Van Gogh, Vincent (1853-1890)
Portrait de Gauguin (Portrait of Gauguin / Man in Red Beret)
1888
Oil on jute on panel, 38.2 cm x 33.8 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
F0546
Arles, December 1, 1888
Van Gogh painted his friend, the artist Paul Gauguin, in their studio in the Yellow House. He made this small portrait on jute – an unusual but inexpensive material. Gauguin had bought some in Arles for the two of them to use. The coarse structure of the cloth made painting difficult, so Van Gogh applied the paint thickly and opted for a strong red-green contrast.
He wrote to his brother Theo that Gauguin was working on ‘a big still life of an orange pumpkin and some apples and white linen on a yellow background and foreground’. Gauguin was probably working on that still life while Van Gogh painted this portrait: you can see the yellow background and spherical form on the left. (VGM)
See also:
• Arles (France) | Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903)