SELF PORTRAIT
RENAISSANCE TO CONTMEPORARY
17 February – 14 May 2006
Exhibition Text Panels
‘… it seems that everything is alive and emerging from the panel. They are
mirrors. They are mirrors, no! They are not paintings …’
artist and writer Karel van Mander 1604
Merging the roles of artist, subject and viewer, the self-portrait offers a most
intimate encounter with artistic creativity and consciousness.
Self-portraiture developed in Europe as a significant and publicly recognised part
of an artist’s work from the late 15th and early 16th centuries. There are three
main reasons for this: technical improvements in glassmaking, which allowed flat
mirrors of a reasonable size to become generally available; the perfection of oil
painting as a technique, which allowed artists to paint in the studio rather than
directly onto the walls of churches and palaces, and to capture with lifelike
brilliance the textures of human flesh; and the changing status of the artist, from
artisan to member of the social and intellectual elite, making the individual artist a
worthy subject for portraiture.
Despite 500 years of social, political and technological change since then, the
self-portrait painted in oils has remained a vital and enduringly popular form of
artistic expression.
1
Peter Paul Rubens
1577-1640
Self portrait 1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
André Derain
1880-1954
Self portrait in studio c1903
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
This picture is an autograph example (by his own
hand, not a workshop production) of the artist's
most widely disseminated self-portrait. By the
1620s when Rubens painted it, his work was in
demand internationally, and he 'had grown so rich
by his profession that he appeared everywhere not
like a painter but a great cavalier'. Rubens sent
another version of this portrait, painted on panel,
to Charles I, then Prince of Wales, for the Royal
Collection in London. This version, painted on
canvas, he kept in his possession until 1628, when
he sent it as a gift to his friend, the renowned
humanist scholar Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc.
Such an elegantly dressed and exquisitely
rendered self-portrayal made an appropriate gift in
courtly and humanist circles. Rubens avoids
explicit reference to the working painter,
concealing his hands as befits the image of a
perfect gentleman. The focus of the composition
is the central right eye, which gives the artist the
aloof, acute look of a sovereign.
Derain was a complex and elusive character who
frequently changed his style. As a young man he
painted with Maurice de Vlaminck at Chatou, a
small town on the River Seine just outside Paris.
He painted this picture during his period of
military service, probably while on leave in
Chatou. Using staccato, angular shapes and bold
slashes of the brush, he applied his colours in
thick, heavy streaks. From their first meeting
around 1900, Derain and Matisse had 'responded
to an answering boldness in each other'. In this
youthful self-portrait Derain records himself
actively at work, drawing attention to the
dynamism of his matador-like painting stance, as
if to underline his artistic identity as a 'combative'
modernist rather than the combat soldier dictated
by fate.
Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
1591-1666
Self portrait c1624-26
oil on canvas
Private collection New York
The nickname Guercino means 'squinter', but this
did not prevent Barbieri from having an extremely
successful career. A native of Cento in the region
of Emilia in northern Italy, Guercino was in Rome
from1621-23 , summoned there by Pope Gregory
XV. From the style and apparent age of the figure,
this self-portrait dates to the period soon after
Guercino returned to Cento from Rome. With
deceptive simplicity, using a restricted palette of
black, white, red and yellow, Guercino has made
the squint from which he took his name into a
sign of creative individuality. The artfully placed
shadow across his eyes suggests a selfexamination, while the quiet pose, hands clasped
as if in prayer, holding a loaded palette and
brushes, reinforces the idea of a meditative pause
during the process of creation. The fluent
virtuosity of his sketchy brushwork and his
emphasis of the mental over the manual aspects of
his profession epitomise the skill on which
Guercino's reputation was built
Studio of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn
1606–69
Rembrandt (1660s)
oil on canvas
The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
This painting is an original work from
Rembrandt’s studio but was not painted by
Rembrandt himself. The canvas comes from the
same bolt as an accepted Rembrandt (the Flora in
the Metropolitan Museum) and is painted on a
kind of ground only used in his studio. The style
is evocative of Rembrandt’s late manner: the
bulbous nose, shadowed eyes and working apparel
are immediately familiar and the pose and gaze
seem to refer to a mirror. A ‘self-portrait’ of one
artist by another seems a contradiction in terms.
Yet this ‘Rembrandt’ was most probably painted
by a pupil. Produced as part of the training
process and most likely completed under
Rembrandt’s supervision, it provided a source of
income and an unconventional means of further
promoting Rembrandt’s own image, authority and
‘authenticity’ of style.
