Paul Gauguin - Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière, 1888/9
I was so looking forward to visiting this survey dedicated to aspects of portraiture from the oeuvre of Paul Gauguin. His paintings are among some of the works that I particularly admire of art at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition opens with a self-portrait of him as an expectant young artist, and ends with a portrait of him as a reflective, isolated older man. Most critics in reviews of this exhibition mindful of the #MeToo movement appear only too eager to point out what a difficult character he was to be around, and his repugnant behaviour in taking child 'brides' whilst living in the islands of Polynesia, making him out to be predatory because of his proclivity for younger girls (which is pretty indefensible), despite the complicity of local traditional customs of offering up their young girls to older influential men. Gauguin wasn't the first artist to behave monstrously to those around him, and as history shows he certainly won't be the last. As co-curator of the exhibition Cornelia Homburg points out "if we were to ignore artists who behaved appallingly 80 per cent of art history wouldn't take place". Problematic as his personality and his behaviours could be though, Gauguin really could paint, and was a consummate colourist, using colour in unusual juxtapositions to define form and delineate space in his paintings. In this exhibition we also get to see Gauguin's work in other media creating portraits in ceramics, sculpture, wood-carving and bronze casts. I was intrigued by the "surrogate portraits" in which he arranged objects which reminded him of the presence of former sparring partners (sunflowers for Vincent van Gogh), in still lives to evoke their memory. This exhibition only hints at his greatness, but a more complete picture of what Gauguin was capable of in terms of his art can be seen in exhibitions I witnessed in Paris two years ago both here and here.
Self Portrait, 1885
Self Portrait (Near Golgotha), 1896
Christ in the Garden of Olives, 1889
Self Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1890-91
Self Portrait 'à l'ami Daniel', 1896
Self Portrait, 1890/94
Anthropomorphic Pot, 1889
Young Breton Woman, 1889
Portrait of a Pont-Avennoise (Perhaps Marie Louarn), 1888
Portrait of Louis Roy, 1890-91
Portrait of Madame Roulin, 1888
Faaturuma (Melancholic), 1891
Vahine no te vi (Woman with a Mango), 1892
Merahi metua no Tehamana (The Ancestors of Tehamana), 1893
Tehura (Teha'amana), 1891-3
Self Portrait 'Oviri', 1894-5
Self Portrait with Manao tupapau (front), 1893-4
Portrait of William Mollard (back, upside down), 1893-4
Young Christian Girl, 1894
Self Portrait with Idol, about 1893
Still Life with 'Hope', 1901
Still Life with Apples, a Pear, and a Ceramic Portrait Jug, 1889
Barbarian Tales, 1902
Self Portrait, 1903
Gauguin Portraits
until 26th January 2020
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London
