traditional bamboo hut

miles from town,

painting his exotic nativity.

Instead of a suit,

he would be wearing a native wrap.

And instead of his European wife,

his model would be a new Tahitian mistress.

Gauguin's quest to redefine

the sacred Christian images of his youth

had taken him far beyond the limits

of respectable society.

But his search for primitive purity on the island

had got off to the worst possible start.

He was woefully disappointed

when he got to Tahiti in 1891

and found it to be, in fact,

kind of like a California boom town.

There was a downtown street in Papayate

with wooden buildings

completely in a European style

with, you know, signs on the doors

advertising, you know, dry goods

and lumber and whatever,

you know, you might need

to live as a colonial.

So the experience was a little bit

not what he had expected.

Certainly, Tahiti was remote,

but it was very colonialized.

It was very colonialized.

Disillusioned, Gauguin beat

a retreat from the town

to a more isolated location

where he could live among the natives.

But even here,

the exotic was in short supply.

Gauguin's problem was that

Polynesian culture had been destroyed.

It had disappeared.

Western Europeans had got

to the South Pacific

a hundred years or more before.

Missionaries had come with them

and I'm afraid the missionaries

had fairly ruthlessly demolished

the Tahitian culture that had existed

and with it the Tahitian religion.

The Tahiti in which Gauguin found himself

had become a largely Christian country.

But it retained some folk memory

of its native beliefs.

This cultural mix turned out

and the untouched Eden

turned out to be much more useful to Gauguin

than the untouched Eden

he had been hoping for.

It actually suited Gauguin down to the ground.

The absence of a Tahitian culture

enabled him to play his games

of piecing things together

and making odd conjunctions

in ways that suited him extremely well.

Gauguin's first major Tahitian success

was like God's child

a picture of the Virgin Mary.

Ia Orana Maria

or Hail Mary

shows a native Madonna

carrying the infant Christ

in a manner unknown

in traditional Christian art

but every day on the island.

In God's child

Gauguin would set himself

a much tougher challenge

to reimagine one of the most sacred images

in Western art

the Nativity of Christ.

The New Testament itself

articulates the mystery

of the birth in human flesh

of the Son of God

in the most incredibly succinct way.

It merely says that

at the appointed time

Mary gave birth to the child.

The event itself

is a throwaway line.

The scripture itself

provides no real explanation

of his birth.

And so it was

that while they were there

the days were accomplished

that she should be delivered

and she brought forth

her firstborn son

and wrapped him

in swaddling clothes

and laid him in a manger

because there was no room

for them in the inn.

Early depictions

of the Nativity

were often set in a cave

as the Bible makes

no mention of a stable.

As the centuries passed

artists added onlookers

the ox and the ass

precisely three wise men

to create a visually rich scene

but none of this detail

is present in the New Testament.

It was drawn from

lesser Christian texts

known as the apocryphal gospels.

Rarely, if ever

did artists attempt to portray

the strains of birth itself.

Normally, artists

show you the Virgin adoring.

She's looking at the child

whom she's just given birth

but you're invited to understand

that that happened

a while back.

Gauguin shows us

as older artists

never showed Mary

on a bed

with her legs spread

clearly exhausted

after having

just given birth

to the child.

The year was 1896

and much had happened

since Gauguin's

first arrival in Tahiti.

He was now living

in a specially built

native-style home

which boasted

an artist's studio

and a 200-litre vat

of red wine

by the door.

The artist's first

Tahitian mistress

had left him

but he had found

himself another

a 14-year-old native girl

named Pauaura Atai.

I do think

we have to reserve

moral judgment

about Gauguin

and his teenage partners

in Tahiti

just because there was

so much pressure

on European men

to do this

to take these young women

into their homes

resisting

which most European men

tried to do

was almost futile.

The family

of the young girl

did expect her

to get pregnant

and have children

and these mixed children

were very desirable.

