Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

This work will be included in the forthcoming Paul Gauguin Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.
This delicately drawn portrait depicts Gauguin’s son Clovis (b. 1879) as an infant. Gauguin had spent the whole summer of 1879 in Pontoise with Pissarro, establishing an artistic alliance which influenced his beginnings as a painter. The portraits Gauguin made of his family during this transitional period - in both life and artistry - are packed with a deeply personal significance, and represent the most intimate and involved period of Gauguin's life as a father.