Self-Portrait with Portrait of Gauguin

In September 1888 Van Gogh was on his own in Arles, in the south of France, and from Gauguin and Bernard, who were painting together at Pont-Aven in Brittany, he wanted one thing in particular: each man's portrait of the other. Bernard was 20 and balked at painting the older Gauguin. What reached Arles in the first days of October was a self-portrait instead, with Gauguin reduced to a quick sketch on the blue wall behind him and a Japanese print by Hiroshige tucked into the lower right. Gauguin had sent the mirror image, himself with a small Bernard. Bernard worked fast here, drawing in thinned dark blue and laying the heavy outlines into the paint while it was still wet. Vincent called it the idea of a painter, a few summary tones and blackish lines, as stylish as real, real Manet. The dedication reads à son copaing Vincent, the extra g a joke about the Provençal accent, and in return Bernard received Van Gogh's painting of men unloading sand barges on a quay.