Still Life with Apples, a Pear, and a Ceramic Portrait Jug

This unusual 1889 work on paper combines a conventional fruit still life with a ceramic portrait jug modeled after Gauguin's own self-portrait — one of several self-portrait ceramics he made during this period. The inclusion of the self-portrait jug among the apples and pear creates a strange confrontation: the artist's head as object, as ceramic artefact placed alongside fruit. Gauguin made ceramics as part of his search for non-European, non-academic means of artistic expression, and the self-portrait ceramics carry a particular charged significance — the head detached, the artist become object. The Fogg Museum's version on paper is an important document of this Symbolist-influenced phase.

The paper support gives the work a lighter quality than Gauguin's oil paintings. The fruit is rendered with simplified forms and flat color areas typical of his Synthetist method, while the ceramic jug's sculptural surface creates interesting tonal complexity within the overall flat design. The arrangement has an odd, dreamlike quality.