Portrait of a little boy

Paul Gauguin's portraits of children carry a quality of psychological curiosity and aesthetic dignity rare in nineteenth-century depictions of young subjects. His 1888 portrait of a little boy, painted at Pont-Aven, brings his full Synthetist approach to a subject that in academic painting was often treated with sentimental conventionality. Gauguin saw in the faces of Breton children the same quality of pre-modern directness he found in the wider Breton culture — an unmediated presence that modern sophistication obscured. His children are observed with the same intensity he brings to adult subjects.

Gauguin renders the child's face with simplified but psychologically penetrating observation — the bold outlines of his Synthetist method giving the portrait a quality of immediacy rather than the sweetness conventional child portraiture imposed. Color is used with expressive confidence: the skin tones are not purely naturalistic but enriched through the painter's interpretation. The background is treated flatly, concentrating attention on the child's face.