Captain Swaton

Paulin Jénot (1891–1930/39); ?Farra; sale, Palais Galliéra, Paris, March 9, 1961, lot B, as "Homme au pareo rouge et au chapeau noir," by Paul Gauguin, for Fr 205,000; private collection, U.S.A. [?C. Michael Paul], in 1964; C. Michael Paul, New York (until d. 1980); Raymonde Paul (1980–82)

Paris. Galerie Charpentier. "Portraits français," 1945, no. 46bis (as "Portrait du Capitaine Swaton," by Paul Gauguin).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections," June 18–October 20, 2002, no. 118.

Paulin Jénot. "Le premier séjour de Gauguin à Tahiti." Gazette des beaux-arts 47 (January–April 1956), pp. 119–20, 124, fig. 3.

Georges Wildenstein. Gauguin. Vol. 1, French ed. [English ed. 1965]. Paris, 1964, p. 162, no. 419, ill., calls it "Le Capitaine Swaton" and catalogues it with the works of Gauguin.

G. M. Sugana. L'opera completa di Gauguin. 2nd ed. [1st ed., 1969; Engl. ed, 1973]. Milan, 1972, p. 101, no. 247, ill.

Douglas Cooper. Letter to Charles Moffett. January 1, 1982, remarks that Wildenstein's attribution of this (no. 419) and nos. 416, 417, and 418 to Gauguin is erroneous and that all four were painted by Jénot although sold by his son as Gauguins in Paris in the 1930s; comments that Gauguin may have sketched the composition for Jénot on small scraps of paper and that Jénot attributed the ideas for them to Gauguin.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 492, ill., as "Captain Swaton".

Charlotte Hale in Colta Ives and Susan Alyson Stein. The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2002, pp. 175, 187–89, 225, 232 nn. 49, 53, no. 118, fig. 79 (color), based on technical and stylistic analysis, concludes that this picture is by Jénot, painted with Gauguin's materials and under his guidance.

Paulin Jénot was a second-lieutenant in the French marines who befriended Gauguin when they were neighbors at Papeete and, according to Douglas Cooper (1982), took painting lessons from him. The traditional attribution of this portrait to Gauguin was based on the discussion of it in Jénot's memoirs of 1891–93. In these memoirs, which were not published until 1956, no painting lessons are mentioned and the portrait of Captain Swaton and three other portraits (Wildenstein nos. 416–19) are illustrated and discussed as having been painted by Gauguin and given to Jénot. In a conversation with Cooper in 1980, Jénot's son apparently admitted that at the time the four portraits were sold as Gauguins in the 1930s, his father told him that the idea for each was provided by Gauguin. Cooper has suggested that Gauguin simply sketched the compositions for Jénot on a piece of scrap paper and doubts that there is even an underdrawing by Gauguin on these portraits.

Although Jénot is said to have won the Grand Prix at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy in about 1886 (see Cooper 1982), if he was actually active as an artist, he would undoubtedly have been outside the circle of influence of the avant-garde in Paris and Pont-Aven. It therefore seems unlikely that he could have so successfully produced this rather striking portrait in Gauguin's style without considerable assistance from Gauguin.

A good color reproduction of the portrait of a mulatto girl (Wildenstein no. 417), also attributed by Cooper to Jénot, is in Sugana 1981, colorpl. 20.