Gauguin had his model,

his studio

and the sacred subject matter

that so haunted him

and there was one

final personal detail

that led to the creation

of God's child.

While he was painting it

Pauaura was pregnant

and the baby

was due at Christmas.

I have no doubts

whatsoever

that this is a painting

about Gauguin's life.

I mean certainly

it's on one very basic level

it's a nativity

but it's also very specifically

a painting about

the birth of a child,

his child

which is on the way

when he paints the picture.

This extraordinary

identification with Christ

starts exploding in him

so it doesn't surprise me

at all

that when Pauaura

gets pregnant

he paints this

charming

but also dark

and difficult picture.

in life

Gauguin

may have been

a swashbuckler

but his work

was careful

and meticulous.

He began

by sketching

his model

and then squaring

that drawing up

to be transferred

exactly to canvas.

Because of his subject matter

I think it's easy

for us

to believe

that Gauguin

was a simpler

and a less sophisticated

artist

than he really was.

Gauguin

wanted to

project an image

of himself

as being

a sort of

a savage painter

close to nature

and close

to the real man

and not the modern

industrialized man.

But Gauguin

was a trained painter

a very astute

technician.

Where Gauguin's

technique was rough

it was a conscious

decision

a creed

rather than a need.

The coarse

knotty canvas

on which he painted

God's child

was not local material

that he had to make do with

but a costly import.

The coarse canvas

that Gauguin used

was more than likely

manufactured in Scotland.

He decided

for the Tahitian subjects

that this coarse

sort of raw

fabric

was best to convey

his idea

of these people.

the shipping

was good enough

so that

anything he requested

from Paris

could be

at his doorstep

in six to eight weeks.

Gauguin would have

primed his canvas

as oil paints

would simply

eat through

bare sisal

but he left

rough edges

conspicuously exposed.

His white priming

was specially designed

to absorb oil

from the paints

helping to create

the flat matte finish

that the artist desired.

Next he painted

in the outlines

of his figures

in bold Prussian blue

lines he would leave

exposed

or even reinforce

in the finished painting.

I think it's terribly

important not to forget

that these are paintings

and that Gauguin's

making extraordinary

flat images

thinking about the canvas

as an entity

which is woven together

with colours

on the surface

he's constantly saying

these are not images

of something somewhere else

they are realities

in their own terms

on this flat surface

of the canvas.

The painting was carried out

in Gauguin's studio home

but this is no realistic scene

the cattle

with their comforting

Christian presence

were not to be found

on Tahiti

so Gauguin copied them

from a reproduction

of an obscure

French painting

once owned

by his guardian.

Gauguin went to Tahiti

with a museum

in a suitcase

a kind of box

full of reproductions

of Western paintings

probably Greek

Greek and Roman statuary

his photographs

of the temples

at Borobudur

a kind of visual iconography

that he carried with him

as a source of inspiration

and we see him

again and again

relying on works of art

from the past

as kind of points

of inspiration

for his Tahitian paintings.

In a painting

which many experts

consider a companion piece

to God's child

Gauguin portrays

a sensual

naked Tahitian Eve

again modelled

on Paura

what was her halo

has become

a scarlet fan

the pose

is drawn directly

from a Renaissance painting

of Venus

by Lucas Cranach

but the painting

but the painting

echoed by God's child

was a far more shocking

and contemporary choice.

There are these signs

and signals

that Gauguin

puts into the painting

that makes you think

of one of the most famous paintings

in the late 19th century

Manet's Olympia

the pose of the young woman

the little animal

on the bed

everyone knew Olympia

was a painting

of a prostitute

so you get this uneasy feeling

that Gauguin

is comparing Mary

and the birth of Christ

to elicit sexuality.

Gauguin had made

his own copy of Olympia

and carried a reproduction

of it with him to Tahiti

by modelling

his Mary on it

he was calling into being

a new kind

of sacred art

it was one

that would dare to admit

the physical realities

of sex

and childbirth.

