# Self-Portrait

- By: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)
- Date: 1887
- Medium: Oil on artist's board, mounted on cradled panel
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 41 × 32.5 cm (16 1/8 × 12 13/16 in.); Framed: 61.6 × 53.4 × 8.9 cm (24 1/4 × 21 × 3 1/2 in.)
- Culture: Netherlands
- Credit line: Joseph Winterbotham Collection
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/80607)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/47c5bcb8-62ef-e5d7-55e7-f5121f409a30/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In 1886 Vincent van Gogh left his native Holland and settled in Paris, where his beloved brother Theo was a dealer in paintings. Van Gogh was apparently inspired by the energy of the city and by his introduction to Impressionism, and he created at least twenty-four self-portraits during his two-year stay in the French capital.

This early example is modest in size and was painted on prepared artist’s board rather than canvas. Its densely dabbed brushwork, which became a hallmark of Van Gogh’s style, reflects the artist’s response to Georges Seurat’s revolutionary pointillist technique in A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884. What was for Seurat a method based on the cool objectivity of science became in Van Gogh’s hands an intense emotional language. The surface of the painting dances with particles of color—intense greens, blues, reds, and oranges. Dominating this dazzling array of staccato dots and dashes are the artist’s deep green eyes and the intensity of their gaze. “I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals,” Van Gogh once wrote to Theo. “However solemn and imposing the latter may be—a human soul, be it that of a poor streetwalker, is more interesting to me.” From Paris,…

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0