Self Portrait

Lovis Corinth's Self-portrait (1887) documents the German painter at 29 — between his Paris studies and his return to Germany, at a moment of personal and professional formation. His self-portraits are among the most psychologically honest in German painting, tracking his development across forty years with extraordinary candor about the aging and changing of the self. The 1887 portrait shows a young man in process of becoming — not yet the powerful figure of his Berlin period but clearly a painter of exceptional talent and directness.

Corinth renders himself with the characteristic directness of his self-portraits: no idealization, no social performance, just the face of a painter examining himself with the same unflinching observation he brought to all his subjects. His palette is warm and academic, the modeling careful but already more vigorous than his more controlled Paris portraits. The self-portrait function — complete honesty about the appearance facing the mirror — suits his temperament perfectly.