Self-Portrait (1896)

Cushioned by his uncle’s legacy, Gauguin attempted to become a fashionable figure on the Paris art scene. However, he was still very much the rebel and courted controversy by dressing in an outlandish manner and setting up home with Anna, a Javanese prostitute, notorious for dancing naked with a monkey at gentleman’s parties. Gauguin’s own family were scandalised. His estranged wife Mette and their five children did not see a penny of Gauguin’s legacy. Indeed Gauguin’s relations with his family deteriorated even further after he discovered that Mette had intercepted payments due to him.

Gauguin failed to re-establish himself in the Paris art world. Although he still had admirers, the artist’s colony which he had previously dominated at Pont-Aven had long since dispersed. On revisiting the area, Gauguin brawled with some sailors and broke his ankle. While he was hospitalised, Anna stole most of his possessions, and found another lover. Gauguin was later convicted of a public order offence. Shortly afterwards Gauguin lost a legal action for the restitution of several pictures which he claimed had been sold without his permission. In an attempt to revive his flagging fortunes, Gauguin held another auction of his work. One of his closest friends, the dramatist August Strindberg, refused to write an introduction to the catalogue. The event was a complete disaster and Gauguin sold hardly anything.


It was against this background that Gauguin returned to Tahiti. Once again he slipped into a deep depression and found solace in self-pity, claiming the status of a persecuted martyr. In “Self-Portrait”, a gaunt and resigned Gauguin gazes out of the canvass. Once again he accuses the world of unjustly failing to appreciate his talent. However, unlike previous self-portraits Gauguin now appears resigned to his fate. The background is no longer bright and decorative but impenetrably dark and haunted by the vague outlines of two ghostly spectres. Gauguin now accepts that he will never achieve material success and has settled for the role of a visionary martyr.

Image Source: The Yorck Project

The Cellist (1894)

Although Gauguin was an intensely ambitious man who desired material success, he flatly refused to compromise his artistic integrity. Gauguin did not prosper in Tahiti. Indeed he became seriously ill and returned to France in 1893. Although his Paris agent had sold many of the pictures shipped home from Tahiti, Gauguin had difficulty in collecting the money. Fortunately his uncle had left Gauguin a legacy which he promptly invested in a fashionable apartment and a public exhibition of his work.

Gauguin, welcomed as something of a celebrity by his fellow artists, was ridiculed by the critics. They dismissed his paintings as childish and condemned his simplified abstract forms as poorly drawn, sensational and self-indulgent. Gauguin’s art failed to satisfy the public appetite for a distant exotic paradise and his exhibition was a total failure.


It was against this background that Gauguin painted the “Cellist”, a portrait of an unknown musician, Upaupa Sckneklud, who is so similar in appearance to Gauguin that the picture may in fact be a self-portrait. Gauguin captures the alert intensity of an artist in mid-performance and implies a vigorous sense of movement though an ornamental background which emphasises the contrast between the static cello and the musician's tense posture.

In the “Cellist” Gauguin again explores the theory of synaesthesia by attempting to convey the idea of music through visual art. The picture was well received; indeed it was one of Gauguin’s most popular works to date. If Gauguin had stayed in Paris and produced more of the same then he would undoubtedly have prospered.

The “Cellist” is in many ways a typical Gauguin picture. A dominant cropped foreground figure is combined with an abstract background intended to provoke a pyschological reaction. The "Cellist" does not compromise Gauguin's professed artistic principles. It simply substitutes a sophisticated male musician in place of the usual "primitive" Tahitian model.

So why does Gauguin fail to capitalise on this success? It seems that he had a depressive side to his character which even his old "friend" Emile Schuffenecker was unable to understand. Despite having scored a considerable success, Gauguin once again drifts into relative poverty and isolation. Why would such a shrewd man act so foolishly?

La Belle Angele (1889)

Gauguin became an enthusiastic member of the symbolist movement while living in Paris. The symbolists were the artistic rebels of their day, challenging conventional beliefs through their dress and behaviour. They naturally attracted attention and thrived on their notoriety. By attaching himself to this movement, Gauguin got himself noticed and received critical acclaim.