In the weeks

he spent working

on God's child

Gauguin also called to mind

one of his own paintings

The Spirit of the Dead Wakes

or Manao Tupapao

The carved pillar

above the bed

appears again

in God's child

It looks authentic

but almost certainly

never existed

Although Gauguin

painted it

to resemble

the few surviving

native carvings

he had seen

his colourful fiction

would have meant

nothing to a Tahitian

But another

shared feature

of the two paintings

would have been

more troubling

This spooky figure

of the nurse

holding the baby

appears in very

similar form

in an earlier picture

as a Tupapao

which is the Tahitian

word for these

dark spirits

of the night

He recognises

in this extraordinary

birth

a sense that

with birth

comes death

That makes it

loaded

that gives it

that magic feeling

that superstitious

magic feeling

that all his art

of this sort

was trying to get

Gauguin worked

and reworked

God's child

over an extended

period

He painted

in conventional

oils

but mixed

them on the

canvas

rather than

the palette

This was clearly

a piece

into which

he put much

effort

and care

I love

his surfaces

I just think

they're extremely

sensuous

and the way

he treats

the Tahitian

women

the Polynesian

women's skin

I'd never seen

it in any

other artist

almost

it's like

he's rubbed

with bronze

and he talks

about how

beautiful

their skin

is

but somehow

he's able

to express

that in

oil paint

I think

he may have

added a little

bit of wax

wax into the pigment

itself

to give it

that sort of

incredible

rubbable

surface

Although God's child

was meticulously planned

an x-ray reveals

how Gauguin made

two important

adjustments

as the painting

took shape

These are

let's say

major changes

in the composition

One is

to turn the head

of the female figure

more to the baby

to the background

of the painting

I would say

it looked today

a little bit more

relaxed

and then

the cat

In the painting

we will find here

a white cat

but we are not

able to see

any trace of it

in the x-ray

so that

may indicate

that the cat

was not part

of the original

composition

When we look

to the painting

we have today

then

we find

a reclining figure

that is

for me

seems to be

relaxed

in comparison

to this one

especially

thanks to the cat

Gauguin's nativity

marked a high point

in his quest

to propel sacred art

into the modern world

and by calling it

God's child

the artist

once content

to portray himself

as Christ

gave himself

a promotion

to the very top

of the heavenly ladder

that title

as ever

was set down

in the Tahitian tongue

a whiff

of tropical mystery

for the folks

back home

Te Tamari

no Atua

actually means

the children

of God

it's assumed

that the artist

whose Tahitian

was by no means

perfect

simply got it

wrong

in July 1896

in July 1896

the finished painting

left Tahiti

by boat

with a selection

of Gauguin's

other works

left on the island

the poverty stricken

artist waited

for news

would the painting's

Christian theme

help it to sell

or would its mixture

of the sacred

the profane

and the downright

mysterious

prove too puzzling

in the event

before potential buyers

even saw the painting

great sadness

overtook the artist

and his partner

the child

whose birth

Gauguin

so tenderly anticipated

in God's child

was born

at Christmas

but after only

a few days

she died

this man

goes and seeks

some kind of redemption

through his paintings

and he paints

Nevermore

there's Paura again

lying on the bed

and it's that same

lemon yellow cover

the difference is

that there's no sense

of expectation to it

it's not about

an impending birth anymore

