ART
Van Gogh only started painting himself in his mid-thirties —
it sparked his transformation into a post-impressionist master
Courtauld Gallery — it
includes almost half of
the 37 self-portraits
he painted —
appears determined
to calm our image
of him. The Van
Gogh presented to us
here is less victim, more
investigator; less crazy, more
thoughtful; less of an isolated
genius, more of an artist of his
times. That the Courtauld is
seeking to work this trick with
self-portraits — the most
obviously personal of art’s
genres — isn’t just counter-
intuitive, it’s downright brave.
Van Gogh didn’t take up
self-portraiture until he arrived
in Paris in 1886, barely four
years before he died aged 37.
There are no juvenile starings
into the mirror of the sort we
might have expected from an
artist of his timbre and no early
displays of angst. Once in Paris,
though, he threw himself in
front of the mirror and refused
to budge. Two thirds of all hisself-portraits date from
the era, half from a
single year — 1887.
The first time we
see him he’s sitting
in the dark wearing
a heavy black
homburg, staring at
us with grim solemnity.
He had been living louchely in
Montmartre for a few months,
but is still trying to pass himself
off as respectable bourgeois.
The bleak atmosphere he has
given himself would also fit an
undertaker.
In truth, the Paris he had
arrived in was a city bursting
with progressiveness. The
impressionists were
completing their sequence of
revolutionary exhibitions.
Pointillism was being
launched. So was symbolism.
Everything was in flux. And,
hey presto, it all started to
affect Van Gogh with
remarkable fierceness.
Taken one at a time, the
many Paris self-portraits arenot especially impressive. They
come in a single format — head
and shoulders, 14in x 12in,
face in the middle, plain
background — and there’s
little deviation in them from
the standard Van Gogh look:
serious, staring, bearded. Put
them all together, however,
and you have an action movie.
In just 12 months, in an
extraordinary display of
artistic transformation, a dull
brown caterpillar turned into
a brightly coloured butterfly.
The Vincent we see at the end
of the process — straw hat
perched jauntily on his head;
funky blue smock instead ofgrim black suit; sunny dashes
of colour emanating from his
face like water from a sprinkler
— isn’t just a different artist.
He’s a whole new being.
Watching this progress
through a dozen intermediate
paintings, each of which sees
him taking a small step
forwards, is like running your
thumb through a flick book.
So furious is the rate of
change from Johnny Come
Lately to Leader of the Pack
that some of the joys we
usually search for in self-
portraiture go missing.
There is, for instance, not
much sense here of that
intense and intimate
relationship between you and
the artist that artistic selfies
usually prompt. Nor is there
much investigation of
changing moods or varied
expressions. And given how
many likenesses there are of
Vincent, it’s strange how little
convincing evidence they
provide of how he actually
looked. The staring eyes,
the hollow cheeks, the bright
red beard are repeated so
regularly they have a
cartoonish sense of
encapsulation about them.THE
CRITICSSelf-portraiture goes down
well with an art audience. I
certainly have a special place
for it in my heart. Its secret, I
think, is that it intensifies your
relationship with the artist
and makes it feel personal.
It’s an illusion, of course, but
a pleasing one.
Small wonder, then, that
Vincent van Gogh became a
premier league self-portraitist
alongside Rembrandt, Goya
and Gauguin. Having led a life
that even by troubled-artist
standards was problematic
and brief, it was a nailed-on
certainty that he would spend
some of it staring into a mirror
and “baring his soul”.
Somewhat perversely,
however, the fascinating
survey that has arrived at the
WALDEMAR
JANUSZCZAK
Portraits of an artist who’s
In his early days in
Paris Van Gogh
would often re-use
his old art. This
glum self-portrait,
painted in his first
year in Paris, in the
winter of 1886-87,
was painted on
top of another
painting of a nude.
Although it looks
very dark, it
actually features
a surprising
amount of colour
in the red beard
and blue cravat.This is the image
on which Kirk
Douglas based his
famous portrayal
of Van Gogh in the
film Lust for Life.
But the work itself
was painted not in
the sunny south
of France, where
most of Lust for
Life was set, but in
Paris, where Van
Gogh came into
contact with the
impressionists
and their search
for bright new
colours.SELF-PORTRAIT
WITH FELT HAT
1886-87PORTRAIT WITH
STRAW HAT
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER, 1887COURTESY VAN GOGH MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM/VINCENT VAN GOGH FOUNDATION COURTESY DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS CITY OF DETROITThe Van Gogh
here is less
victim, more
investigator
10 6 February 2022