Portrait of Julien Tanguy

Van Gogh painted two versions of the portrait of Julien Tanguy — the paint supplier and dealer who sold colors on credit to struggling young avant-garde painters, including Van Gogh himself. Tanguy was one of the unsung heroes of French modernism, a friend to Cézanne, Gauguin, Bernard, and Van Gogh, and these portraits honor his generosity and goodness. Van Gogh surrounded the figure with Japanese print reproductions mounted on the wall behind — a declaration of his aesthetic allegiance and a homage to the printmakers whose work he and Tanguy loved. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen holds this version.

Tanguy is seated against a wall covered with Japanese woodblock prints, each carefully rendered as a distinct image. His square-jawed, sympathetic face is modeled with warm directness. The overall palette combines the figure's warm tones with the vivid colors of the Japanese prints behind — pinks, blues, greens — creating a highly patterned composition unusual in Van Gogh's portraiture.