Julien François Tanguy: How a Humble Colour Grinder Became the Showcase for Cézanne and Van Gogh
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 4 min read
Between the 1860s and 1890s, a modest figure, Julien François Tanguy, affectionately nicknamed Père Tanguy, became a financial, material, and ideological support for still-unknown artists such as Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh.
The Journey of a Singular Merchant
Born in 1825 near Saint-Brieuc, Julien François Tanguy first worked as a plasterer before joining the Compagnie des chemins de fer de Bretagne.
His move to Paris around 1860 determined his vocation when he entered the service of a merchant on Rue Clauzel to work as a pigment grinder. This manual task, which consists of crushing mineral powders to manufacture colouring matter, brought him into direct contact with the artistic milieu.
Having become an independent traveling merchant before establishing a fixed storefront, he paced the outdoor painting locations, such as Argenteuil or Barbizon, and supplied tubes of paint to young Impressionist painters directly at their place of work.
In 1871, war broke out, and the artisan, who served in the National Guard, chose to join the ranks of the Federals during the Paris Commune. But resolutely pacifist, he refused to open fire on the Versailles troops when the moment arose and threw his weapon to the ground.
His Communard activity earned him an arrest, followed by a sentence of two years' imprisonment in a penal colony. He was finally pardoned thanks to the intervention of figures such as Jobbé-Duval or Henri Rouart.
Patronage on Credit Against His Wife's Advice
Back in the capital, the artisan resumed his activity and opened his own colour shop, initially at 14 Rue Clauzel, then moved to the sidewalk opposite.
This small business, backed by a miserable dwelling and overloaded with stored canvases, would become a small alternative exhibition space, for Cézanne and Van Gogh in particular.
Tanguy's singularity lay in his management, dominated by faith in art rather than the pursuit of profit, much to his wife's dismay.
He practiced, when necessary, a system of exchange, providing new canvases and colors, sometimes in return for studies and sketches, to those who could not pay in cash, even though his prices were already very modest.
The artists mostly purchased on credit, which forced the merchant to grant advances in the uncertain expectation of the sale of their works; as a result, he became the only Parisian merchant to possess canvases by Paul Cézanne.
These works were kept in the darkness of a back shop, hidden behind a simple, light partition that he showed to a few rare, well-informed amateurs.
Despite his advanced age and a painful hernia, Émile Bernard recalls how he traveled long distances on foot, carrying canvases under his arm, trying to sell them for the modest sum of two hundred francs—a derisory amount compared to their future value.
An Ideological Convergence with Van Gogh
In 1886, he met Vincent van Gogh, who "took up residence" almost permanently in the shop.
It is true that the Dutch artist, who had been painting since 1883 but had become passionate about colour since the previous year, resorted to a pictorial technique that was particularly expensive in oil; sometimes applying the material directly from the tube, which he squeezed onto the canvas without using brushes.
From this proximity, a friendship was born, nourished by shared social ideals. Tanguy was a fervent reader of the committed press, informing himself through Le Cri du Peuple and L'Intransigeant. It is known that Vincent shared this type of reading since in Arles, he would continue to read L'Intransigeant.
Socialist thought resonated with the ethics of the artist, a former pastor, who assimilated work into a form of religious salvation. Both lived in great insecurity and distributed their meagre resources, whether money or works, to workers or marginalised people.
Van Gogh wished to paint for the humble, not for the bourgeois of the salons, hence his simple frames, even if this choice was also linked to their low price.
The Merchant as a Japanese Sage
Van Gogh painted at least four depictions of his friend, executed in 1887. The modest supplier in a blue apron is transfigured there into a spiritual figure, immersed in an Asian universe.
Three of these canvases incorporate a background saturated with Japanese prints, treated without any spatial transition from the foreground. The rigorous frontal posture, the intertwined hands, and the square face, Émile Bernard emphasises, were directly inspired by a statuette of an Asian monk from Philippe Burty's collection, documented by Henri Guérard.
Van Gogh certainly also took note of a text published in May 1886 by Tadamasa Hayashi in the journal Paris Illustré.
Japanese society was described there through the prism of Confucian morality, which values the acceptance of one's fate and hard work. Two points that could only move Van Gogh.
Furthermore, as the Dutch painter assimilated the gaiety and rigour of the Japanese people into the socialist merchant's ideal of life, it was easy for him to liken him to Buddha. The man of the people became an apostle of Oriental wisdom, embodying an earthly paradise founded on fraternity and labor, amidst resplendent colours.
Julien François Tanguy died in the greatest destitution in 1894, taken by stomach cancer. Octave Mirbeau then took the initiative to organise a charity sale gathering the canvases donated by the painters Tanguy had supported.
This made it possible to raise the sum of ten thousand francs, which was paid to his widow. The man, throughout his life, had kept an unshakable faith in painting.
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