Portrait of Gauguin

Van Gogh painted this portrait of Paul Gauguin in Arles during October 1888, at the moment of their shared experiment in communal artistic life. Gauguin had arrived at the Yellow House just weeks earlier, and Van Gogh depicted him in profile at work — an unusual angle that conveys concentration and psychological distance. The painting captures the tension already simmering between two fundamentally different temperaments. Gauguin later remarked that Van Gogh painted him as he saw him: a man absorbed in his own vision, remote. The two-month cohabitation ended in the crisis of December 1888.

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.