Autoritratto, dedicato al suo amico Daniel

Gauguin painted this self-portrait in Tahiti in 1896, during his second stay on the island, when he was ill, broke, and largely cut off from Europe. He sent it to Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, a fellow painter in Paris who had become his lifeline, taking in the canvases Gauguin shipped home, trying to sell them, and forwarding what little money there was. That is the friend named in the title. Gauguin shows himself in bust, in profile to the left, against a flat ground of ochre, the face gaunt and worn. He kept up this stream of pictures and letters to Monfreid until his death in 1903. The portrait stayed in Monfreid's family for decades and now hangs in Perpignan, in the south of France near where that friend had his roots.