Portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan

Painted in 1889 at Le Pouldu, this portrait of the Dutch Jewish artist Jacob Meyer de Haan is among Gauguin's most psychologically charged works. De Haan, who financed Gauguin's time at Le Pouldu, is depicted with books by Sartor Resartus and Milton's Paradise Lost, symbols that Gauguin used to paint him as a Mephistophelean figure — a Faustian intellectual. The portrait reveals Gauguin's complex feelings toward his patron: gratitude mixed with condescension and a dark fascination. Now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The figure is painted with bold Synthetist simplification — the clenched fists, hunched posture, and exaggerated features creating a caricature of intellectual intensity. Deep reds and oranges glow in the background. The books on the table are clearly rendered but the figure itself is psychologically distorted, the face made demonic through deliberate exaggeration of its characteristic features.