Still Life with Flowers and Idol, Paul Gauguin (1892)
A mysterious profile with a phosphorescent yellow eye peers out from behind a bouquet of exotic flowers, the apparition holding another flower against a violet background. The combination of a frequently demonic or enigmatic visage with a still life – a genre in which human beings are normally present only in the traces of things – occurs in Gauguin’s work from an early stage. This small picture was influenced by his first trip to Tahiti in 1891.
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