Selbstbildnis

Ernst Zimmermann's Selbstbildnis (Self-portrait, 1885) is the Munich-based genre and still life painter's most personal work — the painter facing himself rather than a commissioned subject or selected still life arrangement. Self-portraiture occupied a specific place in the academic tradition as both technical exercise and professional statement; a painted self-portrait announced the painter's confidence in his own ability and provided potential clients with a demonstration of his skill at rendering human features. Zimmermann's self-portrait gives us a glimpse of the man behind the fish still lifes and inn scenes.

Zimmermann applies his carefully developed technical skills to the self-portrait challenge: accurate observation of his own features as seen in a mirror, rendered with the same careful attention to surface and light he brought to his still life subjects. His palette is warm and academic, appropriate to a formal self-portrait — warm flesh tones, controlled background, the specific treatment of his own face that reveals his observational habits. The handling shows his technical competence without the artist's self-consciousness sometimes evident in self-portraiture.