Blue, in the year blue peaks

The record dates Self Portrait as an Artist to 1888. The measured palette reads as blue, and nothing else. Blue is a dominant family in fifty-nine works across the whole catalogue, and twenty-six of those are dated 1888 — the highest count of any year, against seven in 1887 and ten in 1890. The Arles year is the blue year in this record as much as the yellow one.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 65.5 by 50.5 centimetres, an upright, and it is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds twenty-two of the works dated 1888.

Where the self-portraits sit

Eighteen titles in this catalogue name a self-portrait, distributed across four years only: four dated 1886, seven dated 1887, three dated 1888 and four dated 1889. None in the Nuenen period, none in 1890. Three of the eighteen are dated to the Arles year, which for a year holding 135 works is a small share. That is a count over titles, and it is offered as one: the record does not say how many such canvases were made, only how many carry the name here.