2
Gerlach Flicke
c1495–1558
Self-portrait with Henry Strangwish (or
Stangways) 1554
diptych; oil on paper or vellum laid on panel
National Portrait Gallery, London
Giovanni Battista Salvi, ‘Sassoferrato’
1609–85
Self-portrait c1650
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
This is believed to be the earliest surviving selfportrait in oils produced in England. Painted by
the German émigré artist Gerlach Flicke in a
format often used for devotional paintings, it
depicts Flicke and his friend Strangwish, an
English gentleman privateer; both were in prison
at the time. In accordance with humanist ideals of
friendship, the two men are represented as alter
egos: the neat, greying painter turns towards the
younger man. Flicke holds a palette while
Strangwish plays the lute, an aristocratic
instrument associated with love. The Latin
inscription above Flicke’s head implies that he
may have been facing the death sentence, stating
that he has produced his self-portrait from a
mirror as a memento for his ‘dear friends that they
might have something by which to remember him
after his death’.
Sassoferrato took his name from his native town
in northern Italy. His immaculate paintings of the
Virgin Mary were popular during his lifetime and
remain archetypical devotional images. By
reflecting on his appearance in an unblemished
mirror, symbolising the purity of the Virgin,
Sassoferrato visualised an inner, spiritual persona.
He exploited oil paint’s mirror-like finish to
suggest that this image was not only true, but
divinely created. Using his trademark ultramarine
blue, Sassoferrato thus presented himself as a
character within his own devotional world. In its
idealisation, saturated colour and close-up view,
the portrait is reminiscent of Italian Renaissance
paintings. Yet the directness of expression,
enamel-like finish and intense colour also conjure
up an almost photographic effect.
Cristofano Allori
1577–1621
Judith with the head of Holofernes 1613
oil on canvas
Lent by Her Majesty the Queen
Cristofano Allori was taught by his father
Alessandro (whose self-portrait is also in this
exhibition) but reacted against his father’s
polished style. In Rome Cristofano associated
with Artemisia Gentileschi and became a follower
of Caravaggio, who like him rejected gentlemanly
norms in favour of intense and turbulent
experience. This celebrated composition
represents a scene from the biblical Apocrypha in
which the Jewish widow Judith of Bethulia
beheads the Assyrian general, Holofernes. The
model for the gorgeous Judith was apparently
Allori’s lover, while Holofernes, decapitated but
still suffering, is a ghastly mask for Allori
himself. Such role-play simultaneously reveals,
dramatises and disguises the artist’s presence in
his work.
William Hogarth
1697–1764
Self-portrait c1757
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London
William Hogarth achieved success with his moral
or comic ‘histories’, such as A rake’s progress
(1732–34), satirising contemporary life.
Nevertheless, he aspired to recognition by the
Establishment and in 1753 published a theoretical
treatise entitled The analysis of beauty. In 1757 he
was appointed sergeant-painter to King George II.
In this self-portrait of the same year, the artist,
although ostensibly absorbed in his work, makes
bold claims for his art that reach beyond the
picture’s modest size and appearance. Sketched
on the canvas is Thalia, the muse of comedy,
holding a book and a mask.
3
Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun
1755–1842
Self-portrait in a straw hat after 1782
oil on canvas
The National Gallery, London
French artist Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun was
a prolific society painter who, by the age of 15,
had begun to support her family through sales of
her work. In 1783 Marie Antoinette secured her
entry into the Académie Royale against
considerable opposition. This is one of over 20
known self-portraits, all characterised by the
freshness, attractiveness and seeming naturalness
for which her work was renowned. It is based on
Rubens’s Le Chapeau de Paille of c1622–25 now
in the National Gallery, London, which Lebrun
encountered in the Low Countries in 1781. Her
visual homage to a work then supposed to
represent Rubens’s wife acknowledged her artistic
allegiance to this master and to the ‘Rubéniste’
aesthetic of colour as an integral part of lifelike
imitation. Indeed, Vigée-Lebrun herself became
known as ‘Madame Rubens’. More challengingly,
she has taken up the brushes to assume the
position of the master himself.
Vincent van Gogh
1853–90
Self-portrait with felt hat 1888
oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van
Gogh Foundation)
Dutch-born painter Vincent van Gogh moved to
Paris in 1886, and over the next two years
produced more than 20 self-portraits. Impassioned
by his experiments with impressionist painting
techniques, he said he wanted ‘to use colour
arbitrarily to express myself forcibly’. The
staccato brushwork introduces a note of
discordant energy into this self-portrait, which
was one of the last he painted in Paris. The artist’s
face seems to record his intense self-scrutiny. His
self-portraits, like Rembrandt’s before him, could
mask private concerns as often as they mirrored
them. The year before his death van Gogh wrote
from the asylum at St Remy, ‘It is difficult to
know yourself, but it isn’t easy to paint yourself
either’.
