Focus on Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake and analyze the Description.
French art historian Françoise Cachin notes that Gauguin designed both Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake and its companion piece Portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan  as a caricature. In his Self-Portrat, Gauguin appears against a red background with a halo above his head and apples hanging beside him as he holds a snake in his hand with what appear to be either plants or flowers in the foreground.  Curator Philip Conisbee observes the religious symbolism in the images, noting that the "apples and snake refer to the Garden of Eden, temptation, sin, and the Fall of Man." Gauguin divides the canvas in half, painting himself as both saint and sinner, reflecting his own personal myth as an artist. In the top portion of the painting, Gauguin is almost angelic with the halo, looking away from the apples of temptation.  In the bottom portion, he holds the snake, completing the duality.
Jirat-Wasiutyński notes that art historian Denys Sutton was the first critic to interpret Gauguin's self-portrait as "demonic". This interpretation is illustrated by the pendant, the companion piece  Portrait of Jacob Meyer de Haan (1889), which visually complements the Self-Portrait. De Haan's devilish eyes and red hair shaped like horns in his portrait on the left side of the dining room where it was created in situ, corresponds to the snake held in Gauguin's hand in his self-portrait on the right door of the dining room.  Two books appear on the table in de Haan's portrait: Paradise Lost (1667–74) by seventeenth-century English poet John Milton, and Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle.  These respective literary allusions, to Milton's Satan and to Carlyle's Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a character described as both angelic and diabolical, play directly into de Haan's and Gauguin's corresponding self-portraits. Jirat-Wasiutyński argues that Gauguin portrays himself as a magus, as  "both seer and demonic angel".The work shows the influence of Japanese wood-block prints and cloisonnism. In the painting, Gauguin wears what art historian Henri Dorra compares to the saffron colored robe of a Buddhist monk, perhaps influenced by Van Gogh's earlier Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (1888).  In a letter to Gauguin dated October 3, 1888, Van Gogh describes himself in the self-portrait as "a character of a bonze, a simple worshiper of the eternal Buddha". Compared to Gauguin's more traditional Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière (1888 or 1889), the self-portrait painted at Le Pouldu is more "sinister".
Garden of Eden magus bonze John Milton Denys Sutton cloisonnism Le Pouldu Japanese wood-block prints Françoise Cachin right Paradise Lost Henri Dorra Philip Conisbee pendant wood Paul Gauguin Thomas Carlyle Fall of Man Sartor Resartus personal myth Van Gogh left caricature religious symbolism