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Vincent van Gogh

(van-GO)

Dutch, 1853-1890

Self-Portrait with a

Straw Hat, 1887

Oil on pasteboard

 


Subject

“Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thoughts, the soul of the model in it,” Vincent van Gogh exclaimed to his art-dealer brother, Theo. Van Gogh’s compassionate heart and interest in individual character ‑ plus the wish of this lonely man to know himself and others ‑ find expression in his portraits. Van Gogh was probably more interested in the human face than other Impressionists, whom he encountered for the first time in 1886. The artist painted twenty-two self-portraits while living with his brother in Paris from 1886-1888. Later ones, like this Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, reveal the artist’s crumbling health. The three-quarter profile, deep shadows, and tight mouth suggest a man suffering physical and emotional stress. A haunted gaze from one blue and one green eye both pleads for our help and pushes us away. Van Gogh is dressed in the yellow straw hat and work coat of the peasant laborer, an often-worn costume befitting his self-image as a working man’s artist.

Style

Vincent van Gogh came to Impressionism late, as many of the movement’s founders took other paths. He embraced their palette of lighter colors over the dark, heavy forms of his early work. Notice how the daubs of paint change direction to express different forms and textures in the face. The blue-stroked background contrasts vividly with the yellows in the head. Van Gogh delighted in color and studied its combinations all his life. “I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a wedding of two comple-mentary colors, their mingling and their opposi-tion, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones,” he wrote. “To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a somber background.”

Artist

The son of a Dutch clergyman, van Gogh tried and failed at dealing art, teaching, and religious evangelism before turning to drawing and painting at age twenty-seven. He was a self-taught and virtually un-noticed painter who sold only one artwork during his lifetime. Soon after finishing Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, van Gogh left the bustle of Paris for the south of France. There he sought the direct inspiration of nature and the color, light, and natural forms he admired in Japanese prints. Unfortunately, his attacks of mental illness continued, and, at the age of thirty-seven, he took his own life.

 


 

 



Date: 2015-02-28; view: 799


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