Gauguin the Provocateur: Portraits in London

In 2019 the National Gallery in London staged the first-ever exhibition devoted to Paul Gauguin's portraits — of himself, his circle, and the people of Tahiti, where he spent his final years.

Gauguin used bold, flat colour and symbolic settings to turn portraiture into something dreamlike and self-mythologising, casting himself by turns as Christ, outsider and saint.

The show could not ignore the troubling side of his Polynesian years and his relationships with young girls — part of a wider, ongoing reassessment of an artist as influential as he is uncomfortable.

Image: “Paul Gauguin - Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake” — Paul Gauguin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.