Self-Portrait

In the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh was furnishing the Yellow House in Arles and asked his friends up in Brittany to send him portraits for its walls. Laval joined in from Pont-Aven, although the two men had never actually met. They knew each other through two painter friends they had in common, Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. He set himself in front of a window that looks onto the garden of the Pension Gloanec, the inn where the painters lodged and ate, with an autumn tree behind him worked in short loose strokes, and he kept his pince-nez on. Van Gogh had the canvas by 12 November and told his brother Theo it was very self-assured, very distinguished, the kind of painting you take before anyone else has recognised the talent. Two months later he sent Laval one of his own self-portraits in exchange, inscribed to his friend Laval.