Lot Essay
The present work is Gauguin's first painted self-portrait and one of his most expressive and revealing autobiographical works. Painted in the winter of 1884-1885 when the artist and his family (fig. 1) were living with his in-laws in Copenhagen, the painting documents both the artist's intense isolation--a stranger in a strange land--and his indefatigable determination to become a major painter working in a personal and independent style.
Artist's self-portraits are a distinguished genre rooted in the Renaissance. One of the earliest certain self-portraits is Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror of circa 1523 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Self-portraits can be divided into two major types. In one type, the artist depicts himself at the center of a group who supports him in some fashion, providing him with prestige, patronage or other honors. An outstanding example of this type is Velázquez's Las Meninas from 1656, in which the artist has proudly represented himself painting the Infanta in the presence of the King and Queen, who are discreetly represented in the mirror (fig. 2). A famous nineteenth-century example is Courbet's L'atelier (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). In the second category, the artist represents himself alone, usually seated before his canvas and in the act of painting his self-portrait. Generally, these paintings were made at the beginning of the artist's career, when he was too poor to afford models. Famous early examples of this type include works by Caravaggio and Rembrandt (fig. 3). Often, such paintings document both the artist's precocious talent and his preternatural dedication to his craft. The present work is one of the great modern self-portraits of this kind.
Gauguin made this painting during a critical turning point in his life and career. Gauguin faced great economic hardship in the early 1880s, following the collapse of the French stock market in 1882. During this period, he also decided to pursue a career as a painter rather than to continue in business, a decision which created severe tension between Gauguin and his wife, Mette. Commercially unsuccessful as a painter and in desperate need of money, Gauguin and his family moved to Rouen in early 1884 in the hope of finding a more economically stable situation; but distressed by their decline, Mette insisted on returning to her parents' home in Copenhagen, where she moved in October 1884. There she taught French to earn a living. One month later Gauguin arrived, having secured employment as the representative for a French tarpaulin company. Gauguin did not speak Danish and Mette's family did not understand his desire to abandon a business career for the arts; Gauguin felt isolated, misunderstood and rejected. It was at this time that he began the present work, more detemined than ever to become a great painter.
The artist's son, Pola, has described the painting and the conditions under which it was made:
At home Gauguin was forced more and more into the background; he and his painting materials had to be relegated to a little inner room, as the drawing room was required for his wife and her pupils, many of whom belonged to the Danish nobility. A small skylight was all he had to work by and he had no opportunity of using models. The only model he had was himself, so here he sat alone during the long winter months, painting his own portrait. His powerful, animated face has grown rigid in profound reflection, his gaze is introspective under the heavy eyelids, and his full lips are compressed. Silence reigns in the room, only disturbed now and then by distant merriment--Mette and her pupils. Within him a violent revolt is stirring, but the hand that holds the brush does not tremble; it is calm and sure--not yet entirely liberated, still somewhat restrained by the strict schooling it has gone through. Gauguin knows this, but he also knows that the time is not far distant when it will be freed. His artistic conscience is so clear and strong that everything which stands between him and his goal must give way. (P. Gauguin, op. cit., p. 38)
Françoise Cachin has also stressed the artist's determination:
Gauguin painted exactly what he saw in the mirror: the image is reversed... Still, what comes across is his overwhelming sense of suffocation in the shoe-box-like studio where he was confined. Literally wedged in between two canvases--the one he is working on and another on the floor behind him--the face he shows to the world is one of unrest, at once abstracted and on guard. Only that piercing eye--perfectly clear and lucid as it gazes unflinchingly toward an uncertain future--contains any hint of the self-assurance Gauguin was shortly to acquire. (F. Cachin, op. cit., 1988, p. xvii)
Clearly, Gauguin's decision to represent himself as a painter was not due solely to the exigencies he faced, but was also a declaration of his new vocation. In January 1885, at about the same time that he was finishing the present work, he wrote to his close friend, Emile Schuffenecker, "Here I am more than ever obsessed with painting--so much so that financial worries and the need to attend to business can no longer keep me from it" (quoted in ibid, p. xvi). In the same letter he also said:
For me the greatest artist is the form taken by the greatest intelligence, he is the vehicle for the most delicate and the most invisible of the brain's emotions... Work freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognized, if you have any. Above all, don't sweat over a picture. A strong emotion can be translated immediately: dream on it and seek its simplest form. (Quoted in B. Thompson, op. cit., pp. 28-29)
It was during this period too that Gauguin began to compose his "Notes Synthétiques," in which he wrote:
Painting is the most beautiful of all the arts; it is the summation of all our sensations, contemplating it we can each, according to our imagination, create the story, in a single glance our souls can be flooded with the most profound reflections; no effort of memory, everything summed up in a single instant. A complex art which contains and completes all the others. (Quoted in ibid, p. 33)
The colors and brushwork of the present painting show the influence of Cézanne. In his letter to Schuffenecker in January 1885, Gauguin praised Cézanne:
In his forms, he affects the mystery and tranquility of a man lying down to dream, his colors are grave like the character of Orientals... He spends whole days at the top of mountains, reading Virgil and watching the sky; as a result, his horizons are placed high, his blues very intense, and his red is astonishingly vibrant. (Quoted in ibid., p. 28)
Later in 1886, Gauguin painted a portrait of his son Clovis (Wildenstein, no. 187; Private Collection) in which he emulated Cézanne's portrait of his son Paul (Rewald, no. 465; Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris).
