Self Portrait

Opie's 1801 Self Portrait at the Royal Academy of Arts is a work of institutional and personal significance. Self-portraiture within an academy setting was a well-established tradition — the Royal Academy's own collection includes self-portraits by its founder members and subsequent Academicians as a record of the institution's human history. Opie had been elected a full Royal Academician in 1787 and was delivering his famous lectures on painting to the Academy students in the early nineteenth century; these lectures, published posthumously, remain one of the significant theoretical documents of British painting. A self-portrait made for the Academy in 1801 was therefore both a professional statement and a contribution to the institution's collective memory. Opie depicts himself with the same bold scrutiny he brought to all his subjects — including, perhaps especially, himself.

Self-portraiture allows Opie to observe without the social constraints of commission: no need for flattery, no sitter to satisfy. His characteristic bold chiaroscuro is fully deployed on his own face, the strong lighting creating the sculptural presence he valued in all portraiture. The handling of his own features would show his technique at its most direct and unmediated.