Stillleben mit kopfförmiger Vase und japanischem Holzschnitt

Paul Gauguin painted this in 1889, a restless year spent between Brittany and Paris, two years before he sailed for Tahiti. Two objects he loved sit on the table. On the left, pinned to the wall, is a Japanese woodblock print of a kabuki actor in a fierce pose. Gauguin, like many painters then, was collecting cheap Japanese prints and studying their flat colour and bold outlines. On the right stands a dark stoneware vase shaped like a human head. That head is Gauguin's own: a ceramic self-portrait he had modelled that same year. Setting his own face beside an exotic printed one, he was already reaching past Europe for the sources he wanted. The apples and cloth between them tie the odd pairing into an ordinary still life.