Arguably the most naturalistic of Gauguin's self-portraits, the present painting anticipates several of his later autobiographical pictures. On only one other occasion did Gauguin depict himself with brush and palette, Autoportrait à la palette, painted in the 1890s (Wildenstein, no. 410; Private Collection). (A few years earlier, Gauguin also painted his friend van Gogh before his easel, brush in hand (Wildenstein, no. 296; Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam).) In the winter of 1893-1894, Gauguin represented himself seated beneath a skylight in a garret crowded with his paintings, as in the present work (fig. 4). And in the summer of 1896, he made another self-portrait in which blues, blacks and greens form key components of the color harmony (fig. 5). Gauguin's self-portraits constitute one of the most searching essays in this genre since Rembrandt.
(fig. 1) Paul and Mette Gauguin, Copenhagen, circa 1874
(Photo courtesy of Musée Gauguin, Papeari, Tahiti)
(fig. 2) Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656
Museo del Prado, Madrid
(fig. 3) Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, circa 1628
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
(fig. 4) Paul Gauguin, Autoportrait au chapeau, 1893-1894
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
(fig. 5) Paul Gauguin, Autoportrait, près du Golgotha, 1896
Museu de Arte, São Paolo
Artist's self-portraits are a distinguished genre rooted in the Renaissance. One of the earliest certain self-portraits is Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror of circa 1523 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Self-portraits can be divided into two major types. In one type, the artist depicts himself at the center of a group who supports him in some fashion, providing him with prestige, patronage or other honors. An outstanding example of this type is Velázquez's Las Meninas from 1656, in which the artist has proudly represented himself painting the Infanta in the presence of the King and Queen, who are discreetly represented in the mirror (fig. 2). A famous nineteenth-century example is Courbet's L'atelier (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). In the second category, the artist represents himself alone, usually seated before his canvas and in the act of painting his self-portrait. Generally, these paintings were made at the beginning of the artist's career, when he was too poor to afford models. Famous early examples of this type include works by Caravaggio and Rembrandt (fig. 3). Often, such paintings document both the artist's precocious talent and his preternatural dedication to his craft. The present work is one of the great modern self-portraits of this kind.
Gauguin made this painting during a critical turning point in his life and career. Gauguin faced great economic hardship in the early 1880s, following the collapse of the French stock market in 1882. During this period, he also decided to pursue a career as a painter rather than to continue in business, a decision which created severe tension between Gauguin and his wife, Mette. Commercially unsuccessful as a painter and in desperate need of money, Gauguin and his family moved to Rouen in early 1884 in the hope of finding a more economically stable situation; but distressed by their decline, Mette insisted on returning to her parents' home in Copenhagen, where she moved in October 1884. There she taught French to earn a living. One month later Gauguin arrived, having secured employment as the representative for a French tarpaulin company. Gauguin did not speak Danish and Mette's family did not understand his desire to abandon a business career for the arts; Gauguin felt isolated, misunderstood and rejected. It was at this time that he began the present work, more detemined than ever to become a great painter.
