Self-Portrait, Laughing

1908

Oil on canvas, 40 × 30.5 cm. Belvedere, Vienna

A small self-portrait in which the painter stretches his mouth into a wide grin. The Belvedere reads the expression as closer to menace than to good humor, a rare break from his usual gravity.

The Belvedere calls him self-taught; he kept clear of the city's artist associations and chose not to exhibit.
He died in 1908 at 25; his roughly 80 works became known only decades later.
Look at the bared teeth and narrowed eyes, which make the grin look strained.
Short, separate dabs fill the background and thick ridges build the face, with almost no blending; the raw surface makes the paint itself carry his state of mind.
The Belvedere dates it 1908; some sources place it a year earlier.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art