PARIS — Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, January 1889 emerges like a vaguely familiar, climactic apparition about a third of the way through a sprawling new blockbuster exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (FLV) in Paris. Here, visitors encounter "poor Vincent"—as he is occasionally referred to in the exhibition catalog—calmly smoking a pipe, an activity he deeply associated with quiet contemplation. Behind him, dynamic swaths of orange and red form a bold, striking contrast to his green jacket and matching green eyes, which steadily look back at the viewer. As the painting’s title explicitly notes, the canvas captures the artist with his left ear wrapped in a stark white dressing, marking the work as one of only two self-portraits he executed after severing his own earlobe following a turbulent altercation with fellow painter Paul Gauguin.
While van Gogh, depicted in his now-iconic and instantly recognizable post-impressionist style, is immediately familiar to art lovers around the globe, this particular portrait—much like dozens of other masterpieces featured in the exhibition—feels astonishingly fresh.
Indeed, very few people have laid eyes on Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe for decades. The last time this priceless canvas was loaned to a public exhibition by its current owners, reportedly the prominent Greek shipping billionaire Niarchos family, was all the way back in 1990.
This van Gogh self-portrait is far from the only rare and exceptional masterpiece brought out of private obscurity for "Gustave Fayet, Collector-Designer: Icons of Modern Art." The ambitious exhibition is entirely dedicated to resurrecting the legacy of Gustave Fayet, a nearly forgotten yet remarkably influential French art collector and designer. Operating at the dawn of the 20th century, Fayet was dazzlingly connected to the upper echelons of the French avant-garde. He stood proudly among a critical handful of patrons who helped build international renown for artists who were, at the time, roundly rejected by mainstream society and institutions.
"[Fayet] was important, because he was one of the first in France to understand van Gogh, Gauguin, and to support Odilon Redon," exhibition co-curator Sylvie Patry told ARTnews, noting further that the collector was "adventurous in a really positive sense, and had a form of audacity in his choices."
Since opening its striking Frank Gehry-designed building in 2014, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has firmly established a global reputation for mounting major, sweeping surveys dedicated to blue-chip modern masters, ranging from Mark Rothko to Gerhard Richter. Devoting its major fall exhibition to a relatively obscure historical figure and his personal collection might initially appear to be a risky curatorial gamble. However, museum leadership views it as entirely aligned with their core mission.
"Exhibitions on subjects that haven’t been addressed fall squarely within our remit," FLV artistic director Suzanne Pagé told ARTnews. "Especially when it offers an opportunity to present major works of modernity that have never been shown in France."
That unique opportunity was certainly not wasted. The Fondation has successfully gathered more than 250 artworks that once belonged to Fayet’s historic collection, which is extraordinarily rich in Post-Impressionism. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe is merely one of many hidden treasures that have rarely, if ever, been seen by the wider public, collectively forming a breathtaking exhibition that spans the entire museum building through March 8.
In addition to regrouping the vast majority of his extensive collection, the museum has thoughtfully devoted several galleries to Fayet’s own artistic creations. These works offer a delightful discovery that gracefully coexists without competing against the iconic masterpieces—from Gauguin’s Yellow Christ (1889) to Paul Cézanne’s monumental The Great Pine (1887–89)—hanging elsewhere in the halls. Fayet’s personal paintings range dynamically from naturalist landscapes to more modern, color-rich experiments, their synthesized forms clearly bearing the profound influence of the visionary artists he collected.
Elsewhere in the galleries, visitors encounter almost psychedelic, floral watercolors that serve as a more direct homage to Odilon Redon, alongside intricate book illustrations, textiles, ceramics, and carpets that were once a sensation in chic Parisian homes of the period. (The carpets unfortunately still appear somewhat faded, despite the Fondation’s painstaking restoration efforts.) The exhibition experience ultimately culminates in a spectacular, chapel-like scenography, featuring color-bursting stained glass created by artist Richard Burgsthal, which Fayet originally commissioned for the medieval Fontfroide Abbey in southwest France. Fayet had painstakingly restored the abbey, transforming it into his own monumental "total artwork."
Another striking example of rarely exhibited art on display is Odilon Redon’s monumental ensemble of Symbolist paintings, which Fayet originally commissioned in 1908 for the abbey’s library. Although the historic medieval landmark remains open to visitors today, the library housing these three major paintings—titled Day, Night, and Silence—has not typically been included in regular public tours. The Redon series is all the more fascinating because it bridges two distinct phases of his career. The works seem to seamlessly combine his earlier body of work known as the "Noirs"—dreamlike charcoal drawings, prints, and lithographs populated by floating eyeballs and disembodied heads drifting through the sky—with his later, dramatic shift toward luminous color, abstraction, and fantastical floral and figurative motifs.
