Christ On the Mount of Olives is an 1889 painting by French artist Paul Gauguin. It is both a self-portrait and a representation of Jesus about to be taken by the soldiers.
Christ On the Mount of Olives is an 1889 painting by French artist Paul Gauguin. It is both a self-portrait and a representation of Jesus about to be taken by the soldiers.
Born in France in 1848, Paul Gauguin was an influential Post-Impressionist artist whose work was influential on the Symbolist movement and on all of modern art for many years after his death. An extremely religious person, Gauguin focused most of his work on themes of religion and God. As art historian Thomas Buser writes, "It appears that Gauguin believed in a God who breathed life into an original chaos of insubstantial atoms and thus set nature on her course. By doing so, God materialized himself; and, if God once existed, he is now dead." [1] Having what would have been considered an unconventional belief on religion at the time, the way in which Gauguin dealt with religious themes within his work was unlike his contemporaries. Someone who was intrigued with Theosophy, Gauguin used the relationship between Christ and the world as a metaphor for his own relationship with art. Works like Christ on the Mount of Olives where he directly places himself in the position of Jesus Christ are an example of this. In addition to Christ and other religious themes, towards the latter part of his career and life, a large portion of the works created by Gauguin dealt with his understanding and fetishism of "abnormal peoples."
Relying heavily on abstraction, a major distinction between Gauguin and other post-impressionists during this period, such as Vincent van Gogh, was his belief that artists should not rely on reference images, but instead their own imagination and memory. Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake , an oil painting on wood completed in 1889, was both a reflection of this and his fixation with portraying himself as Christ. The painting features Gauguin with an elongated neck staring at an object the viewer is not able to see. In addition to his abstracted features, he includes a halo above his head. Underneath him the viewer can see a snake directly underneath a pair of apples, alluding to the original sin. According to Wladyslawa Jaworska in The Sacred or the Profane?, "Simultaneously with his bitter feeling that nobody understood him, grew his conviction that he was the "chosen one", "the saviour" and "the redeemer" of modern painting." [2] Gauguin believed that he was chosen to be the savior of modern painting and paintings such as Self-Portrait and Christ on the Mount of Olives show him combining his figure with that of Christ in an effort to strengthen this argument.
A strangely captivating oil painting, Paul Gauguin’s Christ on the Mount of Olives is a self-portrait that places the artist in place of Christ as he embarks on a journey into the unknown. Creating both a sense of depth and hierarchy, two figures can be seen trailing behind the character in the foreground. In addition to the size and spacing of the figures in the work creating an implied hierarchy, Gauguin purposely depicts the figures in the background without faces in order to ensure that they do not draw attention away from the central figure. Gauguin carefully chooses each brush stroke in order to create a hazy texture, causing the work to almost appear as a vision. Despite using warm colors in order to build the central figure, the background of the work, an outdoor terrain, is composed almost entirely of cool colors. This juxtaposition of colors in this work cause for a perfectly balanced piece.
Portraying himself as Christ, this work alludes to Gauguin’s belief that he, like Christ, would eventually perish for the salvation and betterment of his contemporaries. Painted in Le Pouldu in Brittany on November of 1889, Gauguin was emotionally distraught due to his recent failures in Paris shows. In a letter to Emil Schuffenecker he stated, "The news I get from Paris discourage me so much that I lack the courage to paint and I drag my old body, exposed to the northern wind, along the sea shore in Le Pouldu. Automatically I make a few studies. But my soul is far away and looks sadly into a black abyss that opens in front of me." [3] The central figure in the image, Gauguin is depicted with his head facing the ground and a face full of sorrow and despair due to the rejection he faced.
Placing himself in the position of Christ, Gauguin attempts to liken his suffering to that of the savior and further continues to portray himself as someone who will ultimately be a messenger for his contemporaries, despite being rejected by them. When asked about Christ on the Mount of Olives by critic Jules Huret in 1891, a few years after the completion of the work, Gauguin stated that "it is to symbolize the failure of an ideal, the suffering which was both divine and human, Jesus deserted by all of disciples, and his surroundings are as sad as his soul." [4] This work served as a visual representation of Gauguin’s role as the person chosen to sacrifice himself for the betterment of visual art.
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful and, struggling with severe depression and poverty, committed suicide at the age of 37.
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Toward the end of his life, he spent ten years in French Polynesia. The paintings from this time depict people or landscapes from that region.
