Self-Portrait with Glass

This 1887 self-portrait in which Van Gogh holds a glass is one of more than thirty self-portraits he made during his Paris period — the most sustained series of self-examination in his career and one of the largest self-portrait programmes of any nineteenth-century artist. He was using himself as a model partly from necessity (he could not afford paid models for extended sessions) and partly from conviction: the self-portrait was a form of artistic self-knowledge, testing new techniques on the most immediately available face. The glass he holds introduces an unusual compositional element — either a reference to the café culture of Montmartre where he spent much of his time, or a deliberate prop to vary the composition and introduce the technical challenge of rendering transparent glass within a portrait. The Van Gogh Museum holds several Paris self-portraits that document his development month by month.

Short, divided strokes in complementary pairs animate the background while the face is treated with somewhat longer, more directional marks. The glass element introduces a reflective surface that breaks the otherwise portrait-focused composition.