Self-Portrait

During his stay in Paris in 1887, Vincent van Gogh turned the brush on himself and produced this striking self-portrait. He had come to the city to live with his brother Theo, and the timing changed everything about how he painted. Surrounded by artists experimenting with fresh techniques, he picked up the Pointillist and Neo-Impressionist habit of building an image from countless small dots and dashes. The background hums with flecks of orange, red, and green tossed across a field of blue, giving the whole canvas a restless energy that frames his face.

Money was tight for Van Gogh, and hiring models was often out of reach, so he became his own most available subject and painted himself dozens of times over his career. His red beard and hair stand out sharply against the swirling colors behind him, and those famous eyes stare straight ahead with a calm, searching focus. He studied his own reflection with the same care he gave to fields and flowers. Now kept at the Art Institute of Chicago, the picture gives us a face to face meeting with the artist just a few years before his life ended.