Self-Portrait

Van Gogh spent two years in Paris living with his brother Theo, and painted himself more than 20 times while he was there, largely because a model cost money he did not have. This one is from the summer of 1887. The head is built out of short separate strokes, the method he had taken up that spring alongside the painter Paul Signac, who was breaking his colour into small touches. Van Gogh put himself in a good jacket and tie for it. That autumn he rented a restaurant on the avenue de Clichy and filled it with his own canvases and those of his friends Emile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Toulouse-Lautrec. He later gave this portrait to Bernard.