it's about something

that didn't happen

you only have to look

at her face

to realise

that it's a painting

about something

that this great sadness

this terrible loss

that Paura personally

and Gauguin himself had

Soon Paura too

would be gone

from Gauguin's life

his illnesses

mood swings

and poverty

together with the death

of the child

seemed to have proved

too much for her

Gauguin himself

left Tahiti

in search of an even

more primitive life

on the nearby Marquesas

islands

the most isolated

in the world

he would never

leave them

back in Europe

in 1897

the painting was

faring little better

than its creator

in a letter

sent to France

Gauguin had stated

that he did not want

God's child exhibited

he had come to regard

exhibitions as vulgar

instead he advised

placing it with

a potential buyer

who would grow

to love it

a friend acting

for Gauguin

William Mollard

had rather more

practical ideas

he decided that the six

Gauguin works in his charge

God's child among them

should travel to the

cutting edge

Libre Aesthetique

or Free Aesthetic

exhibition

in Brussels

in the hope of a sale

if you wanted to know

what was going on

in the European

avant-garde

in the 1890s

the place to go

the place to go was Brussels

it was much more important

than Paris or Berlin

the Libre Aesthetic

was a place

where one would expect

to see the latest

being created

expect to be puzzled

and challenged

it functioned in a way

not unlike the Venice

Biennale

where the world

sends its most adventurous

new art

this was the ideal

shop window

for Gauguin's

sensual Mary

and in February

1897

God's Child

went on display

at the exhibition

priced at

1,000 francs

it was easily

the most expensive

of the six

Gauguin paintings

present

the artist

clearly hoping

that his challenging

take on a familiar

theme

would appeal

to a daring

collector

the critics

however

were indifferent

or downright hostile

Mr Gauguin

has by now

made himself

quite the Tahitian

this we know

but these new works

add nothing

to his offerings

from previous years

of Gauguin's paintings

it is better

to say nothing

I am left

with the impression

of an ugliness

the nature of which

I would rather

not detail

they say

that he is

a great artist

but I cannot

understand him

let us look then

at the catalogue

for the titles

ah yes

Te Tamari

no Atua

someone understands

nothing

potential buyers

turned out

to be no more

enthusiastic

and when the

exhibition ended

on the 1st of April

God's Child

was packed up

and taken back

to Paris

there it would

fall into

the hands

of the man

whom Gauguin

regarded

as his arch enemy

and nemesis

the art dealer

Ambroise Vollard

Ambroise Vollard

was the most

significant dealer

in Paris

he is after all

the dealer

who first

gave Paul Cezanne

one man exhibition

he also gives

Matisse

his first exhibition

he gives

Picasso

his first exhibition

in Paris

Gauguin

always thought

thought that

Vollard

was a ruthless

speculator

someone

who acts

with his head

rather than

with his heart

isolated in the

South Seas

Gauguin

had put in place

an elaborate system

to try to keep

his works

out of Vollard's

hands

but the painter

was by now

desperate for money

and Vollard

was not slow

to exploit

the situation

his stock book

shows that

in 1898

he bought

God's Child

and it seems

two other

Gauguin paintings

for a total

of just 500 francs

half of the sum

Gauguin had wanted

for God's Child

alone

what can go wrong

does go wrong

and when it's not

sort of ridiculous

in black comedy

it's also

pretty tragic

in a way

I mean Gauguin

was beset

by all sorts

of doubts