The artist's son, Pola, has described the painting and the conditions under which it was made:
At home Gauguin was forced more and more into the background; he and his painting materials had to be relegated to a little inner room, as the drawing room was required for his wife and her pupils, many of whom belonged to the Danish nobility. A small skylight was all he had to work by and he had no opportunity of using models. The only model he had was himself, so here he sat alone during the long winter months, painting his own portrait. His powerful, animated face has grown rigid in profound reflection, his gaze is introspective under the heavy eyelids, and his full lips are compressed. Silence reigns in the room, only disturbed now and then by distant merriment--Mette and her pupils. Within him a violent revolt is stirring, but the hand that holds the brush does not tremble; it is calm and sure--not yet entirely liberated, still somewhat restrained by the strict schooling it has gone through. Gauguin knows this, but he also knows that the time is not far distant when it will be freed. His artistic conscience is so clear and strong that everything which stands between him and his goal must give way. (P. Gauguin, op. cit., p. 38)
Françoise Cachin has also stressed the artist's determination:
Gauguin painted exactly what he saw in the mirror: the image is reversed... Still, what comes across is his overwhelming sense of suffocation in the shoe-box-like studio where he was confined. Literally wedged in between two canvases--the one he is working on and another on the floor behind him--the face he shows to the world is one of unrest, at once abstracted and on guard. Only that piercing eye--perfectly clear and lucid as it gazes unflinchingly toward an uncertain future--contains any hint of the self-assurance Gauguin was shortly to acquire. (F. Cachin, op. cit., 1988, p. xvii)
Clearly, Gauguin's decision to represent himself as a painter was not due solely to the exigencies he faced, but was also a declaration of his new vocation. In January 1885, at about the same time that he was finishing the present work, he wrote to his close friend, Emile Schuffenecker, "Here I am more than ever obsessed with painting--so much so that financial worries and the need to attend to business can no longer keep me from it" (quoted in ibid, p. xvi). In the same letter he also said:
For me the greatest artist is the form taken by the greatest intelligence, he is the vehicle for the most delicate and the most invisible of the brain's emotions... Work freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognized, if you have any. Above all, don't sweat over a picture. A strong emotion can be translated immediately: dream on it and seek its simplest form. (Quoted in B. Thompson, op. cit., pp. 28-29)
It was during this period too that Gauguin began to compose his "Notes Synthétiques," in which he wrote:
Painting is the most beautiful of all the arts; it is the summation of all our sensations, contemplating it we can each, according to our imagination, create the story, in a single glance our souls can be flooded with the most profound reflections; no effort of memory, everything summed up in a single instant. A complex art which contains and completes all the others. (Quoted in ibid, p. 33)
The colors and brushwork of the present painting show the influence of Cézanne. In his letter to Schuffenecker in January 1885, Gauguin praised Cézanne:
In his forms, he affects the mystery and tranquility of a man lying down to dream, his colors are grave like the character of Orientals... He spends whole days at the top of mountains, reading Virgil and watching the sky; as a result, his horizons are placed high, his blues very intense, and his red is astonishingly vibrant. (Quoted in ibid., p. 28)
Later in 1886, Gauguin painted a portrait of his son Clovis (Wildenstein, no. 187; Private Collection) in which he emulated Cézanne's portrait of his son Paul (Rewald, no. 465; Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris).
Arguably the most naturalistic of Gauguin's self-portraits, the present painting anticipates several of his later autobiographical pictures. On only one other occasion did Gauguin depict himself with brush and palette, Autoportrait à la palette, painted in the 1890s (Wildenstein, no. 410; Private Collection). (A few years earlier, Gauguin also painted his friend van Gogh before his easel, brush in hand (Wildenstein, no. 296; Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam).) In the winter of 1893-1894, Gauguin represented himself seated beneath a skylight in a garret crowded with his paintings, as in the present work (fig. 4). And in the summer of 1896, he made another self-portrait in which blues, blacks and greens form key components of the color harmony (fig. 5). Gauguin's self-portraits constitute one of the most searching essays in this genre since Rembrandt.
(fig. 1) Paul and Mette Gauguin, Copenhagen, circa 1874
(Photo courtesy of Musée Gauguin, Papeari, Tahiti)
(fig. 2) Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656
Museo del Prado, Madrid
(fig. 3) Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, circa 1628
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
(fig. 4) Paul Gauguin, Autoportrait au chapeau, 1893-1894
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
(fig. 5) Paul Gauguin, Autoportrait, près du Golgotha, 1896
Museu de Arte, São Paolo