Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait

Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait

Vincent van Gogh, with his red hair and beard, lean facial features, and intense gaze, is instantly recognizable. Van Gogh created as many as 36 self-portraits within a span of just ten years. Perhaps only Rembrandt produced more, and his career spanned decades. For many artists like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the self-portrait was a critical exploration of personal realization and aesthetic achievement.

"They say it's difficult to know yourself - and I'm ready to believe it - but painting oneself is not easy either."

Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Théo, September 1889

The painting Van Gogh did at the asylum in St.-Rémy, where he committed himself following a mental breakdown, is among his last self-portraits. He had another breakdown during his stay, staying locked in his room for over a month, not even entering the garden. When he was able to paint again, this was the first canvas he apparently did in one sitting. Van Gogh fervently believed that only work could restore his health. Here, as in his two preceding self-portraits, he holds the tools that identify him as a painter, his palette and brushes, and he is dressed in a painter's smock. In his short career, Van Gogh produced about 2,000 paintings and drawings, and wrote over 800 letters, most of them to his brother Théo, in which he described his aims and struggles as an artist. He worked very consciously and for a long time to perfect his art.

The intensity and vulnerability of Van Gogh's life are conveyed on this canvas through the sharp contrasts of colors and the restless brush strokes. The heavy paint strokes seem to be emanating from his head like a force field energized by its own intensity. This background elevates his image to a higher pitch by bringing out the complementary colors of his greenish face and orange hair. Writing to Théo about this portrait, Van Gogh had said, "I was as pale and wan as a ghost." "The head is dark violet-blue and the hair whitish yellow, so there is a color effect."

Van Gogh was working on a second self-portrait almost at the same time. Though the background is enlivened with swirling brush strokes, the quieter color scheme gives the image a calmer appearance. Yet the artist believed that the picture seen here captured his “true character”.