Portrait Day-- Gauguin, BP Portrait Award and Elizabeth Peyton

Monday October 14 was cloudy with intermittent rain showers (which we largely dodged) and a high of 16C.

We set out late morning and stopped for some poached eggs on toast at a wonderful restaurant on Redchurch Street called Franze and Evans. Luckily we were between the breakfast and lunch crowds.

Franze and Evans- just a few minutes from our flat

Gorgeous desserts

Across the street was some great street art-- "Developer and Man-Bun" (clearly anti-developer and anti-hipster).

Not sure what is planned at this location but the locals aren't happy

We took the tube to Leicester Square and walked into Trafalgar Square on our way to the National Gallery. We saw the remnants of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) camp. XR was launched in 2018 with the goal of having governments declare a "climate and ecological emergency" and take immediate action to address climate change. Late on Monday night, the protesters were cleared from Trafalgar Square and the Police banned further XR protests in London.

As an aside, climate change is taken very seriously in both Ireland and London. Lots of shops and restaurants have information about what they are doing to move to more sustainable operations. There are no debates about whether climate change is happening and that actions are needed to be taken now to reduce emissions and address the impacts.

XR Banner (the hourglass is their symbol)

Tents still up on Monday afternoon

Canadian embassy on Trafalgar Square

Our first museum visit of the day was to the National Gallery to see the Gauguin Portraits exhibit.

Outside of the National Gallery

Poster for the exhibit

The exhibit was a real eye-opener. We had seen a Gauguin exhibit in Paris in 2017 that focused on his experimental methods and had a large number of his ceramics. This exhibit featured many of the portraits that he painted throughout his career. They were absolutely amazing and we thought some of his best work. Gauguin (1848-1903) was not a likeable person and died of syphilis on the remote Marquesan island of Hiva Oa.

Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848. His father was a journalist and his mother was of Spanish-Peruvian descent. After the 1848 Revolution in France, the family went to Lima, Peru. His father died on the voyage. In 1854, his mother and the two children return to Paris. Gauguin travelled the world with the merchant marines from 1865-71. In 1872, Gauguin got a job as a stockbroker in Paris. In 1873, he married Mette Gad, whom he met when she was visiting Paris from Denmark. They have five children between 1874 and 1883. At this time Gauguin was painting in his spare time.

In 1883-84 he left his job in finance due to the stock market crash. To save money, he moved the family to Rouen. Mette moved back to Denmark with their children, as Gauguin was unable to provide for the family. He joined the family in Copenhagen and worked as a sales representative. In 1885, he returned to Paris to try and establish himself as an artist. In 1886, he visited the artists' colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany for the first time. He meets Théo Van Gogh in 1887, who begins to exhibit works by Gauguin. He also works with Vincent Van Gogh in Arles.

In 1891, he visited his family in Copenhagen for the last time. He traveled to Tahiti in 1891 and later that year 'marries' 14 year-old Teha'amana Tehura, a native Tahitian. In 1893, he returned to Marseilles. In 1895, he left for Tahiti again. The art dealer Ambroise Vollard exhibited his work in Paris in 1896. In 1901, Gauguin left Tahiti for the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa, seeking a more remote location. In 1903, he painted his last self-portrait and died at age 54.

Gauguin painted portraits of his family, friends and intimates as well as many self-portraits. He defied convention by putting emphasis on the symbolic or spiritual content of a work. He also experiment with media, texture, and colour. He expanded the parameters of portraiture significantly.

There was a very good guidebook that accompanied the exhibit, which had detailed notes about each picture. I have relied on these notes for most of my comments on the portraits.

The exhibit started with a room of self-portraits. He was clearly self-obsessed, but also had a belief that the world could only be apprehended from his personal point of view. He often adopted different guises in these works. He cast himself as a 'savage', a term he used positively to describe his uninhibited creative self, as Christ, or as an artist-martyr misunderstood by society.

Self Portrait 1885 (light from his attic window- shows a stylistic allegiance to his friend and mentor Camille Pissaro). Gauguin exhibited with the impressionist group four times from 1879.

Self Portrait Dedicated to Carrière 1888/89. This picture had the remnants of a dedication to one friend he had a falling out with and a second dedication to Eugène Carrière (1849-1906), a painter he met around 1890.

