Clovis

Gauguin's portrait of his son Clovis was painted in the mid-1880s during the painful transition from stockbroker-with-family to full-time artist-without-family. Clovis, born in 1879, was one of five children whose upbringing Gauguin effectively abandoned as his artistic commitment deepened. The portrait belongs to a brief period of domestic normality before the final separations: Gauguin had left the Bourse following the financial crisis of 1882, and by 1885 he had sent his family to Copenhagen while returning to Paris alone to pursue his career. The tenderness of his portraits of his children during this period — their careful psychological attention, their gentle observation — stands in complicated relationship to the choices he was simultaneously making. The portrait's location is currently unknown, having likely passed through private hands; its absence from major institutional collections reflects the modest status of Gauguin's early portrait work compared to the Tahitian canvases that defined his reputation.

The child's face is rendered with close, careful observation — the soft forms of childhood treated with a delicacy of brushwork distinct from Gauguin's later more schematic figure painting. The palette is warm and restrained, dominated by ochres and pale browns. The handling shows direct Impressionist influence in its varied, broken touch.