Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ
painting by Paul Gauguin
Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ is an 1890 or 1891 painting by Paul Gauguin, produced in Pont-Aven in Brittany and now in the musée d'Orsay in Paris, to which it was assigned after its purchase by the French state in 1994 with financial assistance from Philippe Meyer and a Japanese patron.
The artist shows himself between two of his own artworks, The Yellow Christ (1889) and a grotesque ceramic self-portrait – he often used Christ as a symbol for himself and thus the work fulfilled his desire to create a triple self-portrait.
History
When the artist began the canvas he had been in Pont-Aven for two years. He produced the work just before leaving for Tahiti. The work is one of several on religious themes from the same period, making him (in Manuel Jover's words) the "original core of Symbolism in painting" – it also included The Yellow Christ and The Green Christ. Initially in the collection of Gauguin's friend Daniel de Monfreid (1856–1929), it had entered Ambroise Vollard's gallery by 1902. It was acquired by Maurice Denis in 1903.
Legacy
In 2004, Peruvian painter Herman Braun-Vega created Notre ancêtre le Gaulois (Gauguin) (Our Ancestor the Gaul (Gauguin)), an appropriation of the Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ that addresses the cultural shock tied to the colonial context in which Gauguin lived.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ” as painting by Paul Gauguin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as painting by Paul Gauguin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9162690. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1890, 1891, 1994 and 1889.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ primary sources, Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ archive and Self-Portrait research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.