A fellow symbolist Albert Aurier, an art journalist for the Mercure de France, stated that Gauguin’s paintings possessed the five principal characteristics required by a work of art since they were ideative, symbolic, synthetic, subjective and decorative. Gauguin felt vindicated. He decided to capitalise on his success by travelling to the French colony of Tahiti. He believed that he could better develop his primitivist style there and win more admirers by despatching exotic canvasses to a fascinated public.

Gauguin was flattered by the praise he received from symbolist writers such as Mallarmé and Verlaine. However, they did not genuinely share his passion for a primitive and visionary style of art. Indeed many symbolists were merely dandies seeking attention. Gauguin later implied that symbolism was an inadequate response to the harshness of life. A few symbolists had promised to accompany Gauguin on his journey of discovery but none actually did.

Shortly before Gauguin departed for Tahiti, he auctioned thirty canvasses and sold all but one. Edgar Degas, the famous impressionist, bought La Belle Angèle. Gauguin’s association with the symbolists had proved extremely profitable. However he was not prepared to compromise his own artistic integrity and by leaving a flourishing career in Paris for the uncertainty of the South Seas, Gauguin demonstrated the sincerity of his own artistic vocation.

In "La Belle Angèle" Gauguin depicts a Breton peasant girl against a decorative background in an unnaturally stiff pose with heavily rouged cheeks and sharp narrow eyes. Her image is juxtaposed with a pagan idol from which she is separated by a heavy circular line.

The painting is a typical Gauguin canvass of the time. He achieves a memorable image by combining two apparently contrasting motifs, thus implying that the respectable peasant girl remains dominated by her primitive instincts.

Image Source: The Yorck Project

The Schuffenecker Family (1889)

Gauguin left Arles immediately after Van Gogh had mutilated himself. He didn’t feel under any further obligation towards his “friend”. Gauguin later exaggerated Van Gogh’s propensity to violence in an attempt to excuse his own cold-heartedness. He also claimed that Van Gogh had made an implicit death threat by referring to a newspaper story about a murder.

After leaving Arles, Gauguin imposed himself on the Schuffenecker family, arriving at their Paris home in time for Christmas 1888. Schuffenecker, also a talented painter, had been a stockbroker acquaintance of Gauguin prior to the crash of 1882.

Gauguin condescendingly referred to Schuffenecker as “le bon Schuff”. However, Schuffenecker was a decent man. He had continued to maintain his wife and family by earning a reasonable living as a drawing master. Gauguin, who had abandoned his own family, despised Schuffenecker and developed a close relationship with his wife.

In “Schuffenecker Family (1889)” Gauguin places Madame Schuffenecker in the foreground with her children by her side. Schuffenecker stands isolated in the background, next to an easel, wringing his hands in a timid pose.

Gauguin uses harshly contrasting colours, heavily outlining the dominant figure of Madame Schuffenecker, which looms so large in the foreground that it has to be cropped in order to fit the frame. By contrast, Schuffenecker, like Van Gogh in “Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers”, is drawn at an awkward angle and made to look even smaller by the deliberately inaccurate perspective.

Instead of the horizontal strips of colour which he used for the background of "Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers", Gauguin inserts a wall on which two pictures hang: a Japanese print and a still life with a rat’s tail next to a bowl of fruit. By doing so he markedly fails to make any reference to Schuffenecker’s own artistic accomplishments, a compliment which he paid to Van Gogh. He also inserts an open window whose vertical bars accentuate Madame Schuffenecker’s stiff pose. Everything outside is cloudy save where an unnatural break in the weather reveals a sunny neighbour's house.

Gauguin may have been attracted to Madame Schuffenecker, but it is unlikely that he would have considered any serious committment. Indeed, the most striking aspect of Gauguin's character is his total dedication to his art.

Image Source: the Yorck Project