James McNeill Whistler
1834–1903
Gold and brown: self-portrait c1896–98
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, gift of Edith
Stuyvesant Gerry
American-born artist James McNeill Whistler was
trained in France but spent much of his working
life in England. Painted in his London studio, this
shadowy Rembrandtesque late self-portrait evokes
the most harrowing period of Whistler’s life,
when after an illness his wife Beatrice died in
1896. A friend recalls the artist in those years: ‘I
never saw anyone so feverishly alive as this little,
old man, with his bright withered cheeks, over
which the skin was drawn tightly, his darting eyes
… his bitter and subtle mouth, and above all, his
exquisite hands, never at rest … every finger alive
to the tips… He was proud of his hands and they
were never out of sight.’
Sidney Nolan
1917–92
Self-portrait 1943
synthetic polymer on canvas on hardboard
Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased with
funds
provided by the Art Gallery Society of New South
Wales 1997
Australian artist Sidney Nolan began his career in
Melbourne in 1938 at the age of 21. He was 26
when he painted this self-portrait while stationed
on military service at Dimboola, in the flat wheatgrowing district of western Victoria. It was the
first time Nolan depicted himself in the role of
artist. Echoes of his life as a soldier resonate in
this boldly flat and frontal image of an artistwarrior. He grasps a palette like a shield and his
brushes like spears, with his forehead ‘warpainted’ in streaks of primary colour. It is the
image of an iconic outsider and individualist.
4
Charley Toorop
1891–1955
Self-portrait with Winter Branches
(Zelfportret met wintertakken) 1944–45
oil on canvas
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Alessandro Allori
1535–1607
Self-portrait c1555
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
Charley Toorop was born into a dynasty of Dutch
artists and although she had no formal training,
she learnt about painting from her father. Toorop
lived in various parts of the Netherlands and the
industrial areas of Belgium. She began to work in
the manner of Vincent van Gogh and
subsequently evolved a form of socialist realism
that included scenes of industrial life as well as a
number of portraits of mental patients. This selfportrait has a tough, stern quality, highlighted by
the wintry black tracery of twigs behind her. It
also suggests the harsh circumstances of occupied
Holland in the last year of World War II.
Allesandro Allori was the adopted son and pupil
of the Florentine court painter Agnolo Bronzino,
whose refined style and characteristic facial type
Allori emulates here. This is an early example of a
new kind of self-portrait, presenting the painter at
work rather than in the honorific pose of a
gentleman. Allori portrays himself observing
himself looking at himself in a mirror, his
delicately poised brush pointing to a painting that
remains hidden from view. The ignoble
connotations of manual labour are effaced by the
artist’s intense mental and spiritual reflection. His
direct experience of the world is connected to an
ideal image that cannot be seen and remains
always a work-in-progress.
Gerhard Richter
b1932
Self-portrait 1996
oil on linen
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Jo
Carole
and Ronald S Lauder and Committee on Painting
and
Sculpture Funds 1996
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932 and
first studied art at the Kunstakademie in Dresden,
where he learnt to copy realistic and romantic
styles. In 1959 he saw works by Jackson Pollock
at the Documenta exhibition in Kassal, and
prompted by this experience, Richter moved
permanently from Eastern Germany just before
the Berlin Wall was built. He continued his
studies in Düsseldorf, where he met artist Joseph
Beuys. Richter’s early paintings were like pop art
in style, but with a political edge. His subject
matter was often based on newspaper photographs
or surveillance images taken from a moving car,
effectively blurring the distinction between
realism and abstraction. In this self-portrait he
returns to the romantic imagery of his youth –
although abstracted the artist is seen as if from a
distance or ‘through a glass darkly’.
Sofonisba Anguissola
c1532–1625
Self-portrait at the easel painting a devotional
panel 1556
oil on canvas
Muzeum-Zamek, Lancut, Poland
Sofonisba Anguissola’s numerous, inventive selfportraits, mostly painted before she left her native
Cremona to join the Spanish Habsburg court,
were a means of self-promotion. In this selfportrait the new theme of the artist at work is
ingeniously related to the legend that St Luke the
Evangelist painted the first portrait of the Virgin
Mary. Anguissola boldly assumes the masculine
role of St Luke, the patron saint of artists, and
exploits the traditional symbolism of the Virgin
Mary as an immaculate mirror. This further
‘reflection’ transforms the portrait of a virtuous
noblewoman into an image of natural creativity –
the vibrant picture of the ideal mother with her
child.
5
Lavinia Fontana
1552–1614
Self-portrait at the clavichord with a servant
1577
oil on canvas
Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Roma
Born in Bologna and trained by her father
Prospero, Lavinia Fontana was well-versed in the
arts and letters. Music was considered a courtly
accomplishment suited to women, and helped to
enhance the status of painting by defining the
hand as a noble instrument rather than a
mechanical tool. Music is also the food of love
and this picture probably commemorated
Fontana’s marriage, while another version in the
famous Uffizi collection of self-portraits
advertised the young woman’s skills to a wider
clientele. Fontana, a portraitist who modelled
herself on Sofonisba Anguissola, emphasised the
respectable lineage and chaste virtue of her female
subjects.