The portraits of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) are the self-portraits, portraits of him by other artists, and photographs—one of which is dubious—of the Dutch artist. Van Gogh's dozens of self-portraits were an important part of his œuvre as a painter. Most probably, van Gogh's self-portraits are depicting the face as it appeared in the mirror he used to reproduce his face, i.e. his right side in the image is in reality the left side of his face.
The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Widely regarded as Van Gogh's magnum opus, The Starry Night is one of the most recognizable paintings in Western art.
Émile Henri Bernard was a French Post-Impressionist painter and writer, who had artistic friendships with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugène Boch, and at a later time, Paul Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and Synthetism, two late 19th-century art movements. Less known is Bernard's literary work, comprising plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as art historical statements that contain first-hand information on the crucial period of modern art to which Bernard had contributed.
Cloisonnism is a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Édouard Dujardin on the occasion of the Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888. Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started painting in this style in the late 19th century. The name evokes the technique of cloisonné, where wires are soldered to the body of the piece, filled with powdered glass, and then fired. Many of the same painters also described their works as Synthetism, a closely related movement.
The year 1889 in art involved some significant events.
Maurice Denis was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer. An important figure in the transitional period between impressionism and modern art, he is associated with Les Nabis, symbolism, and later neo-classicism. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art. Following the First World War, he founded the Ateliers d'Art Sacré, decorated the interiors of churches, and worked for a revival of religious art.
Charles Laval was a French painter associated with the Synthetic movement and Pont-Aven School.
Pont-Aven School encompasses works of art influenced by the Breton town of Pont-Aven and its surroundings. Originally the term applied to works created in the artists' colony at Pont-Aven, which started to emerge in the 1850s and lasted until the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the artists were inspired by the works of Paul Gauguin, who spent extended periods in the area in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Their work is frequently characterised by the bold use of pure colour and their Symbolist choice of subject matter.
Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and van Gogh's own relationship with them.
Meijer Isaac de Haan was a Dutch painter. In French the name was written Meyer de Haan.
Paul Sérusier was a French painter who was a pioneer of abstract art and an inspiration for the avant-garde Nabis movement, Synthetism and Cloisonnism.
Jug in the form of a Head, Self-portrait was produced in glazed stoneware early in 1889 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. This self-portrayal is especially stark and brutal, and was created in the aftermath of two traumatic events in the artist's life. In December 1888 Gauguin was visiting Vincent van Gogh in Arles when Van Gogh hacked off his left ear before leaving it at a brothel frequented by them both. A few days later in Paris, Gauguin witnessed the beheading of the notorious murderer Prado. Gauguin shows his severed head, dripping with rivulets of blood, his ear cut off, his eyes closed as if in denial.
Claude-Émile Schuffenecker was a French Post-Impressionist artist, painter, art teacher and art collector. A friend of Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon, and one of the first collectors of works by Vincent van Gogh, Schuffenecker was instrumental in establishing The Volpini Exhibition, in 1889.
Vincent van Gogh painted at least 15 paintings of olive trees, mostly in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889. At his own request, he lived at an asylum there from May 1889 through May 1890 painting the gardens of the asylum and, when he had permission to venture outside its walls, nearby olive trees, cypresses and wheat fields.
Portrait of Artist's Mother is an 1888 painting by Vincent van Gogh of his mother, Anna Carbentus van Gogh, drawn from a black-and-white photograph. Van Gogh's introduction to art was through his mother, herself an amateur artist. After years of strained relations with family members, Van Gogh excitedly shared some of his works he thought his mother would appreciate most, of flowers and natural settings. In this painting, Van Gogh captures his mother's dignified and proud nature. It was painted at almost the same time, and with a very similar palette of colours and pose as his Self Portrait
Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh painted a self-portrait in oil on canvas in September 1889. The work, which may have been Van Gogh's last self-portrait, was painted shortly before he left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France. The painting is now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is an 1889 self-portrait by Dutch, Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The painting is now in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art and on display in the Gallery at Somerset House.
Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake, also known as Self-Portrait, is an 1889 oil on wood painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, which represents his late Brittany period in the fishing village of Le Pouldu in northwestern France. No longer comfortable with Pont-Aven, Gauguin moved on to Le Pouldu with his friend and student Meijer de Haan and a small group of artists. He stayed for several months in the autumn of 1889 and the summer of 1890, where the group spent their time decorating the interior of Marie Henry's inn with every major type of art work. Gauguin painted his Self-Portrait in the dining room with its companion piece, Portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan (1889).