Christ on the Mount of Olives (Paul Gauguin)

As art historian Thomas Buser writes, "It appears that Gauguin believed in a God who breathed life into an original chaos of insubstantial atoms and thus set nature on her course.

In addition to Christ and other religious themes, towards the latter part of his career and life, a large portion of the works created by Gauguin dealt with his understanding and fetishism of "abnormal peoples."

According to Wladyslawa Jaworska in The Sacred or the Profane?, "Simultaneously with his bitter feeling that nobody understood him, grew his conviction that he was the "chosen one", "the saviour" and "the redeemer" of modern painting.

In a letter to Emil Schuffenecker, he stated, "The news I get from Paris discourage me so much that I lack the courage to paint and I drag my old body, exposed to the northern wind, along the sea shore in Le Pouldu.

Placing himself in the position of Christ, Gauguin attempts to liken his suffering to that of the savior and further continues to portray himself as someone who will ultimately be a messenger for his contemporaries, despite being rejected by them.

When asked about Christ on the Mount of Olives by critic Jules Huret in 1891, a few years after the completion of the work, Gauguin stated that "it is to symbolize the failure of an ideal, the suffering which was both divine and human, Jesus deserted by all of disciples, and his surroundings are as sad as his soul.