Self-portrait (Near Golgotha)

Gauguin's self-portraits are declarations of identity as much as likenesses — he posed as artist, outcast, Symbolist visionary, and eventually as a Christ-like martyr of artistic civilization. This 1896 example applies his Synthetist method to his own face, using bold outlines and simplified color planes to project a mythologized self rather than a naturalistic reflection. The self-portraits were strategic documents in his campaign to construct an artistic legend His synthesis of Western Post-Impressionism with non-Western visual traditions opened pathways that Fauvism, Expressionism, and beyond would follow.

Gauguin applied paint in broad, flat planes of non-naturalistic color bounded by dark contour lines — a style he called Synthetism. His palette is saturated and expressive: deep carmines, cadmium yellows, tropical greens, and acid blue-purples.