Self portrait by Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh painted himself more than 25 times during his two years in Paris, and the reason was partly money. He could rarely afford to hire a model, so the cheapest sitter available was his own reflection. This self-portrait from 1887 is not even on canvas. He used a piece of cardboard, which cost less. Look closely and you can see him testing the technique of the pointillists, the painters around him who built an image out of small separate dots and dashes of colour. He does not copy them exactly. He takes the broken touch and pushes it his own way, letting the strokes fan out around his head. The face studying you back is calm and a little wary, the face of a man practising on the only subject he could afford.