Annibale Carracci
1560–1609
Self-portrait on Easel in Workshop c1605
oil on wood
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
Annibale Carracci’s crowning achievement was
painting the great Farnese ceiling in Rome. The
son of a Bolognese tailor, he was praised by
theorists for reconciling naturalism with classical
ideals but in contrast to many gentlemen painters,
he advised artists not to ‘start taking on grand airs
beyond what is warranted by one’s own natural
circumstances’. To Michelangelo’s claim that ‘we
paint with our brain, not with our hands’ he
apparently responded, ‘we painters have to speak
with our hands.’ This picture presents the artist at
one remove, in a painting within a painting,
framed by the scene of its production. Though
symbolically disembodied and dismembered, the
artist remains present in the material traces
created with his hands.
Jacob Jordaens
1593–1678
The family of the artist c1621
oil on canvas
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
The Antwerp painter Jacob Jordaens translated
Rubens’ visual language into an exuberant,
everyday idiom. This unusually restrained family
portrait may have commemorated Jordaens’
inauguration as dean of the Painters’ Guild of St
Luke in 1621. The gentlemanly stance is
authoritative, the lute by his side a means to
harmonise and regulate rather than actively
seduce. The striking resemblance between the
artist’s wife Catharina, daughter of his master
Adam van Noort, and her first child Elizabeth
links family likeness with artistic imitation. The
standing woman is presumably a maidservant but,
with her red dress and overflowing basket, may
also represent a personification of fertile Nature.
The picture proposes a loving, productive
marriage between the material world and realms
of imagination and desire.
Judith Leyster
1609–60
Self-portrait c1630
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Gift of Mr and Mrs Robert Woods Bliss
Unlike many women artists, Judith Leyster lacked
an artistic or elevated background, but in 1647–48
was praised as a ‘leading star’ of her hometown of
Haarlem. This, her only known self-portrait, was
intended to show off her skills to prospective
customers, and was perhaps her admission piece
to the Painters’ Guild of St Luke. Her own portrait
isas refined as any client might desire. The
laughing fiddler, more sketchily depicted on the
panel, is a motif in one of her genre paintings. The
theatrical, bawdy musician is recognisable as a
comic alter ego of the painter herself.
6
Gerrit Dou
1613–75
Self-portrait 1635–38
oil on panel
Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum
Pieter-Jacobsz van Laer
1599–c1642
Self-portrait 1638–99
oil on canvas
Private Collection, New York
This is among the earliest of about 12 selfportraits by the renowned Leiden ‘fine painter’
and pupil of Rembrandt, Gerrit Dou. The
gentlemanly figure is similar in colouring, apparel
and pose to Rembrandt’s self-portraits of the
1630s but Dou appears in a palatial basilica
holding his tools. The exquisite surfaces,
combined with the slightly bubble-like spatial
illusion, also differ from Rembrandt and were
possibly produced using a magnifying lens. In the
foreground the baleful gaze of a plaster cast draws
a connection between the sitter’s face and a mask,
a symbol of Painting. This relates the theme of
surface and depth to a question central to
portraiture: does external appearance provide
access to the interior or self, or is it a deceptive
façade using conventional signs to create an
outward facing identity?
Pieter-Jacobsz van Laer was the leader of the
‘Bentveughels’ (birds of a feather), a band of
northern European artists in Rome that challenged
the Establishment. They painted the city’s street
life, and their initiation ceremonies involved
drunken parties, justified by ideas of creative
madness and poetic inspiration founded in the
ecstatic worship of the wine god Bacchus. Here
van Laer surrounds himself with occult
paraphernalia, used to transform base matter into
something of value. Rejecting honourable selfrepresentation, van Laer wittily replaces the artist
at work with a practising magician and mockingly
represents the respected form of the vanitas still
life as a scene of sorcery. However, the skeletal
claws on the right turn the joke into a nightmare.
Artemisia Gentileschi
1593–1652
Self-portrait as the allegory of Painting (Selfportrait as La Pittura) 1638–39
oil on canvas
Lent by Her Majesty the Queen
Artemisia Gentileschi was trained by her father
Orazio while he was a follower of Caravaggio.
