Van Gogh - Self Portrait
Posted by: Steve | April 16th, 2008 | No comments
Self Portrait by Vincent van Gogh (1886/7). 41×32.5cm, oil on artist’s board, mounted on panel. In the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This portrait by Vincent van Gogh is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was painted using a style similar to Pointillism, but doesn’t stick strictly to dots only.
In the two years he lived in Paris, from 1886 to 1888, Van Gogh painted 24 self-portraits. The Art Institute of Chicago described this one as employing Seurat’s “dot technique” not as a scientific method, but “an intense emotional language” in which “the red and green dots are disturbing and totally in keeping with the nervous tension evident in van Gogh’s gaze”.
In a letter a few years later to his sister, Wilhelmina, Van Gogh wrote: “I painted two pictures of myself lately, one of which has rather the true character, I think, although in Holland they would probably scoff at the ideas about portrait painting that are germinating here. … I always think photographs abominable, and I don’t like to have them around, particularly not those of persons I know and love…. photographic portraits wither much sooner than we ourselves do, whereas the painted portrait is a thing which is felt, done with love or respect for the human being that is portrayed.”
(Quote source: Letter to Wilhelmina van Gogh, 19 September 1889)
