Accession Number
2007/2.18

Title
Portrait de Stéphane Mallarmé

Artist(s)
Paul Gauguin

Object Creation Date
1891

Medium & Support
etching, drypoint, engraving and aquatint, printed in brown ink on cream wove pa

Dimensions
19 1/8 in. x 14 3/16 in. ( 48.5 cm x 36.1 cm )

Credit Line
Museum purchase made possible by the Jean Paul Slusser Memorial Fund

Subject matter
Mallarmé was a friend to many of the Impressionist painters in the late 1800s, including Whistler, Redon, Manet, Degas, Monet, and Renoir. For both Gauguin and Mallarmé the role of imagination was paramount, and Gauguin’s image of the poet contrasts sharply with that of Whistler’s. Just as with Whistler’s portrait, Gauguin’s also shows the figure emerging from a shaded background although the figure’s placement within the image is quite different. Gauguin brings Mallarmé closer to the viewer than Whistler’s more psychologically distant rendering. Mallarmé translated Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Raven, into French and a raven occupies the space just behind the French poet’s head.
This is Gauguin’s only attempt at etching, although he worked extensively in woodcut, and was executed shortly before he left for Polynesia. Very few impressions were taken of this image during Gauguin’s lifetime; this impression, although taken posthumously, is among the limited number taken from the plate.

Physical Description
A shoulder-length portrait of a man occupies the bottom half of the image. The upper portion of the image is untouched. The man's head is silhouetted against a very dark background created by dense marks and hatching that prints very dark. The man looks away from the viewer to the left; behind his head is a partially drawn crow or raven. The man has short hair, moustache and beard.

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
portrait

Collection Area
Western

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
aquatints (prints)
copper engraving (printing process)
drypoint (printing process)
etchings (prints)
men (male humans)
portraits