The one new thing I did
learn about his appearance
is that he had a big nose, with
a hook to it. You notice it in
a self-portrait drawing, and
keep seeing it everywhere
after that.
While the Paris year is
examined in spectacular
depth, his next journey to
Arles, where he cut off his
ear, and the sojourn in the
mental hospital in St Rémy,
where he went to recover his
sanity, are only sketched in
thinly. Given how important
the Arles period was in his
story — it is where he
produced many of his
best-known works — it’s
curious how little self-
portraiture was involved.
The present show confines
the evidence to just one
painting — the Courtauld’s
own Self-Portrait with
Bandaged Ear. A couple of
others are missing, notably
his finest, the one where he
casts himself as a shaven-
headed Japanese monk.
Harvard wouldn’t lend it.
The Arles self-portrait,
a covert Crucifixion in which
the tortured Van Gogh
equates his fate with that ofChrist on the cross, is the first
picture we see here with clear
ambitions to say something
dramatic and intimate about
himself. In all the preceding
art he uses himself as a cheap
and convenient model on
whom to practise fresh styles
and techniques. Here, though,
he wants us to know him
through his art.
It’s a symbolic approach
that the show backs up by
also including the famous
painting of his chair, in which
the chair clearly stands in
for him.
The two St Rémy portraits
that complete the journey
have a before and after feel
about them. In the first he
strikes a confident artistic
pose: palette in hand, white
shirt, clipped beard. In the
second the black dog has
ravaged him and he stares out
at us resentfully, like a sullen
child who has been scolded.
It’s the very end of the how.
But only now does he give us
something that might pass for
a peep into his soul. cVan Gogh Self-Portraits, at the
Courtauld Gallery, London
WC2, until May 8One portrait
is a confident
artistic pose,
the other a
sullen child
not as crazy as we thought
Before Van Gogh became a
painter he spent four years
from 1873 until 1877 living on
and off in the UK, and it
shaped his life. At 20 he took
a job in London, working for
an art dealer. He walked all
over the city, including
from his lodgings in
Stockwell to
Covent Garden,
rowed on the
Thames and spent
hours at the
National Gallery
studying Turner and
Constable. Ideas of social
reform were circulating and
he read JS Mill’s On Liberty.
His subsequent painting
Prisoners Exercising (1890)
was inspired by a trip to
Newgate Prison.
But his personal life was in
tatters. He fell in love with his
landlady’s daughter. When it
wasn’t reciprocated (she was
already engaged to a former
lodger) he fled to Paris.
In 1876 he returned to
teach at a boys’ school in
Ramsgate, where he feltPainted soon after
he cut off his ear
after a violent
argument with
Paul Gauguin,
Self-Portrait with
Bandaged Ear is a
covert Crucifixion,
in which Van Gogh
imagines himself
as Christ. The
easel behind him
forms the cross,
while the place of
the three Marys
at the foot of the
cross is taken by
a Japanese print
of three geishas.Having been sent
to an asylum in
St Rémy after his
breakdown, Van
Gogh was not
initially allowed to
paint. But after he
grew stronger the
asylum authorities
relented and he
produced some
of his best-known
works there.
This confident
self-portrait shows
him holding his
brushes and
palette in a classic
artist’s pose.VAN GOGH IN THE UK
SELF-PORTRAIT
WITH
BANDAGED EAR
JANUARY, 1889SELF-PORTRAIT
SEPTEMBER, 1889COURTESY THE COURTAULD GALLERY, LONDON, SAMUEL COURTAULD TRUST COURTESY NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON DCVincent’s chair It clearly
stands in for the artistNATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON/GETTY IMAGEShappy and
peaceful. When
the school moved
to Isleworth, he
joined them, but
eventually became absorbed
elsewhere, working as a
Methodist preacher. It was
this that took him back to
Amsterdam to study
theology, but he always
remembered the Kent sea
air fondly. There are blue
plaques for him in Ramsgate
and at 87 Hackford Road,
where he lived in Stockwell.
This house is now a museum,
hosting artist residencies,
exhibitions and events.Susannah ButterGETTY IMAGES6 February 2022 11