When Gauguin Portraits ends its run at the National Gallery this month, the artist will have emerged as a serious portraitist as well as a Primitivist, Symbolist and Synthetist. What might have been overlooked along the way is Gauguin the man of God.
Gauguin’s fascination with the traditional beliefs of French Polynesia is well known. It is all part of the rebellious stockbroker package, taking his unappreciated creativity off to warmer climes. But his patriarchal failings are also plain to see. There’s no whitewashing the artist. He is an inconsiderate, self-absorbed paedophile (in modern terms), with unaccountable quantities of genius thrown in. (He also had an un-Gallic love of Bovril, I remember reading long ago, although that is not part of the exhibition.)
