Van Gogh's Self-Portraits
Van Gogh painted himself more than 35 times in just a few years. The series traces his path from dark Dutch tones to bright colour.
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About the series
Vincent van Gogh made more than 35 self-portraits between 1886 and 1889. Most date from his two years in Paris, where he could rarely afford to pay a model and used his own face to practise portraiture and to test new ideas about colour and brushwork. He sometimes painted over old canvases to save money.
The Paris self-portraits show him taking in Impressionism and Pointillism, with short strokes of complementary colours. Later ones, painted in Arles and Saint-Rémy, are bolder. They include the Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear of January 1889, now in the Courtauld Gallery in London, and the self-portrait of September 1889 with its swirling blue background, in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds the largest group.
Most of the originals are small, so the smaller sizes stay close to the scale Van Gogh worked at. Two self-portraits from different years hang well side by side and show how his style changed.
