Self-Portrait

Canvas and paint cost money Van Gogh did not have in Paris in 1887. For a while he got his supplies from Julien Tanguy, the colour dealer the painters called Père Tanguy, on credit or in trade for pictures, until Tanguy's wife put a stop to the arrangement. Vincent wrote to Theo about her furiously and called her an old witch. This head is what that shortage looks like from the back. He took a still life he had painted two years earlier in the Netherlands, turned the canvas over and used the reverse, which is why the museum catalogues it under the same number as the older picture. The face is worked almost entirely in blues, the background as well, and even the whites of his eyes are blue.