Self-Portrait

The painting you're looking at now is Self-Portrait by Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh painted an extraordinary number of self-portraits. In total, he created more than forty-three of them. And this is one of them.

Take a close look at the painting. The dominant color is a soft turquoise. The background is painted in turquoise, and Van Gogh's jacket is painted in a slightly darker, greener shade of the same color. Because the colors are so similar, it would almost be difficult to distinguish his body from the background. To prevent that, Van Gogh outlined his jacket with a darker green, making the figure stand out.

Even more remarkably, if you look closely, you'll notice that traces of turquoise also appear in his skin. The same is true of his eyes. With turquoise and green forming the overall color palette, the orange tones of Van Gogh's beard and hair become even more vivid.

Van Gogh once wrote to his sister, "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer." For Van Gogh, a self-portrait was never simply about recording his physical appearance. After all, nothing could reproduce a person's outward features more accurately than a photograph. What he wanted to capture was something a photograph could not: the inner self.

Rather than painting reality exactly as it appeared, he wanted to express his own emotions. Perhaps this helps explain why Van Gogh even chose to paint his own skin in shades of green. Even now, that idea may still seem difficult to understand. Perhaps that's one reason why Van Gogh was never fully understood during his lifetime. Maybe he was simply ahead of his time.

What do you see in Van Gogh's self-portrait? There is no right answer. Whatever you feel when you look at it is the right answer for you.

Take your time experiencing the painting in your own way.