About Today Is Art Day Patch - Self-Portrait - Van Gogh
Self-Portrait with Straw Hat by Vincent van Gogh
About Self-Portrait with Straw Hat Vincent van Gogh’s dozens of self-portraits are an important part of his oeuvre as a painter. Most probably, van Gogh's self-portraits are depicting the face as it appeared in the mirror he used to reproduce his face, i.e. his right side in the image is in reality the left side of his face.
Van Gogh did not have money to pay for models. Therefore, it was cheaper and more convenient for him to paint self-portraits.
A few self-portraits with straw hat can be seen around the world: three at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, one at the Detroit Institute of Arts and another one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Van Gogh was a master painter who strongly influenced the abstract and Neo-expressionist who came after him. Originating from the Netherlands, he discovered Impressionist art while living in Paris and started to use the color and light. His work is well known for its beauty, emotion, and color, as well as its interesting viewpoints of mundane objects.
Despite being extremely poor and generally unknown throughout his lifetime, Van Gogh is now one of the greatest Dutch painters. He lived a life with emotional tension and madness, and he created his finest piece, Starry Night, inside an institution.
Although the specter of mental illness haunted him throughout his adult life and created a habit of inflicting self-harm (such as the infamous severed ear), his work remained a testament to his genius. Van Gogh died at the age of only 37, due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His brother Theo would go on to distribute his work and cultivate his popularity.
