一八九八-九九年におけるポール・ゴーギャンの騎手モチーフの象徴的意味について

抄録

The purpose of this paper is to consider why Paul Gauguin frequently used equestrian motif from 1898 and what its symbolic meanings are, and to show a visual source of the back-rounded equestrian in three important paintings, <<The White Horse>>, <<FAA Iheihe>>, and <<Rupe Rupe>>. One reason is that for Gauguin of 1898-99 the motif implied his happy childhood in Peru and symbolized the primitive state of himself. The idea probably developed from conclusion of a book titled A Book of the Beginnings, vol. 1, by Gerald Massey. Among his memories in childhood, riding a wooden horse particularly must have provided him an important inspiration. This can be inferred from the following passage from Diverse choses, "As for myself, my art goes way back, further [back] than the horses of Parthenon all the way to the dear old wooden horse of my childhood". The other reason is that travel journals by Edouard Petit and Eugene Girardin probably led to romantic primitivism for horse-riding in the South Seas to some of the French colonists in Polynesia, including Gauguin, in the late 19th century. As to a visual source of the equestrian, it may be derived from Delacroix's lithogragh, <<Negre a cheval>> (1823).