Nave Nave Fenua (Terre délicieuse), from: NOA NOA

Imagine very low reliefs, with full forms, printed handsomely, with sober notes of red and yellow to break the monotony of the blacks and whites. He [Gauguin] extracts from these the powerful effects that are the secret of the artist’s temperament’ (Julien Leclercq, February 1895).

In this extract from a review written for the journal Mercure de France in February 1895, the symbolist poet and art critic Julien Leclercq described a series of ten woodcuts by Paul Gauguin, exhibited in his studio at 6 rue Vércingetorix in December 1894. Known collectively as NOA NOA ('Fragrant Scent'), Gauguin had created the woodcuts upon his return to Paris to accompany an essay about his sojourn in Tahiti for an exhibition of his paintings at Durand-Ruel in November 1893. Roughly cut, gouged and scratched using a knife, needle and sandpaper, the blocks were initially proofed by Gauguin himself, using his hands instead of a press to selectively apply pressure while printing and varying the inking for each impression. He then commissioned the Breton artist Louis Roy to print an edition of 25-30 impressions of each block. The Durand-Ruel publication was never realised, but the following year Gauguin displayed both his own proofs and impressions from Roy’s edition, alongside paintings and wood carvings, in his own studio, with the prints simply tacked to the walls. For many of Gauguin’s close circle of friends and admirers the woodcuts were amongst the highlights of the show. Writing in Le Soir, the poet Charles Morice effused: ‘I would say that Gauguin’s current effort will tomorrow provoke a complete revolution in the art of engraving and in that of watercolour’. With their modest scale and muted palette, these dark and mysterious prints - full of allusions to Tahitian mythology and art - powerfully declare Gauguin’s urge to create a new aesthetic, unfettered with European notions of form and tradition.