Self-portrait

In his two Paris years Van Gogh made more than 20 self-portraits, and the reason was practical. He wanted to be a painter of people, models expected to be paid, and the man in the mirror worked for nothing. This one is on cardboard rather than canvas, another economy. He primed the board and laid the background in with dashes of purple, the opposite of the yellow straw hat, so the two would push against each other. The hat places it in the summer of 1887, when he was walking out to the river suburbs to paint. That purple has faded over the years, so the contrast in front of you now is milder than the one he mixed.