THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, October 21, 2019 |A
as a martyr to his art and his
claims of exotic lineage. Cast-
ing aside his European ances-
tors’ historical past in Peru,
the French artist adopted, in
such carefully constructed
images, a pronounced, hook-
nosed profile as “proof” of
his fanciful Incan origins.
Gauguin’s family paintings
retrace his early years and
shifting professional alle-
giances. “Mette in Evening
Dress,” a conventional 1884
portrait of his wife, recalls
the comfortable life he had
known as a Parisian stockbro-
ker before forsaking every-
thing, including her and their
children, to devote himself to
art. More radical is “Clovis
Asleep” (also 1884), which
the artist himself pronounced
“extra strong.” It is a breath-
taking likeness of his young
son asleep on a table along-
side a carved wooden tankard
and against an azure wall
alive with swirling, birdlike
forms. The painting suggests
Gauguin’s lifelong obsession,
even within this most natu-
ralistic genre, with fantastic,
dreamlike realms where still-
life objects and phantom
forms were sometimes surro-
gates for his subjects.
The artist’s most frequent
sitter, besides himself, was
the diminutive Dutch painter
and mystic Meijer De Haan,
whose exaggerated features
and pensive pose were a riv-
eting presence in Gauguin’s
work. His powerfully sculpted
portrait of De Haan from Le
Pouldu (1889-90), a rough-
hewed head chiseled from a
massive oak block and poly-
chromed like primitive Breton
effigies, dominates one of the
show’s central galleries. As
displayed in the final room,ART REVIEW
ANewProfileofa
Familiar Face
Portraits guide a fascinating journey through Gauguin’s life
London
THE BOLDLY inventive por-
traits of the French artist
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
span the length of his career
and evince his audacious,
brilliant ambition. In like-
nesses of family, friends, pro-
vincial and Polynesian sub-
jects, Gauguin captured his
sitters’ characters and dispa-
rate contexts—but at times
he defied the conventions of
portraiture to provide a
glimpse of far more. And as
beautifully explored in “Gau-
guin Portraits,” a tightly fo-
cused show of about 50
works in an array of often-
unorthodox media, the artist
flouted expectations sur-
rounding the genre in mate-
rial terms as well. The exhi-
bition was organized by
Christopher Riopelle of the
National Gallery, London,
where it is now on view, and
conceived by Cornelia Hom-
burg, who curated its earlier
showing at the National Gal-
lery of Canada, Ottawa. The
first show ever on the sub-
ject, it significantly reframes
the familiar narrative of Gau-
guin—his peripatetic travels
and incessant drive to forge a
new imagery that referenced
the primitive and exotic cul-
tures he found—from the fas-
cinating perspective of his
portraits.
The opening gallery of
self-portraits establishes
Gauguin’s gifts for self-pro-
motion, which would shape a
mythology inseparable from
his work. The tentative
young painter who peers out,
in an 1885 canvas, from a
cramped garret studio in his
family’s Copenhagen home—
BYMARYTOMPKINSLEWIS where, penniless, Gauguin
briefly retreated with his
Danish-born wife and fam-
ily—is soon supplanted by
the confident artist envi-
sioned as a charismatic
leader at the art colony of
Pont-Aven, Brittany. His “Self
Portrait Dedicated to Carri-
ère” (1888-89) depicts Gau-
guin resplendent in the re-
gion’s rustic, embroidered
costume before a sunlit land-
scape, while its inscription to
a painter he sought as an ally
underscores the portrait’s
dual role.
In “Christ in the Garden of
Olives” (1889), painted in the
seaside village of Le Pouldu,
where he would relocate
some months after a disas-
trous stay in Arles with the
painter Vincent van Gogh,
Gauguin appears even more
the poseur. His tormented sa-
cred figure bears the artist’s
likeness and asserts both
Gauguin’s imagined statureDe Haan’s evocative like-
ness endured in Gauguin’s
art even after the Dutch
painter’s death in 1895. In
“Barbarian Tales” (1902),
a symbolic composition
representing Maori (an
indigenous Polynesian
culture), Buddhist and
Western beliefs, De Haan
embodies the Judeo-
Christian tradition. His
claw-like feet and hands,
flame-red hair and men-
acing stare lend him a sa-
tanic aura in pointed con-
trast to his serene
companions, but in keep-
ing with Gauguin’s dis-
dain for Western mores.
In 1891, Gauguin left
France for the distant
colony of Tahiti, but arrived
to find its exotic island cul-
ture transformed by French
settlers and missionaries.
Such stunning paintings as
his “Arii matamoe” (“The
Royal End”) of 1892, a depic-
tion of a severed human head
that is by turns exquisite, re-
pulsive and fascinating to
consider as a portrait, reflect
Tahiti’s lost allure. Though
Gauguin labeled it a memo-
rial to a deceased Tahitian
king, the canvas’s lush tropi-cal palette and ornate setting
defy its utterly barbaric im-
age, a ghastly open-mouthed
head presented—trophy-
like—on a shimmering white
pillow.
In contrast, in the monu-
mental painting of the young
Tahitian woman who long
served as his favorite mis-
tress and muse “Tehamana
Has Many Parents” (1893),
Gauguin’s subject wears a
modest missionary dress,
poses before stylized Maorispirits and glyphs lifted
from Easter Island tablets
that supposedly chart her
ancestry, and gazes
steadfastly at us. While,
to judge from drawings
and from sculpted por-
traits of her here, it may
not offer a true likeness
of his sitter, the canvas
captures the reality of Ta-
hiti’s new colonial world
with vestiges of its
mythic past.
Gauguin moved to
Polynesia’s remote Mar-
quesas Islands in 1901, in-
creasingly ill and aware
that his days were num-
bered. Few of his final
works are as moving as
his last painting of him-
self, a grave, sparsely painted
image from 1903 that recalls
Roman funerary portraits. In
its intimate, unvarnished nat-
uralism and telling austerity,
it brings the exhibition full
circle and to a poignant close.Gauguin Portraits
The National Gallery, through
Jan. 26, 2020Ms. Lewis writes about art
for the Journal and other
publications.CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: NORTON MUSEUM OF ART; THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO; NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA
Paul Gauguin’s ‘Christ in the Garden of Olives’ (1889), above; ‘Tehamana Has Many Parents’ (1893),
below; and ‘Portrait of Meijer De Haan’ (1889-90), leftLIFE & ARTS
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