and uncertainties

what was going

on in Paris

was he being

well treated

were people

taking advantage

of him

and he had

reason to be

worried

because he was

being taken

advantage of

and the works

were not doing

that well

and he was

losing control

Soon

Gauguin was

under contract

to Vollard

producing two

canvases a month

for just 200

francs each

in 1903

syphilitic

half lame

and embittered

Gauguin died

on the remote

Marquesas Islands

he had failed

to make his peace

with either God

or man

death

it turned out

did wonders

for Gauguin's career

as the cult

of the artistic

noble savage

began to take hold

the value

of his paintings

soared

Ambroise Vollard

was sitting

on a fortune

all he needed

now was a buyer

at this point

a new character

enters the story

a German museum

director

with a taste

for the avant-garde

in art

Hugo von Tschudi

Hugo von Tschudi

was art historian

he came from

Switzerland

he came from

a noble family

and he was

the most powerful

man in museum life

around 1900

in Germany

I think there

was never

such a powerful

man

such a courageous

man like him

von Tschudi

was director

of the National

Gallery of Germany

in Berlin

a post requiring

all of his

power and courage

because while

von Tschudi's taste

was for the new

wave

the gallery

he presided over

was an artistic

mausoleum

dedicated to the

past glories

of German art

von Tschudi

began a bold

program to

transform the

National Gallery

buying modern

works by radical

artists like

Cezanne

Manet

and Van Gogh

and in 1904

he made one

particularly

adventurous purchase

God's Child

but before

God's Child

could go on

display at the

National Gallery

von Tschudi

had to convince

one man

of its merit

he was the

supreme head

of the gallery

the German

emperor

Kaiser Wilhelm

II

Wilhelm

was not a

fan of

modern art

the emperor

knew better

than everybody

else

he knew better

in military

things

he knew

better

in

political

things

and we

all know

how disastrous

all these

consequences

were

of knowing

better

and of course

he knew better

in artistic

questions as well

and again

the results

were disastrous

Wilhelm was

outraged

by the new

paintings

which were

beginning

to appear

in his

beloved

National Gallery

the French

Impressionists

were to him

violet pigs

and their

pictures

gutter art

a dabbler

in paints

himself

Wilhelm

proposed

his own

style of

art

as a

more

appropriate

model

for the

nation

and even

gave it

a name

Kaiser

Kunst

a

groundbreaking

painting

like

God's

child

would have

been

exactly

the kind

of work

to get

right up

his nose

Gauguin

loved

the

barbed

image

he really

enjoyed

poking fun

and

eliciting

strong

responses

from the

people

he

didn't

like

the

bourgeois

what he

considered

the

conventional

mentality

he was

disappointed

if some

of these

images

didn't

elicit

that kind

of

response

God's

child

certainly

got a

response

increasingly

perplexed

by Von

Judy's

purchases

the Kaiser

put him

on extended

leave

and finally

in 1908

ushered him

out of the

door

but it

was

Ugo von

Judy

who was

to have

the last

love

he had

purchased

God's

child

with

private

money

loaned

to

him

so

when

he

left

Berlin

he

took

the

painting

with

him

soon

he

was

offered

a post

as

head

of

the

Neuer

Pinakothek

in

years

years

years

passed

and

the

late

Paul

Gauguin

gradually

came

to be

hailed

as

the

artistic

genius

he

had

always

known

himself

to

be

on

Tahiti

he

was

also

becoming

an

important

part

of

the

island's

heritage

so

much

so

that

the

celebrated

English

novelist

W.

