Vincent van Gogh
To celebrate The Courtauld’s forthcoming landmark display of the troubled Dutch master’s self-portraits, STEVE PILL looks at the stories behind 10 of the most dramatic works on display
1. Self-Portrait with Felt Hat
December 1886 – January 1887
Oil on canvas, 41.5x32.5cm
Vincent van Gogh painted at least 35 selfportraits during his lifetime and the majority of those were made during his time in Paris. It wasn’t vanity that inspired these reflective studies, but rather a desire to hone his techniques coupled with “want of a better model”.
Having arrived in the French capital in March 1886, the artist shared a Montmartre apartment with his art dealer brother Théo and began studies in the atelier of the historical painter Fernand Cormon, who would also count Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and later Chaim Soutine among his pupils. This early self-portrait was painted over a nude study that Vincent had made during his initial studies with Cormon.
2. Self-Portrait
March-June 1887
Oil on cardboard, 41x33cm
That this neo-Impressionist study was made on card suggests much about the artist’s intentions. This was an experiment, not destined for the Paris Salon – which makes the fact that it has survived more than 130 years even more remarkable.
The artist clearly thought little of it, leaving it behind at his brother’s apartment (they were no longer sharing living quarters by 1887, Vincent having moved to the suburb of Asnières). Yet while it was never exhibited during his lifetime, this remarkable study reveals a blossoming of the artist’s technique. Gone are the block colours of the previous year, along with the darker tones of The Potato Eaters. In their place, we see a healthy dose of white paint and an experiment to suggest the textures of a jacket with broken brushmarks.
3. Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat
Spring 1887
Oil on cardboard, 42x34cm
The fragmented experiments of the previous portrait coalesced into a more cohesive finished article here – albeit one that was also painted on cardboard and still contains thenaudacious visible strokes.
Use the Courtauld exhibition as a chance to look closely at the surface of this particular self-portrait (or head to the Rijksmuseum website to see a reproduction using the extensive zoom function) and you can spot a single impasto pink line highlighting each eyelid, a vibrant stroke of yellow picked out in the beard, or the scrubbed green and cyan passages of his cravat that have melded with the underlying colours.
4. Self-Portrait
Summer 1887
Oil on canvas, 40.3x34cm
The provenance of this particular self-portrait had been called into question over the years. Despite appearing in exhibitions as a Van Gogh original as far back as 1913, critics felt it perhaps didn’t match up to his other works. X-ray technology eventually confirmed its authenticity, when traces of a second painting – a peasant woman in keeping with Vincent's earlier work – was revealed underneath.
Nevertheless, when seen in the chronology of Vincent’s other self-portraits, it seems a step apart. The fragmented brushwork has been dialled back in favour of a simple dark background. While still a masterpiece by most standards, it survives as proof that his brief career was not all progress, and that even the greats have bad days.
6. Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat
September-October 1887
Oil on cotton, 44.5x37.2cm
While in Asnières, Vincent had been studying the paintings of the Pointillists – fellow Paris-based artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac – who filled the surface of their canvases with dots of pure colour which mixed optically when viewers stood back. He adapted their techniques here, favouring longer strokes that form a halo around the titular titfer, while placing clashing complementary colours next to one another to create a pulsating effect.
This would be even more striking were it not for the fact that some of the artist’s pigments faded. Conservators at the Van Gogh Museum determined that many of the blue strokes seen here were originally purple, the reds in the mix having deteriorated over time.
5. Self-Portrait with Straw Hat
August-September 1887
Oil on panel, 34.9x26.7cm
One of the more noticeable effects of Vincent’s stay in Paris and immersion in the work of the fledgling Impressionist movement was the lightening of his palette. This late summer portrait bears a soft bright background, dappled with pastel pinks and sky blues, indicative of his lighter mood at the time.
“Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily, in order to express myself more forcibly,” he would later write.
7. Self-Portrait as a Painter
December 1887 – February 1888
Oil on canvas, 65.1x50cm
If Vincent came to Paris to study, he left as a fully formed artist, as this final self-portrait from that period attests. Life in the French capital had ground him down though, so he headed to Arles on the Provence coast to recharge. In a letter to his sister Willemien, he described his appearance in this portrait in detail: “A pink-grey face with green eyes, ash-coloured hair, wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth, stiffly wooden, a very red beard, quite unkempt and sad, but the lips are full, a blue smock of coarse linen, and a palette with lemon yellow, vermilion, Veronese green, cobalt blue.”
The colour choices were a statement in themselves, such bright pigments a contrast to the prescribed natural hues of a traditional atelier class.
8. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
January 1889
Oil on canvas, 60.5x50cm
After mutilating his left ear following an argument with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, Vincent was admitted to hospital in Arles and discharged in the first week of January. In a letter to his brother Théo that same month, he confessed that his “unbearable hallucinations” had stopped, yet the bandages remained.
Quite what the intentions were behind this remarkable statement piece are unclear. The bandage could be read as confrontational, a cry for help from a troubled painter keen to show the world his troubles. Yet the almost blank canvas behind him on the easel coupled with a favourite Japanese print on the wall behind suggests an artist inspired and eager to get back to work.
One thing we can be sure of thanks to this painting is the artist’s technique when it came to self-portraiture. Vincent had cut his left ear, yet the bandage here covers the right one – proof that a mirror was involved in capturing his own likeness, rather than photography or other means.
9. Self-Portrait
Late August 1889
Oil on canvas, 51.5x45cm
After a return to hospital, Vincent volunteered himself to enter an asylum set in a former monastery in nearby Saint-Rémy. He had two rooms to himself, one of which became a makeshift studio in which subject matter was limited.
Vincent made copies of masterworks and produced a number of landscapes inspired by his short, supervised walks in the Provençal countryside. He also made several self-portraits, including this haunted likeness with sad, deep-set eyes and furrowed brow.
10. Self-Portrait
September 1889
Oil on canvas, 57.8x44.5cm
“People say – and I’m quite willing to believe it – that it’s difficult to know oneself,” opined Vincent in another letter to Théo in September 1889. “But it’s not easy to paint oneself either.” Nevertheless, he went on to describe several self-portraits that were currently under way.
This particular painting was completed in a single sitting in a virtuoso demonstration of the troubled artist’s talents, as the lush blue sweeping lines of his smock echo the swirling skies of his Starry Night. It was also the one that he felt captured his “true character”, albeit with a gaunt face, jaundiced complexion and haunted stare.
In that same letter, Vincent had sounded almost hopeful for the future: “I could almost believe that I have a new period of clarity ahead of me.” Sadly, he would be dead within 10 months from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and the Washington self-portrait would remain one of his last.
Van Gogh Self-Portraits runs from 3 February to 8 May at The Courtauld Gallery, London. www.courtauld.ac.uk