Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant

1912

Oil and opaque color on wood, 32.2 × 39.8 cm. Leopold Museum, Vienna

A bust-length self-portrait in a dark jacket, set beside the thin stems and red fruit of a lantern plant. The edges crop both head and body, and the red fruit answers the dark areas.

Look at the head, which turns to the right while the eyes meet yours.
The twist of the head against the shoulders does the expressive work, turning a plain bust into a picture of strain and self-scrutiny.
Its earliest recorded showing was his 1928 memorial exhibition in Vienna.
Its first owner, a Vienna engineer, is said to have bought it between 1914 and 1918, probably from the painter himself.
Rudolf Leopold bought it in the mid-1950s; it passed to the Leopold Museum in 1994.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain