Self-portrait

By 1888 the Uffizi had been collecting self-portraits of famous artists for two centuries, and being asked to send one was a form of admission to the canon. Therese Schwartze was the first Dutch painter invited since Rembrandt. She answers the honour without a trace of modesty. She turns to face us with brush and loaded palette in hand, dressed well, half her face in shadow, and she keeps her eyeglasses on. That last detail is the argument. Glasses were a working tool, not something a woman was expected to wear for posterity, and by including them she presents herself first as a professional. The portrait went to the Paris Salon that same year and won her a silver medal at the world's fair of 1889. It reached Florence in 1895.