Background
Laval was born in Paris, and was a contemporary and friend of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
Laval was born in Paris, and was a contemporary and friend of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
Gauguin created a portrait of him in 1886 looking at one of Gauguin"s Ceramic sculptures, entitled Still Life with Profile of Laval. In search of an exoticism that could provide the key to art, Gauguin and Laval went to Panama in 1887. To gain some subsidies, Laval performs academic portraits (all lost), using his experience received from Leon Bonnat.
A series of mishaps caused Laval and Gauguin to leave the Central America for the island of Martinique.
There he made a small series of landscapes speckled with bright colors, that have been erroneously attributed to Gauguin in the past Laval died of illness complicated by tuberculosis in 1894 at the age of 32.
Van Gogh asked Laval, Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard to send him a portrait, in exchange for one of his own self-portraits. Van Gogh was impressed by Laval"s contribution.
He described Laval"s painting as powerful, distinguished and precisely one of the paintings that you talk about: that one has in one"s possession before others have recognized the talent.
