Focus on this artwork and explore the Provenance and exhibition history.
The painting was exhibited in Paris by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in November 1893, along with 40 other recently created Gauguin works, but did not immediately sell; it also failed to find a buyer in the Bernheim-Jeune auction of Gauguin works in 1895. The artist Henry Lerolle would purchase Arii Matamoe at auction in 1895 for 400 francs from Drouot, and eventually bequeath it to his wife in 1929. It was briefly owned by the collaborationist writer and art collector Émile Roche, who sold it "before the war" to Georges Leven, a prominent French-Jewish lawyer and acting director of the Alliance Israélite Universelle until his death in 1941; Leven's heirs consigned the painting to an unknown Geneva gallery between 1941 and 1945.Although well known to art historians and scholars, the painting was privately owned after World War II by a Swiss collector who, after 1946, lent it only once for an obscure domestic exhibition. After eight years of negotiations, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced its purchase in March 2008, declining to name the painting's last private owner or the painting's cost (estimated around $30 million by Le Figaro). At the time, Getty curator of paintings Scott Schaefer called Arii Matamoe "the ultimate still life" and "the most famous painting by Gauguin that no one has seen". After a light cleaning, the painting has been on public display since and has been lent by the Getty for several exhibitions.
Georges Leven Geneva Henry Lerolle Bernheim-Jeune Los Angeles Paul Durand-Ruel J. Paul Getty Museum Drouot Alliance Israélite Universelle Émile Roche