Paris, 1887

The record dates Self Portrait with Felt Hat to 1887, the second Paris year, and the catalogue holds a dense run of self-portraits with that date — seven of them, more than any other single year. Keeping them distinct is a real problem for any catalogue: several share the phrase "felt hat", and this one has a near-twin in the record, Self Portrait with a Grey Felt Hat, also dated 1887 but held by the Stedelijk Museum rather than the Van Gogh Museum.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 44 x 37.5 cm and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette returns indigo and yellow as the two dominant families. Indigo is the dominant family in only eight works in this catalogue, and this is the only one of the eight that pairs it with yellow. It is a properly 1887 result: the blue-yellow opposition that becomes ordinary in Arles the following year is already the measured reading here.

Why 1887 is the pivot

Across this catalogue, 1887 is the year in which the arithmetic turns. Brown and ochre dominate a third of the works with a measured palette, down from nearly half in 1886; yellow dominates well over half. The self-portraits are simply where that turn is easiest to see, because the sitter and the format hold still while the colour does not.