She pursued her career in Florence, Naples, Rome
and London. When she was 19 the art
entrepreneur Agostino Tassi was convicted of her
rape. Much of Artemisia’s subsequent work seems
to refer to this episode, in biblical scenes of
female heroism and vengeance. In this selfportrait, painted in her mid 40s, Gentileschi
appears as a youthful ‘Pittura’, the female
personification of Painting described in Cesare
Ripa’s Iconologia, an influential dictionary
published in Rome in 1593. Through this inspired
device, she identifies directly with Painting,
subverting contemporary ideas of an implicitly
masculine intellect acting upon passive, implicitly
feminine, matter.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
1599–1660
Self-portrait c1645
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
Painted by Velázquez at the age of about 45, this
self-portrait illustrates his social ambitions for
distinction at the court of Phillip IV of Spain,
where he was principal court painter. There is no
explicit reference to the artist’s profession here;
instead, a hand gesture draws attention to the keys
of the office of Royal Chamberlain and the
martial stance and sword implicitly claim
membership of the hereditary nobility. Velázquez
coveted a knighthood and in the year before his
death was finally admitted into the Order of
Santiago.
7
Salvator Rosa
1615–73
Self-portrait c1645
oil on canvas
The National Gallery, London
Salvator Rosa was a painter of marine and battle
scenes, wild landscapes, and visions of demons
and witches as well as an accomplished poet,
actor, satirist and musician. He assumed the role
of a moral philosopher, asserting the lofty aims of
painting and scorning the northern ‘low-life’
painters in Rome such as Pieter-Jacobsz van Laer.
In this self-portrait he presents himself as an
outsider, self-consciously engaged with death and
immortality. The Latin dictum, inscribed on
something resembling both a tombstone and a
painter’s panel, advises the artist-philosopher to
speak only if his speech is better than silence. A
companion picture is believed to represent the
painter’s mistress as Poetry, alluding to the
humanist parallel between the two arts. Both
Painter and Poetry transfix their viewers, reducing
them to silence with an intransigent stare.
Johannes Gumpp
Self-portrait 1646?
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
Inconsistencies between the inscribed age and
date and the scant biographical data concerning
‘Johannes Gumpp’, an artist of Austrian origin,
make it uncertain which family member painted
this work. The artist’s face is accessible only
indirectly, as ‘reflected’ in the mirror to the left
and as ‘produced’ on the canvas to the right.
Moreover it is the point of view of the observer,
rather than the artist, that brings these selfrepresentations together: although the image we
see mirrored closely matches the portrait in
progress, the ‘real’ artist would actually view his
face in the mirror straight on. The manipulation of
perspectives exposes the portrait’s claim to
documentary truth as a clever deceit, and
dramatises the parts played in acquiring selfknowledge by seeing oneself and being seen,
knowing oneself and being known.
Adriaen van de Werff
1659–1722
Self-portrait with wife and daughter 1697
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
In 1718 the ‘fine painter’ Adriaen van der Werff
was described as the greatest Dutch artist. He
apparently painted this self-portrait for the Elector
Palatine on being appointed his court artist in
1696. A humanist claim that ‘art is born of love’
was frequently represented in Dutch art by
portraits of artists together with their spouses.
Here the ‘picture within a picture’ is a portrait of
the artist’s wife and daughter. However, the
woman is not only the painter’s muse and natural
inspiration, but also a manifestation of his
cultivated imagination. The mask around her neck
is an attribute of Pittura, the allegorical
personification of Painting. The child, like the
work of art itself, is a product of their union.
Johann Zoffany
1733–1810
Self-portrait (with hourglass and skull) c1776
oil on panel
Galleria degli Uffizi, Collezione degli Autoritratti,
Firenze
The German émigré Johann Zoffany made his
reputation in London through conversation pieces
and theatrical portraits. In 1772 Queen Charlotte
sent him to Florence, where he lived the high life.
This self-portrait dramatises his personal tragedy
and guilt as a devout Catholic relating to the
accidental death of his young son following his
remarriage. Dressed in a luxurious coat, he puts a
picture of The temptation of St Antony behind him
and faces a statue of a flayed human figure.
However the statue, book, palette and three nudes
also evoke a classical art education. Perhaps the
painter’s smile, echoed by the grinning skull,
indicate an ironic perspective that finds meaning
in a tragic world through art. The hourglass draws
attention to the ambiguous Latin inscription,
which translates as: ‘art lives long yet life is
short’.
8
Paul Cézanne
1839–1906
Self-portrait c1880
oil on canvas
The National Gallery, London
Paula Modersohn-Becker
1876–1907
Self-portrait 1906
oil on cardboard
Haubrich Collection, Museum Ludwig, Cologne
One of the most celebrated of the postimpressionist painters, Paul Cézanne painted
many self-portraits as well as his more famous
abstracted studies of landscapes in southern
France. This is one of the most celebrated of his
self-portraits, painted when he was about 50 years
old. Although the painting is quite small,
Cézanne’s rugged square brushstrokes invest the
work with a sense of density and monumentality.
The colour structure is complex and dynamic and
Cézanne has invented intricate, ingenious marks
to create a balanced, harmonised composition,
through which in his own words, ‘the whole thing
is put in as much rapport as possible’.
