Portrait of Gauguin

Van Gogh painted this profile portrait of Paul Gauguin at work in October 1888, during the brief first weeks of the two painters' cohabitation at the Yellow House in Arles — before the mounting tensions that would end in the crisis of December 23rd. The choice of a three-quarter rear-view, showing Gauguin absorbed in painting rather than facing the viewer, was unusual and deliberate: Van Gogh depicted his friend and rival as a man turned away, enclosed in his own vision and practice, already psychologically remote. Gauguin later wrote that Van Gogh had painted him 'as I see him' — an observation that catches the portrait's ambiguity, since the position implies both respect for Gauguin's concentration and awareness of his inaccessibility. The two months the painters shared at Arles were among the most ideologically charged in the history of Post-Impressionism: their disagreements about painting from imagination versus painting from nature, about the future of art, about colour and form, were simultaneously personal and theoretical. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Painted with thick, directional brushstrokes characteristic of Van Gogh's Arles period, the work uses a warm ochre background that throws the subject's dark silhouette into relief. The handling is rapid and decisive, with minimal modelling of form.