Portrait of the Artist with the Idol

Portrait of the Artist with the Idol (c.1893) at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio was painted during or shortly after Gauguin's first return from Tahiti, when he was actively constructing his public identity as the painter who had gone beyond the boundaries of European art to encounter 'primitive' spiritual forces directly. The small carved idol placed prominently over his shoulder in the composition was one of the Polynesian objects he had collected or carved during his Pacific stay and kept in his Paris studio as props for his self-mythologizing. The self-portrait with cultural object was a calculated genre: it situated him not as a French painter of exotic subjects but as a cultural intermediary who had absorbed non-Western spiritual power into his own creative process. The McNay Art Museum, which holds this canvas alongside the 1902 Sister of Charity and other works that span his career, provides American viewers access to the self-conscious mythologizing aspect of his artistic identity.

The idol is rendered in careful detail to distinguish it from the figure's more broadly painted clothing and face. The background is kept neutral. The artist's direct gaze establishes a confrontational self-presentation that contrasts with the exotic presence behind him. The handling is more finished than the Tahitian landscapes.