The German-born artist Paula Modersohn-Becker
began her career in 1898 by joining an artists’
colony at Worpswede near Bremen. For a year
before her premature death in 1907, she settled in
Paris, making her boldest strides towards an
original artistic identity. In 1906 she produced
several of her most powerful self-portraits,
characteristically treating her face as if it were a
mask by highlighting her large eyes and
simplifying the broad planes of her nose, forehead
and cheekbones. Her self-portraits were
influenced by Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin,
as well as the Romano-Egyptian mummy portraits
she studied in the Louvre. As her friend Rainer
Maria Rilke wrote, she painted herself ‘moulded
from inside’.
Lovis Corinth
1858–1925
Self-portrait with model June 1903
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich
Lovis Corinth studied at the Königsberg, Munich
and Antwerp academies before finally entering
the Académie Julien in Paris in 1884. In Antwerp
he formed a great admiration for the painting of
Rubens, Jordaens and Rembrandt, and many of
his later paintings hark back to Rubens in
particular. He then moved to Berlin, where he
encountered the symbolist work of Arnold
Böcklin, Hans Thoma and Max Klinger. Corinth
was a prolific self-portraitist with no fewer than
42 recorded paintings of himself. In this work,
Corinth looks over his wife Charlotte’s shoulder
at their reflection in the mirror and beyond, to
meet the eyes of the viewer. He holds his palette
in the hand that protectively enfolds her naked
shoulder, while his other hand is poised to
continue applying paint to the plane that is both
mirror and canvas.
Suzanne Valadon
1865–1938
The blue room (La chambre bleue) 1923
oil on canvas
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Musée national
d'art moderne
Born Marie-Clémentine Valadon, the daughter of
a domestic labourer, Suzanne Valadon began her
career as an artists’ model in Montmartre in Paris
in the 1880s. Determined to become an artist
herself, she learnt her craft by observing her
employers when she posed for them. In 1894
Degas, her first patron, purchased examples of her
early work from a Paris Salon. La chambre bleue
is one of Valadon’s most celebrated mature
works. Believed to be an imaginative rather than a
literal self-portrait, it commemorates her dual role
as an artists’model and an independent creator,
alluding ironically to Manet’s Olympia and to the
tradition of representing the ‘odalisque’ (harem
woman) in French art.
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Edward Hopper
1882–1968
Self-portrait 1925–30
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,
Josephine N Hopper Bequest
Frida Kahlo
1907–54
Self-portrait ‘The Frame’ c1937–38
oil on aluminium on glass
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Musée national
d'art moderne
Certain paintings by Edward Hopper have become
modern American icons. Between 1900 and the
mid 1920s he made several self-portraits before
creating his more famous images of American
buildings, landscapes and cityscapes. This is his
first oil self-portrait in his mature style. He
presents himself as a reserved, introspective,
unpretentiously dressed figure with wary eyes and
a determined chin. Interestingly, he does not
directly identify himself as an artist but rather as a
character within one of his urban scenes.
Frida Kahlo began her career as an artist while
convalescing after a horrific bus accident in
Mexico City in 1925. The accident left her in pain
for the rest of her life and a large number of her
self-portraits explore this experience. Her
marriage to the great Mexican social realist Diego
Rivera was also an important influence on
Kahlo’s life and art. She adopted a palette and
style that owed as much to traditional Mexican
retablo painting as to European modernism. This
self-portrait resembles a Catholic memorial, yet
uses joyful colours, typifying Mexican attitudes to
death. It also looks like an ex voto painting, which
is a form of intercession, a prayer for healing or
relief from suffering. Kahlo wrote, ‘People
thought I was a Surrealist. That’s not right. I have
never painted dreams. What I represented was my
own reality’.
Stanley Spencer
1891–1959
Double nude portrait: the artist and his second
wife 1937
oil on canvas
Tate, purchased 1974
Stanley Spencer studied at the Slade School of
Fine Art in London from 1908, where he attended
lectures by Roger Fry and learnt about postimpressionism, and in particular Gauguin and the
symbolists. He also shared Fry’s interest in
medieval European painting and had a strong
attachment to the solid, earthy figures of Giotto.
Spencer painted a number of important selfportraits, full face, but in this painting, also
known as The leg of mutton nude, Spencer shows
himself crouching over his second wife Patricia
Preece. The conjunction of Spencer’s
uncompromising view of life and his painterly
approach make this particular painting an
important precursor to self-portraits by Francis
Bacon and Lucian Freud.
Pierre Bonnard
1867–1947
Self-portrait c1938–40
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1972
A founding member of the French Nabi
movement and a radiant colourist, Pierre Bonnard
painted almost a dozen self-portraits, most of
them depicting the introspective artist in later life.
