Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin and Mette Gad took their first married home on the place Saint-Georges in 1873, while he was prospering at the Bourse.
28 place Saint-Georges
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The first home Paul Gauguin shared with his Danish wife Mette Gad after their marriage in 1873, on a handsome small square — the address of a successful stockbroker rather than a painter.
- 28 place Saint-Georges, 75009 Paris
- Gauguin and Mette Gad's first married home, from 1873
The place, briefly
Paul Gauguin married Mette Gad, a Dane, in 1873, and the couple took their first home on the place Saint-Georges. He was two years into a well-paid job at the Bourse and could afford a fashionable address.
This is the Gauguin who is easy to forget: a young man in his mid-twenties with a career, a foreign wife, and children arriving steadily, painting at weekends and spending his salary on canvases by Pissarro, Cézanne and Manet. Nothing in the arrangement suggested he would abandon it.
The square has kept its shape better than almost anything else in the quarter — the fountain in the middle, the ring of nineteenth-century façades, the scale. It is one of the few Gauguin addresses where the surroundings genuinely resemble what he saw.
The building is private.
Key facts
- From 1873, after his marriage to Mette Gad
- A well-paid broker's agent at the Bourse
- Pissarro, Cézanne and Manet, on his salary
- Fountain and nineteenth-century façades largely intact
- Private building; the square is public
Timeline
Gauguin marries Mette Gad; the couple settle on the place Saint-Georges.
He exhibits with the Impressionists for the first time.
On the map
Questions before you go
Who was Mette Gad?
Gauguin's Danish wife, married in 1873. They had five children. The marriage broke down after he gave up his career for painting, and she remained in Copenhagen.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Père Tanguy's shop, 14 rue Clauzel
The tiny paint shop of Julien 'Père' Tanguy, who supplied the Impressionists on credit, hung their canvases in his window when no dealer would, and sat three times for Van Gogh's most affectionate portrait.
Visit the place5 rue Henri-Monnier
The house of Gustave Arosa — businessman, photographer and collector — who became Paul Gauguin's guardian, found him his job at the Bourse, and owned the Delacroix, Courbet and Pissarro canvases that started him painting.
Visit the place15 rue La Bruyère
A Paul Gauguin address in the 9th arrondissement during the years when he was still a stockbroker, painting on Sundays and quietly assembling one of the better private Impressionist collections in Paris.
Visit the place56 rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
The house where Paul Gauguin was born on 7 June 1848, months before the family fled France for Peru — a departure that killed his father and shaped everything that came after.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.