Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
Paris, 1886
The record dates Self-Portrait with Dark Felt Hat to 1886, the first Paris year. Self-portraiture is a Paris phenomenon in this catalogue and the record is blunt about it: there are no painted self-portraits dated before 1886 here, and from 1886 onward there are eighteen, four of them dated 1886 and seven dated 1887. The change of city and the beginning of the self-portraits are the same event in the chronology.
What the record gives
The canvas is 32.5 x 41 cm and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette resolves to brown, still the Dutch reading — 1886 is the year of transition, not of arrival.
Reading the titles as a series
The felt hat recurs so often that the catalogue has to work to keep the entries distinct: alongside this one there is Self-Portrait with Dark Felt Hat at the Easel from the same year, and from 1887 both Self Portrait with Felt Hat and Self Portrait with a Grey Felt Hat, held by different museums. These are separate canvases with separate dimensions and separate owners. The differences between them are exactly what a chronological catalogue is for, and exactly what gets lost when a single image is allowed to stand for the whole run.
Sources
2 references- Vincent van Gogh — Wikipedia
Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he c
- Self portrait as a painter - Vincent van Gogh — Wikimedia Commons
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