He was fascinated by the possibilities of mirror
reflections and exploited them for their
tantalisingly oblique glimpses into his private
realm. This iridescent self-portrait dates to the
period of the German occupation in France, when
the 73-year-old-painter was living in Le Cannet
near Cannes. He depicts himself in deep
concentration, his desire to understand and fulfil
himself
as an artist undiminished. Bonnard’s late selfportraits defied the climate of the times. He wrote,
‘I am working a lot, immersed more and more
deeply in this outdated passion for painting’.
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Lucian Freud
b1922
Interior with hand mirror (self-portrait) 1967
oil on canvas
Private collection
Lucian Freud was born in Berlin in 1922 and
moved to England with his family in 1933 when
the Third Reich came to power. From his early
paintings and drawings, made during the war
years, he emerged as a strangely compelling
young surrealist. After 1945 however, he began
his quest for a form of realism in which paint
constituted the substantial world. Freud has
dedicated most of his career since then to
depicting the naked body, initially female but later
male nudes as well. His subject matter, like
Francis Bacon’s, is always drawn from his circle
of friends and acquaintances and throughout his
life he has painted himself. He has said of his
work, ‘It is about my self and my surroundings. I
work from people that interest me and that I care
about’. In this small but compelling picture, Freud
plays on the idea of the window and the mirror as
a means of knowing the self.
Francis Bacon
1909–92
Self-portrait 1971
oil on canvas
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Musée national
d'art moderne
Born in Dublin, Francis Bacon arrived in London
in 1928. Encouraged by the Australian artist Roy
de Maistre, Bacon took up painting and in 1933
one of his works was reproduced in Herbert
Read’s book Art now. Most of Bacon’s mature
paintings were figure compositions, often
including portraits of his close circle of friends
and colleagues, as well as many self-portraits. He
is best known for dramatic fragmentation of the
body and rapid gestures made with a broad brush
or smeared with a piece of cloth, and occasionally
even splashed directly from the can. In this
intense self-portrait, his characteristic painting
style stands in for his presence as strongly as the
image itself. The face functions as both a mask
and an expression of interior feeling. Bacon said,
‘I want to try and get to the raw sensation.’
Georg Baselitz
b1938
Mannlicher Akt – Fingermalerei May–July
1973
oil on canvas
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg and Paris
Georg Baselitz was born in eastern Germany but
moved to West Berlin to study at the Berlin
College for Visual Arts in 1957. He was one of
the postwar generation of artists who looked back
to expressionism and the Neue Sachlichkeit as an
authentic moment in German art, banned by the
Third Reich. Subsequent exposure to exhibitions
of abstract expressionism from the USA modified
this early influence. In this self-portrait expressive
strokes of the brush are replaced by the sensuality
of oil paint, applied with the artist’s fingers.
Characteristically the image is inverted, placing
greater emphasis on the painterly qualities of the
work. The artist’s likeness is presented in
complete synchronicity with his stylistic signature
and the physical trace of his body.
Marlene Dumas
b1953
Evil is banal (het kwaad is banal) 1984
oil on canvas
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Born in South Africa in 1953, Marlene Dumas
grew up under the Apartheid regime, making her
very aware of issues of race and social justice. In
1976 she moved to Holland, where she studied
painting and, later, psychology. Like Francis
Bacon, Dumas prefers to work with images from
newspapers and magazines, and avoids using live
models. Her works also have a strong, tactile
impact. In 1984 Dumas painted this self-portrait,
with its averted gaze and strange and disturbing
title. ‘Evil is banal’ may be understood, in part at
least, to refer to her upbringing under Apartheid.
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Leon Kossoff
b1926
Self-portrait with Christ Church 1989
oil on board
Private collection, courtesy LA Louver Gallery,
Venice, California
Leon Kossoff lives and works in London and,
along with Frank Auerbach, was associated with
artists exhibiting at London’s Beaux Art Gallery
in the 1950s and 60s. Kossoff’s work reflects his
immediate environment, friends and family. In
Self-portrait with Christ Church, he paints himself
in front of the church at Spitalfields, a building
which Kossoff knew as a child and has fascinated
him ever since. The figure fills the canvas to the
point of exceeding it, his hand raised with the
index finger extended right to the edge. The image
is captured in the movement of the paint: a rich,
complex surface which also vividly preserves the
artist’s presence.
Richard Hamilton
b1922
Four self-portraits – 05.3.81 1990
Anthony d'Offay, London
oil and Humbrol enamel on Cibachrome on
canvas
Richard Hamilton was a member of the
Independent Group associated with the ICA in
London from 1952. The group’s pioneering work
in installation, performance and new media
anticipated British pop art and was a precursor for
conceptual art. In 1965 Hamilton worked with
Marcel Duchamp on the reconstruction of The
large glass: the bride stripped bare by her
bachelors even and in 1966 he organised the
Duchamp retrospective at the Tate Gallery. This
self-portrait deconstructs the mystique of painting
and originality. Hamilton photographed himself
from four slightly different angles in each of the
four panels, suggesting the multiple viewpoints of
cubism. He then re-photographed these images
through sheets of glass onto which he painted
marks, which he doubles in successive layering of
real and reproduced gesture.
