Portrait of a One-Eyed Man

This 1889 portrait of a man with a damaged eye at the Rijksmuseum is among the most uncompromising of Van Gogh's asylum figure studies — confronting his sitter's physical difference directly rather than composing around or obscuring it. Van Gogh's commitment to painting the human face without flattery was established in his Nuenen head studies and carried forward through every period; here it extends to a figure whose disability would conventionally have placed him outside the usual range of portrait subjects. The sitter is likely an asylum resident or attendant whom Van Gogh had the opportunity to observe and approach; the limitations of his asylum life paradoxically concentrated his figurative practice on the immediately available human beings around him. The Rijksmuseum's holding of this work places a product of Van Gogh's most confined period in the national museum of the country that had formed him as a painter.

The heavy impasto around the collar and jacket contrasts with the smoother treatment of the face, drawing attention upward to the eyes. The palette is subdued relative to many Saint-Rémy works, using earthy browns and greens.