Self Portrait With Bandage
Vincent van Gogh, Explained - Episode 9
Did you know?
Wouter van der Veen, renowned Van Gogh specialist, art historian and author, highlights four things that you must know about the Self Portrait With Bandage.
- This painting should be compared to the self-portrait he made in Saint Rémy and intended for his mother. The painting with the bandaged ear shows a wounded man in a cold place, with a powerful color effect: a stark contrast of green and red. In his painting ‘The night café’, Van Gogh used the same opposition and described it as a violent contrast that conveyed the passions that could drive a man to madness. The Saint Rémy beardless self-portrait, contrarily, is painted with of mostly bleu-green and naturalistic flesh tones. Van Gogh used that specific contrast to illustrate rest and calmness.
- The Japanese engraving in the background shown young ladies and cranes. In French, the French word for crane is grue, which also means prostitute.
- The painting is a spectacular document, maybe more than a brilliant work of art. With this portrait, we can see that Van Gogh’s art and life are always intimately connected: Van Gogh tells the viewer that he went too far, that he put himself in danger and almost lost the battle. But here he is, wounded but alive, and… painting.
- The fur cap he is wearing did not go unnoticed by his contemporaries. It is typical for Van Gogh to wear what he thought was practical. Fur protects efficiently against cold – what it looked like was the least of his problems.
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