Madame Alexandre Kohler

Madame Alexandre Kohler (c.1887) at the National Gallery of Art belongs to Gauguin's most conventionally European portrait period, when he was still working within the established modes of bourgeois portraiture before his Synthetist breakthrough. The Kohler portrait reflects the influence of Manet above all — the frontal placement, the dark clothing against a neutral ground, the psychological distance between sitter and viewer that distinguished Manet's portraits from both the flattering convention of academic portraiture and the informal intimacy of Impressionist figure painting. Gauguin was in his late thirties and still building his reputation within the Parisian art world, accepting portrait commissions from the professional and commercial bourgeoisie he would soon turn his back on. The National Gallery of Art's possession of this canvas alongside more radical Gauguins from his Breton and Polynesian periods allows visitors to measure the distance he traveled in just a few years, from the socially anchored world of bourgeois portraiture to the Pacific exile of his mature imagination.

The sitter is rendered with Manet-influenced directness — frontal, psychologically closed, dressed in dark clothing against a neutral ground. The handling is more finished than Gauguin's Impressionist landscapes, with smoother transitions in the face. The chair and background are kept subsidiary to the dominant presence of the sitter.