Painted in 1890
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH YELLOW CHRIST 14 ⅝ x 17 ¾" (37 x 45 cm.)
Former collection Maurice-Denis

GAUGUIN PAINTED THIS PICTURE during the third year of his Brittany period,
after he had returned from the brief episode in Arles with Van Gogh.
It represents the reaction of the "school of Pont-Aven" against tradition and
Impressionism. The Yellow Christ that closes off the composition, painted
the year before (page 93 ), is itself one of the monuments of the "synthetist"
style. Placed here, so that the imaginary space of its landscape substitutes
for the depiction of any real depth, it prefigures Maurice Denis' famous
definition: "Remember that a painting before being a landscape...is above
all a series of colors arranged in a certain order."

Yet this is also a self-portrait. As such its details have meaning. The more
so as "synthetism" was also symbolism. The artist's handsome head and mas-
sive shoulders emphasize the impressive physical presence, the virile
strength of which he was so proud, and which indeed stood him in good
stead during long years of deprivation. The pose and the glance reveal
those qualities of actor (at times of cabotin) which were innate, and
which Gauguin played up. The accompanying Crucifixion is no accident. By
it Gauguin surely means to suggest suffering, as he did in the self-portrait
dedicated to Van Gogh and inscribed "Les Misérables." There is here per-
haps both bravado and egotism. But in another sense there is also humility.
This is a symbolic portrait, in which his head is no longer that of an indi-
vidual, but stands for all neglected artists who in a fashion not unlike
religious devotion, suffer and sacrifice for an ideal of art.

LIFT PICTURE FOR TITLE AND COMMENTARY

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