Self-Portrait

Gauguin painted this self-portrait on a cupboard door in a Le Pouldu inn. A halo, apples, and serpent combine signs of sanctity and temptation. The image constructs an exceptional role for the artist. Its caricatural face and disembodied hand make the self-presentation deliberately provocative.

The head tilts and the eyes look downward. The face exists almost apart from the body against broad red and yellow fields.

A thin halo floats above his head. Gauguin assigns himself a sign usually associated with saints.

Two red-and-green apples hang from a branch. In the museum's interpretation, they refer to the forbidden fruit and the Fall.

A green curling form rises beside the fingers. It becomes a serpent held beside the artist's own image.

A thin green boundary divides red and yellow fields. Broad color relationships organize the ground rather than a depicted room.

The door came from Marie Henry's inn dining room. Gauguin left the work with the landlady in place of rent. The provocative self-image thus had a specific domestic history before becoming an independent museum object.