Paul Gauguin – Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ

Paul Gauguin – Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ – hand-painted oil painting reproduction

The painter put himself in front of one of his own pictures. The canvas dates from 1890, oil on canvas, and is held by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris under inventory number RF 1994 2. The format is landscape: 46 cm wide and 38 cm high. We paint the scene again by hand: a hand-painted oil painting reproduction, oil on canvas, never a print.

A picture inside the picture

Behind Gauguin’s head, on the left of the canvas, hangs The Yellow Christ — his own painting of 1889, which measures about 92 × 73 cm and is today in Buffalo, in the United States. Here we see it reversed, as though hanging on the wall behind him. This is not a quotation of somebody else’s work: the painter stands in front of his own and tells you who he is by doing so. We sell that painting separately — The Yellow Christ — so you can compare how the same Christ looks as a picture in its own right and as the background of a portrait.

What else is on the canvas

At the upper right stands a reddish ceramic vessel modelled as a grotesque head, one eye bulging, the mouth open. Exactly what it is, and whose, is a separate question; we do not print an identification we cannot support with two independent sources. Gauguin himself is in the foreground in a dark blue jersey, turned to his left, his look hard and a little tired. Between the Yellow Christ on one side and the ceramic head on the other stands a face that smiles at neither of them.

The measurements, and what we actually know about them

An honest note: we have a single record for the size. Wikidata gives 46 cm wide by 38 cm high and the inventory number RF 1994 2; we could not reach the museum’s own record, because their site refuses automated requests. The aspect ratio of our photograph comes within 0.76 per cent of that figure, which supports it but is not a second source — a photograph can corroborate, it cannot prove. So we print it for what it is: one line from one record, and we say so out loud.

A hand-painted reproduction for your home

The landscape format and the quiet dark blue of the jersey suit an office, a study, or the wall above a desk, where a portrait is not in the way. The original measures 46 × 38 cm; we paint it in eight sizes, which you choose in the selector above this text. From the same Breton years comes The Green Christ, and the year after this Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, where Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? leads.

• Subject: Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ, Paul Gauguin, 1890, Brittany
• Technique: hand-painted canvas, oil on canvas, a reproduction — never a print
• Original: oil on canvas, 46 × 38 cm (width × height, landscape), Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. no. RF 1994 2; the size rests on a single record
• Detail worth knowing: the painting behind the artist’s head is his own Yellow Christ of 1889, which you can also buy from us as a reproduction in its own right