From November 1884 to June 1885 Gauguin lived in Copenhagen with his
wife and family, and it was there that he painted this self-portrait.
His letters to friends in Paris chronicle what was for him a
difficult period - he missed the cultural life of Paris, disliked the
Danes, his wife's family in particular, and the harsh climate meant
that he could do little work in the open air. Increasingly he was
forced to work indoors, without a model, and his subject matter betrays
these constraints. His work became increasingly premeditated and he
wrote to Schuffenecker, 'above all, don't perspire over a picture.
A strong emotion can be translated immediately: dream on it and seek
its simplest form.' However, in the execution, particularly in the
flickering brushwork, this painting is still close to the work of his
Impressionist years.
Gauguin's rather romantic characterization of the solitary figure
labouring in a garret establishes the tenor of much later
self-portraits, in which he depicted himself as artistic martyr,
culminating in the series of works of 1889 in which he increasingly identified with Christ.