Self-portrait

Vincent van Gogh was born on this day 163 years ago. Unappreciated in his own time, his work has become some of the most recognisable ever. To commemorate his birthday today we present this self-portrait from Kröller-Müller Museum, which owns second-largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, after the Van Gogh Museum itself. 

This self-portrait was one of over forty Van Gogh produced over a ten-year period, and they were an important part of his work as a painter. Like Rembrandt and Goya, van Gogh often used himself as a model; in his case, however, he would paint himself because he often lacked the money to pay for models. Like the old masters, he observed himself critically in a mirror. The artist is instantly recognizable by his reddish hair and beard, his gaunt features, and his intense gaze. 

Regarding his preference for the painted instead of photographic portrait he wrote to his brother Theo: “I’ve noticed the many photographers here […]. But always the same conventional eyes, noses, mouths, waxy and smooth and cold. It still always remains dead. 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. The more photographs one looks at, it seems to me, the more one feels this.” And while in Paris he wrote to his sister Willemina: “It isn’t easy to paint oneself […] and you see — this is what Impressionism has — to my mind — over the rest, it isn’t banal, and one seeks a deeper likeness that that of the photographer.” 

Tomorrow we will present another great artist who shares his March 30th birthday with van Gogh. It seems to be a good date for art history :)