Autorretrato

Van Gogh made this in Paris, where he had moved in 1886 to live with his brother Theo and run straight into the new painting of Monet, Seurat and Signac. His palette brightened almost overnight. Models cost money he did not have, so he turned the brush on himself over and over. He left more than 25 self-portraits, most of them from these two Paris years. Here you can watch him testing the pointillist touch of his younger friends, the face and the background alike stitched together from short dabs of contrasting colour, tried out on the one model he could always afford.