Portrait of a Man

Two painters sat looking at this man at the same time. Around the middle of December 1888, in Arles, Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh set up together in front of the same sitter. Van Gogh took him from the front, Gauguin from the right at an angle, which tells you Gauguin was working from the left hand seat. The man is very probably Joseph-Michel Ginoux, who ran the Cafe de la Gare on the Place Lamartine with his wife Marie. That name was proposed in 1989 by the art historian Ronald Pickvance, without documentary proof, and it fits: the people Gauguin painted that autumn all came from Van Gogh's small circle in the town. Gauguin also borrowed Van Gogh's way of working, straight onto the canvas with no drawing underneath, and he did not like it much. He left the picture behind as a study, one corner still bare canvas.