MASP

The painter lived his first years in Lima, Peru. After going back to France, he joined the Navy between 1865 and 1871. While working as an exchange agent, he started to paint as an amateur. Between 1880 and 1886, he participated in collective exhibitions of the impressionist group and decided to dedicate himself exclusively to painting. Then followed a period of financial and family-related straits that led him to look for an alternative to the tough reality of the modern metropolis. First, he went to study on the fields of Brittany. Later, he spent a season with Van Gogh (1853-1890) in Provence, time when took place a dramatic rupture between them. From 1895 until his death, he lived in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, places where he absorbed aesthetic influences that reoriented his style. This stylistic shift must not be construed as a retreat towards the exotic, but rather as a conscious quest of formal values as an alternative to Western art, which were sought after in numerous sources and reinterpreted with great compositional skill. In Self-portrait (Near Golgotha), the intense light foregrounds the gaze and adds a prophetic and mysterious tone. The light-blue attire contrasts with the backdrop apparently composed of moss and stones. There is one single gap in the upper left corner, allowing to glimpse trees at a distance. The portrait was found among Gauguin’s belongings after he passed away. On both sides of the canvas, there are faces that blend with the background, as if they were ghosts. In the image itself, there is an inscription that mentions Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified. Such allusion to the Passion is combined with the presence of characters of the Polynesian mythology.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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By Luciano Migliaccio
The canvas, Self-Portrait (Near Golgotha) found amidst Gauguin’s personal belongings after his death, was sold to Victor Segalen, officer and physician on board the liner “La Durance” who also acquired seven other works by the artist. The fact that Gauguin kept this painting at his own home from 1896 suggests his great attachment to it. As did many other artists, from Dürer to Rembrandt, Gauguin painted self-portraits as records of his own existential status. This portrait was painted at the time when he wrote to Daniel de Monfreid: “Je suis tellement démoralisé, découragé, que je ne crois pas à des malheurs plus grands pouvant survenir” – a free expression of feelings that explains the tragic inscription and the title. A halo illuminates the painter’s head. On the dark background, two figures appear in the shade: to the right, a Tahitian woman facing the viewer; to the left, a silhouetted profile that could be an idol. This silhouette is similar to that of Oviri, the first statue created by Gauguin which the artist also called “L’assassine”. This work was inspired in an indigenous cult as well as in recollections of Balzac’s Seraphita, as the artist himself explained in a note on a preliminary sketch he drew for this sculpture. Gauguin synthesized in this painting the Christian religious spirit and the cult of primitive peoples. The thin face features an enigmatic expression. The light and luminous robe attracts the viewer’s attention to the gaze that seemingly comes from within and prophetically sees the world beyond reality. For Boudaille (1964, p. 265), the painting is so forceful that it manages to tangibly express the horror of the situation, a horror comparable perhaps to that shown in the last words of the leading character in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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