Provenance
Joseph Jacob Isaacson [1859-1942], The Hague. (H.P. Bremmer, The Hague); Hugo Tutein Nolthenius [1863-1944], Delft, by 1904;[1] by inheritance to his brother, Jacques Tutein Nolthenius; on consignment with (Katz Gallery, Basel, Switzerland), probably by 1945;[2] on consignment with (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, no. 2845); sold 9 June 1947 to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York;[3] gift 1998 to NGA.
[1] According to J.-B. de la Faille, _The Works of Vincent van Gogh: His Paintings and Drawings_, rev. ed., Amsterdam, 1970: F626, the painting was lent by Nolthenius to a 1904 exhibition in Rotterdam. Thea Sternheim, wife of the German playwright Carl Sternheim, writes in her diary that they saw the portrait on exhibition in Rotterdam in 1910, lent by Tutein Nolthenius. Nolthenius' collection was dispersed by his heirs following his death in 1944. An appraisal of the collection dated February 1944 included the Self Portrait with the annotation "sold" (copy, documentation center, van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
[2] Knoedler had the painting on consignment from the Katz Gallery when it was sold to Whitney in April 1947 (see Commission Book #4, M. Knoedler & Co Records, Getty Research Institute, copy NGA curatorial files). Katz is probably the "private collection" which lent the painting to a 1945 exhibition at the Galerie Schulthess, Basel and a 1946 exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern.
[3] Acquisition date and source according to Whitney records in NGA curatorial files.
Accession Number
1998.74.5
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 57.79 × 44.5 cm (22 3/4 × 17 1/2 in.) | framed: 77.5 × 63.7 × 6.7 cm (30 1/2 × 25 1/16 × 2 5/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting Canvas Dutch
Background & Context
Background Story
Van Gogh painted this self-portrait in September 1889, during his voluntary confinement at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy-de-Provence. It is one of the last self-portraits he ever made and among the most confrontational. His face emerges from a swirling vortex of blue and green brushstrokes, his red beard and fiery hair blazing against a cool background that seems to pulse with the energy of his disturbed mind.
The painting's visual tension is extraordinary: the face is modeled with relative clarity and solidity, while the background dissolves into an almost abstract pattern of curving, rhythmic strokes. This contrast suggests a mind divided against itself - a self that can still observe and record, surrounded by a world that has become turbulent. Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that his self-portraits were attempts to re-characterize himself, to understand his own condition through the act of painting.
Van Gogh produced over 40 self-portraits in his lifetime - far more than any major artist before him. In this final group, completed less than a year before his death in July 1890, the artist's gaze has acquired an almost clinical intensity.
Cultural Impact
Van Gogh's self-portraits invented a new genre: the artist's self-image as a site of psychological investigation. Before Van Gogh, self-portraits demonstrated skill; after Van Gogh, they probed identity. His swirling, impastoed surfaces became the visual vocabulary of emotional intensity for every Expressionist painter who followed.
Why It Matters
This self-portrait is Van Gogh's final statement about himself as an artist and a human being. It records the point where his inner and outer worlds became indistinguishable - where the act of painting and the experience of madness folded into each other.
