Wooden spoon worked with a recumbent fox thought to have been carved by Paul Gauguin in Tahiti, estimate $8000-10,000 at CRN Auctions.
When last sold by Christie’s New York in 2016, the work was to be included in the Paul Gauguin catalogue raisonné and it comes for sale with letter dated 2013 from the Wildenstein Institute.
Attempting to reject ‘the influence of civilisation’ in his art and abandoning any effort to be a family man, he first travelled to French Polynesia in 1891. His claims to have discovered some kind of erotic idyll are perhaps referenced in this spoon. The fox is a symbol of lasciviousness and Gauguin himself referred to the fox as “the Indian symbol of perversity”.
It comes for sale at CRN Auctions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 1 with an estimate of $8000-10,000.
