Van Gogh: Self-portraits

Stunning exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of 16 self-portraits by Van Gogh.

This show was a delight as it kept things simple. The pictures were hung at head height so you could look the artist directly in the eye and really study the detail in the brush work. The commentaries were clear and informative and it was well spaced out so the works were easy to view without too much queuing up.

All Van Gogh’s self-portraits were painted in the last four years of his life and half the pictures in this show were from 1887 when he was in Paris and it was remarkable how his style developed in that one year. The first pictures were fairly conventional but the brush work gradually got looser and more expressive. I loved one picture which seemed to be painted in spirals radiating from his nose and forming circles around his head.

There were some lovely light touches in the show such as reuniting two pictures painted a week apart in the Saint-Remy hospital. It was the first time they had been together since they left the workroom there. I also loved the inclusion of the National Gallery’s painting of his chair in Arles which was a pendant picture to a picture of Gaugin’s more comfortable chair, a sort of self-portrait via an object.

Closes 8 May 2022

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