The Sculptor Jean Paul Aubé (1837-1916) and his son Emile

The double portrait of sculptor Jean Paul Aubé and his son Emile (1882) at the Petit Palais is a rare commissioned work from Gauguin's period of transition between amateur and professional painter. Aubé was a respected academic sculptor known for public monuments, and the commission to paint his portrait provided Gauguin with an opportunity to practice formal portraiture within the established Salon tradition he was simultaneously absorbing and preparing to depart from. The pairing of father and child in a formal portrait had conventional precedents in bourgeois portraiture from the Dutch seventeenth century onward, and Gauguin's treatment is respectful of those conventions while adding the psychological attentiveness he brought to all his portraits of people he knew personally. The Petit Palais in Paris, primarily a museum of French art from the medieval period through the early twentieth century, holds this canvas as part of its documentation of the French portrait tradition from Ingres and Delacroix through the Post-Impressionist period.

The two figures are juxtaposed with careful attention to their relative scale and the spatial relationship between adult authority and childlike dependence. The handling of the sculptor's face shows careful modelling of form, while the child's softer features are rendered with lighter, more fluid strokes. The background is kept neutral to focus attention on the figures.