Here we discover a young artist working on his skills as a draughtsman, tackling his favourite genre of all - portraiture. A middle aged man looks across to our left and Gauguin captures his pose in black chalk, which appears to have softened and lightened over time.

This drawing can be found at The Cleveland Museum of Art in the US, as part of a large and impressive collection. Visitors to this establishment will be able to find a number of other artworks by Paul Gauguin, as well as a number of other notable artists. This particular piece is a double-sided drawing, with a portrait of Mother and Child on the other side, with both having been completed in black chalk, which was the artist's preferred medium for drawing during the 1870s and 1880s. This art form allowed him to work whenever he liked, without the need for elaborate working tools such as an easel that would be very hard to carry around. He left behind a good number of portrait drawings of his son, but the identity of the male figure in front of us here is unknown.

A trip to this American establishment in Cleveland will unveil an incredible display of work which goes way beyond just European paintings. They have a number of African and Asian cultures featured here, with some items that date back many centuries. It truly is a wonderful venue to spend a few hours and in terms of European art, some of the names featured here that you might be interested in include the likes of Caravaggio, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Georges de la Tour, Auguste Rodin and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Besides those, we have pretty much every other movement from the Renaissance included here as well, meaning pretty much all tastes are catered for somewhere within this large venue. Many will actually arrive seeking to enjoy one aspect of their collection, before being introduced to, and excited by, something that might just surprise them. The US today has a growing selection of major art venues which have managed to catch up with their counterparts in Europe, partly because of a number of wealthy American collectors who over time have donated many significant artworks to various establishments across the nation.