Autorretrato

Van Gogh painted no self-portraits at all until he moved to Paris in early 1886 to live with his brother Theo, who dealt art there. He was 33 and nearly unknown, and models cost money he did not have, so he turned the mirror on himself and kept doing it, more than 25 times over the next two years. In this early canvas the palette is still the heavy Dutch brown he had carried north from Nuenen. The Impressionist and Pointillist pictures he was seeing all over Paris would soon break his color into brighter, looser strokes, but that shift has not happened yet here. These early ones were practice, made in front of the only face he could study for free.