Self Portrait 'à l'ami Daniel' 1896.

Christ in the Garden of Olives 1889- Gauguin depicts himself as Christ on the eve of his betrayal. Gauguin's lack of commercial success and feelings of isolation fuelled his sense of persecution. By adopting the person of Christ, Gauguin communicated his suffering and sacrifice.

The second room had pictures of family and friends; and a number from Brittany. On becoming a full-time artist in the mid 1880s, Gauguin largely abandoned his wife, Mette Gad (1850-1920) and their five children. They had been frequent subjects in his first years as an artist. In 1886, he moved to Brittany where he portrayed the local peasants as 'primitive' and 'pure' in comparison to the Parisian sophisticates he had left behind. Gauguin began to suspect that he had not travelled far enough in his search for an 'unspoiled' indigenous culture.

Young Breton Woman 1889- Gauguin received permission from Comtesse de Nimal, a Breton aristocrat to paint her daughter. There are symbols of the fleur-de-lys and a coat of arms to indicate her nobility. Perhaps to suggest her transition to womanhood, he added one of his own sculptures-a figure of a naked woman exuding menstrual blood. Unsurprisingly, the Comtesse did not buy the picture.

Mette in Evening Dress 1884- a more conventional depiction of their bourgeois life which changed with the stock market crash of 1882.

Still Life with Profile of Laval 1886- Charles Laval (1861-1894) was a disciple of Gauguin's in Brittany. Laval is at the edge of the painting and one of Gauguin's early ceramics is placed near the fruit, which recall the still lives of Paul Cézanne, whom Gauguin enormously admired and had once collected.

Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin 1889 - Gauguin depicts himself meeting a peasant woman
at a gate in a Breton village.

Two Dutch artists played vital roles in Gauguin's life and art: Meijer de Haan (1852-1895) and Vincent Van Gogh (1953-1890). Gauguin met De Haan in 1888 through Vincent's art-dealer brother, Théo. They worked together in Brittany. His features and melancholic pose reappear in Gauguin's paintings even long after he died.

Gauguin spent almost three months with Vincent Van Gogh in Arles in 1888 in an attempt to found another artists' community. They often worked side by side doing portraits of the same people. Their friendship ended badly at Christmas 1888. Van Gogh suffered an emotional breakdown and cut off part of his ear and Gauguin fled back north. Although Van Gogh died in May 1890, more than a decade later he began to reappear in Gauguin's art in symbolic guise.

L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux, 1888. Marie Ginoux (1848-1911) was the joint owner of Van Gogh's local in Arles. She sat for both artists.

Portrait of Madame Roulin 1888. In November 1888, Gauguin and Van Gogh set up their easels side by side to paint the wife of the local postman.

The next section dealt with Gauguin's time in Tahiti between 1891-1893. He went there in search of an 'unspoilt', albeit French-speaking non-western culture. Tahiti had become a French colony in 1880. Christian missionaries had been there for decades. They compelled Tahitian women to wear 'modest' missionary dresses based on European models. Gauguin was outraged at the imposition and was very anti-colonial. Apparently, he managed to fight with a lot of people he met in Tahiti. However, his portraits were very beautiful. He arrived with photographs and works of art from around the world, borrowing from them to add symbolic resonance to his depictions of Tahitians. He had a number of sexual relations with young girls, 'marrying' two of them and fathering children.

At the end of the exhibit was an excellent video, in which the curators and others, including the great granddaughter of Mette Gad, were interviewed. After the exhibit, we saw one of the commentator in the video and talked to her. She was originally from Chicago, but lives in Brittany now. She was in town for a special screening of a BBC documentary dealing with Gauguin. One Polynesian woman interviewed noted that at the time it was not usual for 14 year olds to have sexual relations. However, clearly Gauguin exploited his situation. The exhibition tried to put stories behind the women in the pictures and the video noted that Gauguin did not paint generic Tahitians, but rather these were of women and men he knew in the community.

Faaturuma (Melancholic) 1891. This is perhaps Teha'amana in a French colonial rocking chair wearing a missionary dress. Gauguin may have been evoking a mood of nostalgia for a Tahitian way of live disappearing in the wake of colonial contact.

