Paul Gauguin

Odilon Redon's portrait of 'Paul Gauguin' (1904) is a remarkable document — Gauguin had died in 1903 in the Marquesas Islands, and Redon's posthumous portrait of his fellow artist and contemporary represented both a personal tribute and an engagement with the figure who had been the most influential artist of the Post-Impressionist generation. Redon and Gauguin had known each other through the Nabi circle, and the posthumous portrait created an image of the dead artist through the surviving one's distinctive visual intelligence.

Redon renders Gauguin's portrait with the luminous, atmospheric quality that was his signature — the portrait of the recently dead painter given the same treatment as his mythological and symbolic subjects, the specific face of Gauguin depicted within the characteristic Redon color atmosphere. Whether working from photographs or his memory of the living man, his portrait created an image that was both documentary and visionary. His handling creates a portrait that exists between social observation and symbolic tribute.