Vincent van Gogh
Paris, Summer 1887
Oil paint on canvas
In this work, Vincent van Gogh represents himself slightly from above, an angle that gives undue prominence to his wide forehead and receding hairline. The short brushstrokes and bold green dashes that highlight his face and hair anticipate the experimental technique he developed in self-portraits later in the year (on view on this wall).
One of the reasons Van Gogh made self-portraits was to practice the art of portraiture itself, which he considered to be the highest ambition of a painter:
‘what I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession – is the portrait, the modern portrait.’
Painting himself was cheaper and more reliable than hiring a model. Van Gogh wrote to Theo that he felt that the painter’s role was
‘to show people that there’s something else in human beings besides what the photographer is able to get out of them with his machine… And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can’t go.’