Self-Portrait with Pipe and Straw Hat

By 1887 Van Gogh had been in Paris a year, living with his brother Theo and soaking up the bright, broken colour of the Impressionists he had met there. Models cost money he did not have, so he bought a decent mirror and painted the man in it, more than 20 times across those Paris years. Here he wears a workman's straw hat and a painter's smock, a pipe clamped in the corner of his mouth. He set the smock and hat down as flat, outlined patches of colour, then built the face up more carefully in small strokes. He said the pipe kept him calm, and that he wanted to be left to smoke it in peace.