Self-Portait
Vincent van Gogh
VINCENT VAN GOGH, 1887. OIL ON PASTELBOARD.
“People say – and I’m quite willing to believe it – that it’s difficult to know oneself – but it’n not easy to paint oneself either”, so said Van Gogh in one of his many letters to his brother Theo. Yet for all the difficulty, or perhaps because of it, Van Gogh did paint himself, constantly and almost obsessively in his short-lived artistic life. Often from the same angle, with his face at three quarters to the view, Van Gogh documented his changing life, mind, and health with each new self-portrait and from the clues that are hidden within them we can learn enormous amounts about his life. This painting was perhaps his first since he moved to Paris, seeking out the new style of French painting he had heard of. He documents himself as a fashionable Parisian, bourgeois with an elegant suit and well fitted straw hat, in rhythmic, hypnotic brushstrokes. Yet Van Gogh never quite felt comfortable as the figure he tried to depict here, this portrait was a version of himself and you can see, in his eyes, that it does not match his true spirit.