Self-Portrait with Portrait of Emile Bernard (Les misérables)
Currently on view
Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903), Pont-Aven, 1888
oil on canvas, 44.5 cm x 50.3 cm
Credits (obliged to state): Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Van Gogh knew that Japanese printmakers often exchanged work with one another. The idea appealed to him, so he suggested that he, Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard should do the same: ‘It clearly proves that they liked one another and stuck together, and that there was a certain harmony among them [. . .] The more we resemble them in that respect, the better it will be for us.’ His friends both sent self-portraits, with a likeness of the other artist in the background.
Gauguin painted himself in the guise of Jean Valjean, the main character of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, equating the vibrant and loving fictional outcast with the misunderstood artists of his time. He wrote: ‘By doing him with my features, you have my individual image, as well as a portrait of us all, poor victims of society, taking our revenge on it by doing good’. The cheerful floral pattern on the wall was Gauguin’s way of testifying to ‘our artistic virginity’.
Van Gogh was impressed by the portrait’s melancholy character. He described the shadows in Gauguin’s face as ‘lugubriously tinged with blue’ and noted that he looked ill and tormented.’
- Object number
- s0224V1962
- Dimensions
- 44.5 cm x 50.3 cm, 74 cm x 63.1 cm, 5.5 cm
- Provenance
- Exchanged by the artist, Pont-Aven, with Vincent van Gogh, Arles, 4 or 5 October 1888; sent by Vincent van Gogh from Arles to his brother, Theo van Gogh, Paris, 30 April 1889; after his death on 25 January 1891, inherited by his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, and their son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, Paris; administered until her death on 2 September 1925 by Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Bussum/Amsterdam/Laren; transferred by Vincent Willem van Gogh, Laren, to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam, 10 July 1962; agreement concluded between the Vincent van Gogh Foundation and the State of the Netherlands, in which the preservation and management of the collection, and its placing in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, to be realized in Amsterdam, is entrusted to the State, 21 July 1962; on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh from the opening of the museum on 2 June 1973, and at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, since 1 July 1994.
- artist
- Paul Gauguin
- Credits (obliged to state)
- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
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