Vincent van Gogh
Paris, December 1887-February 1888
Oil paint on canvas
This self-portrait is one of the last paintings Vincent van Gogh completed before leaving Paris for the south of France in February 1888. Prominently signed and dated in red, this ambitious work is a statement of Van Gogh’s growing confidence as an artist and the culmination of everything he learned during his two years in Paris.
The colours on the palette in the painting correspond to those used to create the work. He described it in detail in a letter to his sister:
‘a pink-grey face with green eyes, ash-coloured hair, wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth, stiffly wooden, a very red beard, quite unkempt and sad, but the lips are full, a blue smock of coarse linen, and a palette with lemon yellow, vermilion, Veronese green, cobalt blue, in short all the colours, except of the orange beard, on the palette, the only whole colours, though. The figure against a grey-white wall.’
The little pots in the foreground, clipped to the side of the palette, would have held turpentine, a solvent used to thin paint.