Portrait of the Painter Slewinski

This 1891 portrait of the Polish painter Wladyslaw Slewinski, now at the National Museum of Western Art Tokyo, was painted in the year of Gauguin's first departure for Tahiti. Slewinski was a fellow painter in the Pont-Aven circle who had studied with Gauguin and became one of his closest followers, developing his own Synthetist style rooted in his native Poland. The portrait shows Gauguin's mature handling of the face as a formal and psychological object — the simplified planes, the strong outlines, the direct gaze that characterizes his best portraits. It is one of his finest European portraits before his Pacific immersion.

The face is rendered with Gauguin's characteristic simplification — planes of color contained by bold outlines, a direct, uncompromising gaze. The background is minimal, focusing attention on the face and expression. The handling shows his full command of Synthetist portraiture: psychologically present and formally assured.