Autoportrait de l'artiste au béret basque

Autoportrait de l'artiste au béret basque (Self-Portrait with Basque Beret), painted in 1931 and held in the Louvre's Department of Paintings, represents a summation of Zuloaga's self-understanding as an artist. The Basque beret is not incidental: Zuloaga, who was born in Eibar in the Basque Country, wore Basque dress in his self-portraits as an assertion of cultural and regional identity against both the cosmopolitan art world of Paris and the Castilianizing nationalism of Madrid. The Louvre's acquisition of this self-portrait — a Spanish painter entering the collection of the most important French museum — was a significant cultural recognition. By 1931, Zuloaga was in his sixties and at the apex of his reputation, having been celebrated in France, Germany, and the United States as the greatest Spanish painter since Goya. The beret also carried a more general artistic mythology: it was the headwear of the Romantic artist-bohemian, and Zuloaga's adoption of it self-consciously situated him within that tradition.

The beret's dark mass creates a strong silhouette above the face, framing it with a characteristic Zuloaga device: dark above, luminous below. The background is typically neutral and compressed. The self-portrait gaze is direct and evaluative — Zuloaga assessing himself with the same unflinching attention he gave to his sitters. Brushwork is fluent and economical.