Somerset

Maugham

made

the

boat

trip

there

to

research

a

new

novel

based

on

the

painter's

life

he

managed

to

track

down

Paura

but

was

disappointed

to find

that she

had

few

memories

of

Gauguin

and

little

interest

in

him

Maugham

claimed

she

only

was

gathering

and

the

painting

that

had

traveled

halfway

around

the

world

would

soon

be

on

the

move

again

in

July

1937

many

artworks

including

examples

from

the

Neuer

Pinnakothek

were

confiscated

by the

Nazis

as

examples

of

entarteter

kunst

or

degenerate

art

some

were put

on

display

as

monstrosities

in

the

Nazi's

own

gallery

the

Haus

der

kunst

Gauguin

was on

the list

of

degenerates

and

God's

child

with

its

dark

skinned

Madonna

would

have

been

a

prime

target

for

those

intent

on

building

the

myth

of

Aryan

superiority

Gauguin

completely

distances

himself

from

western

constructions

of

beauty

here

you

have

a

rather

blunt

featured

dark

skinned

stocky

young

woman

an

alternative

type

which

could

also

be

regarded

as

beautiful

in

its

primitivism

as he

would

have

seen

it

it

was

vital

that

the

SS

did

not

set

eyes

on

God's

child

only

quick

thinking

by

the

director

of

the

Neuer

Pinakothek

saved

the

painting

from

ignominy

sale

or

destruction

at

at

once

he

closed

all

the

rooms

with

the

French

paintings

with

impressionist

paintings

and

when

he

understood

that

the

collection

of

Hugo

von

Giudy

was

in

danger

he

said

that

all

the

paintings

had

been

a

donation

to

the

state

so

that

the

state

could

not

in

fact

sell

the

paintings

or

seize

them

that

they

must

remain

in

the

museum

a

battle

had

been

won

but

the

chaos

of

real

war

now

threatened

as

the

threat

of

aerial

bombardment

grew

ever

greater

the

artworks

of

the

Neuer

Pinakothek

were

evacuated

from

Munich

they

would

never

see

their

former

home

again

home

for

God's

child

for

the

next

six

years

would

be

the

sellers

of

the

castle

of

Neuschwanstein

in

the

foothills

of

the

Bavarian

Alps

the

castle

also

held

Nazi

gold

and

stolen

artworks

destined

for

Hitler's

private

collection

Gauguin's

infant

Christ

had

fallen

into

bad

company

still

the

castle

did

its

job

keeping

God's

child

safe

from

the

attentions

of

allied

bombers

so

that

after

the

war

the

painting

was

in

good

shape

rather

better

shape

in

fact

than

its

former

home

the

Neue

Pinakotique

was

just

ruins

and

all

the

other

places

were

destroyed

with

one

big

exception

because

the

Haus der

Kunst

built

by the

Nazis

for

their

terrible

prosaic

art

this

was

finally

the

only

building

which

was

not

destroyed

so

the

first

life

for

the

collections

in

Munich

after

the

war

started

in

the

Hörserkunst

ironically

in a

place

originally

given

and built

by the

Nazis

the

years

rolled

by

and

God's

child

roamed

from

temporary

home

to

temporary

home

as

chance

would

have

it

Gauguin's

provocative

reimagining

of the

Christmas

story

was

at

large

in one

of the

most

conservative

parts

of

Catholic

Europe

history

does

not

record

how

local

Christians

responded

to

it

but

even

today

the

painting

can

divide

opinion

here

for me

is this

a Christian

painting

yes

and no

you wouldn't

think that

the woman

was Mary

because of

her country

of origin

because

of her

looks

the only

thing

she does

have

is this

halo

which

is a

symbol

of

Christianity

as a

Christian

you expect

Christ

to be

the center

of the

painting

but here

the woman

is the

focus

and the

child

turned

away

even today

I'd find it

hard to hang

this picture

in a church

because there

are two

sides

to it

on the one

hand

it's definitely

a Christian

scene

on the other

it's a very

personal

painting

that deals

with the

painter

himself

I think

it can be

a good

thing

to have

something

unusual

in church

something

you don't

recognize

at once

to get

people

talking

God's

child

was never

hung

in a

church

its

end

was

in

its

beginning

nearly

four

decades

after

being

destroyed

a new

new

gallery

or

Neuer

Pinakothek

finally rose

from the

rubble

of the

old

and

Gauguin's

holy

vagrant

came

to

rest

itself

now

over

a

century

old

God's

child

continues

to

delight

the

eye

and

challenge

the

mind

the

Tahitian

title

Gauguin

insisted

on

hides

a

universal

significance

we have

to be

deeply

attentive

to

what

the

artist

intended

when

he

gave

a

specific

title

and

in

this

case

not

the

nativity

of

Christ

but

God's

child

God's

child

are

we

meant

to

see

the

baby

as

Christ

or

are

we

not

meant

here

to

see

Christ

as

every

child

even

the

most

distant

the

most

exotic

the

most

culturally

foreign

child

this

masterpiece

was born

of the

meeting

of

cultures

and

has

survived

cultures

clashing

in

in a

world

increasingly

strained

by

difference

it

is

an

image

growing

ever

more

urgent