Portrait of Alexander Reid

In the spring of 1887 a young Glasgow dealer named Alexander Reid came to Paris to learn the trade and ended up sharing the Montmartre flat of Theo van Gogh and his brother Vincent. The two men looked so alike that a friend of both said he often hesitated, until he got close, over which of them he was meeting. Vincent painted him twice that summer, here in the short directional strokes of pure colour he had been picking up from the pointillists around him. The resemblance caused a long confusion. The picture was catalogued as a Van Gogh self-portrait until 1928, when Reid's son saw it reproduced, recognised his father and wrote to the artist's family. Glasgow bought it in 1974.