Self-Portrait with Hat

Self-Portrait with Hat is an oil on canvas painted by Paul Gauguin in Paris in the winter of 1893–94, after his first stay in Tahiti; measuring 46 × 38 cm, it is the front of a double-sided canvas with a portrait of William Molard on the back, and has been in the Musée d'Orsay collection since 1966.

Gauguin returned to Paris on 1 September 1893 determined to make his Tahitian work known and to justify what he called his 'savage' painting. Recognition was slow to come. In November the Musée du Luxembourg refused his offer of Ia Orana Maria, now in the Metropolitan Museum, and an exhibition of his finest Tahitian canvases at Durand-Ruel was only a partial success; a few figures such as Degas, Alfred Jarry and Thadée Natanson supported him, while most artists remained reserved. The Orsay reads this self-portrait as a reply to those setbacks and a renewed assertion of his rebellious spirit.

He shows himself in his new studio on the rue Vercingétorix, whose walls he had painted yellow and olive green, crossed by a diagonal yellow beam. Behind him, reversed as if seen in a mirror, hangs Manao tupapau (The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch, 1892, Buffalo), which he regarded as the most important and significant work of his Pacific stay. A blue and yellow pareu at the right recalls the exotic objects he had brought back and arranged around the room. The rough, simple handling and the coarse canvas reinforce the image of a fierce artist with 'primitive' features.

On the reverse Gauguin painted the face of his young friend William Molard (1862–1936), a Wagnerian composer connected with the Montparnasse bohemia that also included August Strindberg and the sculptor Paco Durio, figures who later helped spread Gauguin's reputation. The two sides together sum up Gauguin's Paris winter of 1893–94. The canvas is unsigned and was shown at the 1906 Gauguin exhibition with the Molard side displayed. The French state bought it in 1966 with help from an anonymous Canadian donation.