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Shortly before Paul Gauguin joined Vincent van Gogh in Arles on October 23, 1888, the two artists exchanged self-portraits. Although their previous self-representations had been soberly realistic, in these works both men assumed fictive personae. Van Gogh depicted himself “in the character of a simple Bonze worshipping the Eternal Buddha”; Gauguin portrayed himself with “the face of an outlaw, ill-clad and powerful like Jean Valjean [the criminal-hero of Hugo's Les Misérables, 1862] who also has an inner nobility and gentleness.” A close examination of the artistic and psychological contexts in which these portraits were created, supplemented by the lengthy descriptions both men provided in contemporary letters, demonstrates that the tragic outcome of the partnership in Arles could have been predicted and prevented, had both participants heeded the conflicting implications of their highly revealing selfimages.
Gauguin and van Gogh evidently met soon after the French artist returned from his ill-fated voyage to Panama and Martinique in November 1887; instantly attracted to one another, they soon exchanged paintings. With characteristic generosity, van Gogh traded Gauguin two little paintings of sunflowers for a single canvas his new chum had executed in Martinique (Merlhes, 1989, p. 55). That December, Vincent's brother Theo, an art dealer employed by Boussod, Valadon and Company, exhibited a group of Gauguin's paintings and ceramics at the gallery and subsequently agreed to become his official dealer.
Early in 1888, both artists left Paris; van Gogh arrived in Arles on February 20, 1888, a few weeks after Gauguin had settled in Pont-Aven Brittany, where he remained until he joined Vincent in Arles the following October. During the