Merahi met no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana 1893. While wearing a missionary dress, she is surrounded by spiritual references. The portrait merges a colonial present with a mysterious, fictionalised mythic past.

Gauguin returned to France in 1893 with the intention of re-establishing his presence in the French art world. He felt his journey to Tahiti made him unique among contemporary artists. Still sales did not materialise and in 1895 he returned to Polynesia, never to see Europe again.

Self Portrait with Manao tupapau 1893-- he appears with one of his major Tahitian painting, Manao tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead watching) hanging in the background.

Père Paillard 1902- The naked horned devel with a pious Western face represented the local bishop, who had admonished Gauguin for his liaisons while having affairs with his own domestic staff. Gauguin entitled the sculpture Père Paillard ("Father Lecher") and placed it on public display outside his home on Niva Oa.

Barbarian Tales 1902. Meijer de Haan reappears as a vivid and alarming presence dressed in a missionary dress.. By contrast a serene Polynesian couple represent two religious traditions of his adopted home- Buddhism in the figure seated in the lotus position and Ma'ohi beliefs of the woman on the right.

We then went around the corner to see two exhibits at the National Portrait Gallery. The first featured the finalists for the BP Portrait Award 2019. After 30 years of sponsorship, the BP Portrait Aeard remains the most prestigious portrait painting competition in the world. There were 44 exhibited works chosen from 2,528 entries. The judges considered the works anonymously.

Poster for the exhibit

There were some remarkable portraits in the competition.

My Skin is Black My Collar is White by Fakhri Bohang (b. 1988) is an Indonesian artist who lives and works in Germany. The portrait is of the artist's friend Papise.

The Poet by Tina Oršolić Dalessio (b. 1983) who trained as a lawyer before gaining a degree in painting at the Florence Academy of Art. The portrait is of Ruby, a poet and friend of the artist. This was one of our favourites in the exhibit.

Ninety Years by Miguel Angel Oyarbide (b. 1954). He studied painting in Madrid. He has exhibited in his native Spain. The portrait is of the artist's mother. He says "Her facial expression and hands serve as a metaphor for her life, marked by the Spanish Civil War, exile and severe scarcity of resources, but bringing up six children with love and compassion."

Aurelio by Iván Chacón (b. 1989). He has a MA in painting from the University of the Basque Country.
The portrait is of a relative.

Father with Partner by Marco Krauwinkel (b. 1980) is a self taught artist in the Netherlands.

Imara in Her Winter Coat by Charlie Schaffer (b. 1992). He studied painting at the University of Brighton. The portrait is of his friend who sat for the painting every week over a period of four months. This was the 1st Prize winner. The Judges' commented that the portrait had "a strong sense of a living presence".

Manresa by Fances Borden (b. 1970) has a degree in painting from Chelsea College of Art and Design. She had been perviously selected for the BP Portrait Award three other times.
This is a self-portrait which she only completed recently.

The second exhibit was Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels. Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965 in Danbury Connecticut) is an American painter who rose to popularity in the mid 1990s. She studied fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where she now resides. The focus of her art has been the small-scale portrait often of her friends and intimates as well as celebrities and royalty. She usually works from photographs.

Jeanne Moreau and Francois Truffaut (The Bride Wore Black) 2005

Irises and Klara Commerce St. 2012

Flowers, Berlin 2010

Live to Ride (E.P.) 2003

(Self Portrait), Berlin 2011

Elio, Oliver (Call me by Your Name) 2018

Angela 2017

Rosenborg, (Elias) 2018

After the exhibits, we headed up Charring Cross to visit one of our favourite bookstores- Foyles. There was a flag with the cover of Margaret Atwood's latest novel The Testaments hanging outside the bookstore and her books were featured prominently. It was very exciting to read on Monday evening that she was one of the co-winners of the Booker prize.

Outside of Foyles - with The Testaments flag

Five floors of books and a Café where we stopped for a bit - very well laid out bookstore and brightly lit

We took the Tube back to our 'hood and went for a light dinner at Ozone Coffee. It was quiet on a Monday night and the kitchen closed at 9:00 p.m. just after we ordered.