Portrait of a seated man 1884

Paul Gauguin painted this “Portrait of a Seated Man” during a time when traditional European society was being questioned and artists were exploring new ways of seeing and representing the world. In this piece, the sitter is adorned in the garb of the European Bourgeoisie, and yet Gauguin’s stylistic choices, such as visible brushstrokes and the non-naturalistic rendering of the background, reject academic traditions. We get a sense of a person who is simultaneously embedded in, and distanced from, the conventions of his time. The pipe he holds might be seen as a symbol of leisure, but it also hints at a more complex narrative; a potential yearning for something beyond the sitter’s immediate reality. Gauguin often sought to represent an “authentic” existence, sometimes at the expense of the people and places he encountered, yet in this work, the tension between the conventional and the unconventional suggests a quest for something more meaningful that resonates with the artist's own life.