Fayet maintained a close personal friendship with Redon and is believed to have owned more than 300 works by the artist, alongside dozens of pieces by the Nabis group. The sheer volume and caliber of names featured in this exhibition speak powerfully for themselves. On view are 86 works by Redon, 78 by Gauguin, 10 by van Gogh, and multiple pieces by Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Paul Signac, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, and Henri Matisse.
During his lifetime, Fayet is estimated to have owned roughly 750 artworks at any given point, though his collection was in a state of constant flux due to frequent sales and exchanges. Such transactions typically occurred when a sizable opportunity for resale profit presented itself, though financial speculation was generally the exception rather than the rule.
"He made a few nice deals with some Gauguins, but if he was really collecting in order to speculate, he’d have done it more systematically," Patry explained. "Instead, when the opportunity presented itself, he sometimes jumped. He didn’t like losing money and tended to come out even in the end."
Fayet inherited his substantial fortune from a family of wealthy winegrowers who shared a deep passion for the arts, with both his father and uncle practicing as amateur painters. Fayet also tried his hand at painting early on, working in the nature-inspired realist style of the Barbizon School. That perceptive, trained eye ultimately served as a critical guide for his collecting philosophy, which, according to co-curator Angeline Scherf, "gave him a particular sensitivity" toward kindred artistic spirits. Fayet eventually cultivated a profound appreciation for art that championed intense color, drawing directly from nature to fuel imagination, fantasy, and mysticism.
In Paris at the turn of the century, Fayet became famous for housing what contemporaries dubbed his private "Gauguin museum," which encompassed as many as 200 works across various mediums, alongside a dedicated room showcasing his van Goghs. At a time when few others were willing to exhibit or purchase works by these two struggling artists, experiencing their creations typically required securing access to private collections like Fayet’s. Consequently, illustrious visitors to his multiple lavish homes included artists Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, André Lhote, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Édouard Vuillard; prominent writers such as Edith Wharton, André Suarès, and Colette; and celebrated collectors Sergei Shchukin and the Morozov brothers. (The more widely known Shchukin and Morozov collections have also previously been the subjects of major FLV exhibitions.)
The prescience of Fayet’s vision as a collector is explored with profound depth in the gallery floor dedicated to Gauguin, which is mounted on the scale of a focused retrospective survey. Here, the Fondation has successfully reunited three interconnected paintings centered on the figure of Christ: Self-Portrait with the Yellow Christ (1890–91), Le Calvaire Breton (1889), and The Yellow Christ (1889)—the latter widely considered a foundational manifesto of Synthetism. Remarkably, these three works have never been exhibited together in France before.
Later sections of the gallery explore Gauguin’s Tahitian works, in which he "sought to penetrate what he called the ‘Māori soul,’ [though] Gauguin himself was part of the colonial world he denounced," according to a wall label provided by the museum. The text notes that the artist lived "with underage vahines," or local girls, representing the furthest the exhibition goes in directly addressing the deeply controversial aspects of Gauguin’s personal life and oeuvre. The museum text adds that he was nevertheless "one of the first European artists to view Polynesian forms and culture in aesthetic rather than ethnographic terms, as equal to European traditions."
Despite his profound impact, Fayet was not an entirely isolated taste-maker; he routinely relied on the advice and cultivated opinions of an exceptional circle of friends. Artists such as George Daniel de Monfreid and Émile Schuffenecker were instrumental in turning Fayet’s attention toward Gauguin and van Gogh, respectively. His childhood friend, the art critic and collector Maurice Fabre, proved perhaps most pivotal in introducing Fayet to the broader art world while actively helping him shape his personal aesthetic. The two men did not always see eye-to-eye, however; Fayet was notably less convinced about Cézanne’s artistic prowess. Although he did collect Cézanne—once famously declaring him "as great a painter as Rembrandt"—he eventually resold several of those works.
The constant churn of his collection, combined with a relative frugality when purchasing art—he frequently favored mid- to lower-priced works by less-recognized, living artists—demonstrated that Fayet was as shrewd a private collector as he was a businessman within his family’s enterprise. Given the monumental significance of his collection, art historians have often been surprised to learn that he donated only two paintings to the Louvre during his lifetime, both by 19th-century artist Adolphe Monticelli. Following his death, Fayet’s family did not actively work to preserve his legacy as a cohesive unit, factors that all contributed to his eventual near-disappearance from mainstream art history narratives.
This comprehensive exhibition successfully rectifies that historical oversight, offering a rare window into how a network of groundbreaking, largely misunderstood artists eventually transformed into the cultural icons recognized today.
"The masses in France were completely against this kind of French avant-garde art," Pagé noted, "because the most important artists break the rules."
Fayet not only reveled in that rule-breaking spirit, but he also deeply understood the importance of listening directly to the artists themselves, who remain history’s greatest discoverers of new talent.
"It’s first and foremost through other artists," she added, "that other [avant-garde creators] are discovered."
