Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat

1887

Oil on canvas, 40.6 × 31.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A small head-and-shoulders view painted in Paris. It shows how quickly his dark Dutch manner gave way to light and color.

Short, separate strokes of color build the face, hat and background. The Met links this to his growing grasp of Neo-Impressionist methods and color theory.
Look at the hat brim, where yellow strokes are laid in curving, radiating rows.
Bare canvas shows between the strokes in many places, especially in the background.
He painted it on the reverse of a peasant study from 1885, The Potato Peeler.
It came to the Met in 1967 through the bequest of Adelaide Milton de Groot.

In Paris, from 1886 to 1888, he painted over twenty self-portraits. Short of money for models, he worked from a mirror and used himself instead.