Jenny Saville
b1970
Juncture 1994
oil on canvas
Marguerite & Robert Hoffman
Jenny Saville studied at the Glasgow School of
Art, where she completed her studies in 1992.
Talking about her own commitment to painterly
quality she says, ‘de Kooning is my main man
really, because he just did everything you can do
with paint. He reversed it, dripped it, and scraped
it. But I want to hold on to a certain amount of
reality’. It is significant that Saville mentions de
Kooning because of his notorious mutilation of
the female form. Her own figures are a little
monstrous and often depicted from unusual
angles, perhaps to counter the masculine gaze.
Saville’s use of a photograph rather than a mirror
to create this picture of herself has enabled her to
turn away from traditional conventions of selfportraiture.
Francis Newton Souza
1924–2002
Self-portrait 1961
oil on board
Ruth Borchard Collection courtesy of Robert
Travers, Piano Nobile Fine Paintings, London
Born in the Catholic enclave of Goa, India,
Francis Newton Souza was brought up in Mumbai
(Bombay), where he studied art before moving to
London in 1949. He supported himself in part as a
writer, and held his first exhibition at Gallery One
in 1955, which was a critical success. His writing
and art were described by one critic as ‘over-thetop’, taunting bourgeois prudery, respectability
and racist attitudes. In 1962 Souza said ‘I have
everything to use at my disposal. I leave
discretion, understatement and discrimination to
the finicky and lunatic fringe’.
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John N Robinson
1912–94
Self-portrait as a young man with mirror c1940
oil on canvas
Robert L Johnson from The Barnett Aden
Collection, Washington DC
The American painter John Robinson lived in the
Anacostia neighbourhood of Washington DC, and
although he never attended art school, was tutored
by senior artists at Howard University. He worked
for 34 years as a cook at St Elizabeth Hospital,
while continuing to paint with a particular
emphasis on religious paintings and portraits of
his family. Towards the end of his life, Robinson
also completed several large-scale church murals.
Here he creates a determined and complex image
of himself. Through the painted reflection in the
glass we can see fragments of his other paintings,
and the interior of his studio.
Joshua Reynolds
1723–92
Self-portrait c1747–49
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London
The leading English artist of his day and first
president of the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds
was renowned for his portraits of elite sitters. His
output of self-portraits was comparable to
Rembrandt’s. This remarkable example is
brilliantly painted in an unusual landscape format.
It was probably produced shortly before Reynolds
left for Italy, aged about 25, to study the Old
Masters. The raised hand produces effects of
shadow that suggest an interest in works by
Rembrandt, where shaded eyes were a sign of the
melancholic temperament associated with artistic
creativity. Reynolds turns his gaze towards the
light as if in an intense effort to see clearly into
the distance, but his confident, energetic quest is
inseparable from the shadow that partially
obscures his face.
Andy Warhol
1928–87
Self-portrait (strangulation) 1978
acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
Anthony d’Offay, London
Andy Warhol began his career as a commercial
artist in Pittsburgh before moving to New York.
By the early 1960s he had developed the idea of
representing commodities as fine art, alongside
images of celebrities. Avoiding the aura of
handmade originals, he used cheap source
imagery such as pictures from photographic
booths. The multiples that he produced by
silkscreen printing were sometimes customised
with a painterly overlay. Warhol’s persona was
projected through glitzy, seemingly superficial
imagery but his work also has a dark side,
exemplified in his Disaster Paintings of the
electric chair, traffic accidents and suicides. He
created self-portraits throughout his career; in this
work the stilling of the subject is equated
with suffocation and violent death.
Chuck Close
b1940
Self-portrait 2005
oil on canvas
The Artist, courtesy Pace Wilderstein
After studying in the USA and then Vienna,
American artist Chuck Close turned from making
abstract paintings to those which use photographic
images as a source. By 1967 he had completed the
first of a sequence of highly detailed large-scale
realist paintings of heads in acrylic paint, each
dramatically enlarged from a photograph and
formed from a grid of more than 100 000 squares.
While often choosing friends and family as his
subjects, Close has made many self-portraits each
reflecting a current phase of his work. In 1986
Close returned to using oils and began to build up
his images from more loosely painted, almost
independent units, a process reinforced after he
suffered a severe stroke in 1988. Commenting on
his self-portraits he wrote, ‘It’s a very difficult
thing to deal with a nine foot high image of
yourself … I always refer to it as “him”
anyhow’.
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