Selbstporträt

Selbstporträt (Self-Portrait), painted in 1908 and held at the Kunstmuseum Bern, is among the latest and most significant of Anker's self-examinations. Anker was seventy-seven years old when he completed this work — an extraordinary age to be producing oil paintings — and the self-portrait must be read as an act of late-life stocktaking. He had by this point outlived most of his contemporaries, witnessed the transformation of Swiss society from the rural world he had spent his career depicting, and continued painting despite serious health limitations. Self-portraits by old artists carry a particular authority: there is nothing left to conceal, and the face before the mirror has been a lifetime in the making. The Kunstmuseum Bern's possession of this work confirms its status as a document of national cultural significance.

An 1908 Anker self-portrait would show the marks of age in both the subject and the execution: a face mapped by decades, and a hand that may move with slightly less certainty but no less intelligence. The paint application in late self-portraits often shows a simplification of means — fewer layers, more direct decisions — as the painter focuses on what is essential. The face is still handled with all the tonal precision that characterised his approach throughout his career.