1884 -1903 · loved ones, artists and constructed identities

Gauguin never completely separates resemblance and staging: his mother, Suzanne Bambridge, Émile Bernard or his own face become the elements of a story about the artist.

Paul Gauguin's portraits span family, friendships and self-portraits. The face of his mother, Aline Chazal, is taken from a photograph and connects the artist to a family history marked by Peru. In the Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Bernard, painted in Arles in 1888, Gauguin responds to an exchange of effigies: his monumental face stands out in front of the image of his young friend, transforming the portrait into an aesthetic statement. The Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ superimposed his head, an anthropomorphic ceramic and his own religious painting in 1890; he thus distributes himself between suffering, craftsmanship and creation. Suzanne Bambridge, painted in Tahiti in 1890, appears with a frontal restraint which cannot be detached from Gauguin's colonial and social view of the island's inhabitants. Each portrait therefore provides as much information on the model as on the painter's authorial strategy. The "Portraits of Paul Gauguin" selection notably compares Portrait of the artist's mother and Portrait of Suzanne Bambridge. His reading favors the material.

The face painted by Gauguin is rarely a simple presence: it becomes an emblem placed among other images.