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Self-portrait
Paul Gauguin • Painting, 1890, 45×38 cm
Description of the artwork «Self-portrait»
Though we don’t know exactly when Paul Gauguin created this self-portrait, in its background you can see the details of the painting "Ondine (In the Waves)", painted in 1889. This suggests that the artist created his self-portrait after completing the painting of the seductive red-haired mermaid, but experts still differ in their assessments. Some of them believe that the portrait was created in 1893, when the artist returned from his first trip to Tahiti.
This assumption is not groundless. In this self-portrait he depicted himself as a sad and disappointed man whose earthy-coloured face sharply contrasted with the bright background. In 1893, returning to France, the artist brought along his best paintings of idyllic landscapes and beautiful native women. Gauguin was confident of his future triumph, but the homeland met him unfriendly. The exhibition of paintings Gauguin had high hopes for, appeared to be a failure: journalists and critics used abusive language and derogatory epithets towards the artist and his works. To make things still worse, Gauguin's wife refused to talk to him and put him out of the house. Insulted and humiliated, the artist left France for good and lived the rest of his life on his favourite islands.
What makes this painting even more interesting is that its composition and mood are similar to those of the last self-portrait of Gauguin, created shortly before his death in 1903. In both paintings one can feel the artist's fatigue from life and disappointment in it (or, probably, in himself). But if in the first work Gauguin still plays with the public, giving his appearance a favourite filibuster infernality, the last portrait has nothing to do with the image of the rebel.
During his life, Paul Gauguin produced dozens of self-portraits, most of which reflected and supplemented his ideas about himself as a "savage," a man from another world, a man of quite a different breed. In some of his works the artist goes even further: he lent his own features to the face of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and later he would paint a self-portrait with the halo. Almost each of his self-portraits seems to throw the viewers a challenge and invites them to play the game without rules.
This assumption is not groundless. In this self-portrait he depicted himself as a sad and disappointed man whose earthy-coloured face sharply contrasted with the bright background. In 1893, returning to France, the artist brought along his best paintings of idyllic landscapes and beautiful native women. Gauguin was confident of his future triumph, but the homeland met him unfriendly. The exhibition of paintings Gauguin had high hopes for, appeared to be a failure: journalists and critics used abusive language and derogatory epithets towards the artist and his works. To make things still worse, Gauguin's wife refused to talk to him and put him out of the house. Insulted and humiliated, the artist left France for good and lived the rest of his life on his favourite islands.
What makes this painting even more interesting is that its composition and mood are similar to those of the last self-portrait of Gauguin, created shortly before his death in 1903. In both paintings one can feel the artist's fatigue from life and disappointment in it (or, probably, in himself). But if in the first work Gauguin still plays with the public, giving his appearance a favourite filibuster infernality, the last portrait has nothing to do with the image of the rebel.
During his life, Paul Gauguin produced dozens of self-portraits, most of which reflected and supplemented his ideas about himself as a "savage," a man from another world, a man of quite a different breed. In some of his works the artist goes even further: he lent his own features to the face of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and later he would paint a self-portrait with the halo. Almost each of his self-portraits seems to throw the viewers a challenge and invites them to play the game without rules.
