Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin worked as a broker's agent at the Paris Bourse from 1871 until the crash of 1882 destroyed his income and pushed him into painting full time.
Palais Brongniart (the Paris Bourse)
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The neoclassical temple of the Paris stock exchange, where Paul Gauguin worked as a broker's agent from 1871 until the crash of 1882 turned him into a full-time painter.
- 16 place de la Bourse, 75002 Paris
- The Paris stock exchange from 1826 until the late twentieth century
The place, briefly
The Palais Brongniart is a Roman temple built to house a stock exchange, which tells you most of what the July Monarchy thought about finance. It opened in 1826 and the Bourse traded here for over a century and a half.
Paul Gauguin worked here from 1871, placed through his guardian Gustave Arosa's connections, and he was good at it. For eleven years he was a prosperous bourgeois with a Danish wife, five children and a growing collection of Impressionist pictures bought out of his earnings — a Sunday painter with money.
The Paris market crashed in 1882 and took his living with it. What is striking is what he did next: rather than find another position, he decided at thirty-four to paint full time. The family went to Rouen to economise, then to Copenhagen to his wife's relations, and the marriage did not survive the decision. He returned to Paris in 1885 effectively destitute with one of his sons.
Every subsequent thing — Pont-Aven, Martinique, Arles, Tahiti, the Marquesas — proceeds from a choice made when this building stopped paying him.
Key facts
- The Paris stock exchange, opened 1826
- 1871 to 1882, as a broker's agent
- Through his guardian Gustave Arosa
- The Paris market crash of 1882
- Turned full-time painter at thirty-four
- Now an events venue; exterior and square freely visible
Timeline
Gauguin begins work at the Bourse.
The market crashes and he loses his living.
He commits to painting full time.
On the map
Questions before you go
Was Gauguin really a stockbroker?
Yes, for around eleven years, and a successful one. He painted as an amateur and collected Impressionists on his earnings before the 1882 crash pushed him into painting full time.
Can you go inside the Palais Brongniart?
The exchange has gone; the building now hosts events and conferences, so the interior is open for programmed occasions rather than as a general visit.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Boussod, Valadon & Cie, 19 boulevard Montmartre
The Boussod, Valadon gallery on the boulevard Montmartre, where Berthe Morisot was given her first solo exhibition in 1892 — at the age of fifty-one, and three years before her death.
Visit the place
Galerie Vivienne
A glass-roofed 1820s shopping arcade near the Palais-Royal, and home to the bookshop the City of Paris calls Colette's haunt.
Visit the place
École du Square Louvois
The municipal school Louis-Ferdinand Céline attended from 1900 to 1905, two minutes' walk from the family shop in the Passage Choiseul — the first classroom of the boy then registered as Louis-Ferdinand Destouches.
Visit the placeOpéra-Comique (Salle Favart)
The Salle Favart, where Debussy's only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was first performed on 30 April 1902 — after nearly a decade of work and a dress rehearsal that turned into a public row.
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.