Vincent van Gogh painted 35 self-portraits in his lifetime. Fifteen of them are now together at the Courtauld Gallery, in the first exhibition dedicated to his portraits here since 1960 and the first ever featuring his paintings of himself from across his career. They’ve come from the huge collection in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, of course, but also from Washington DC, Chicago, and Paris among other places. Will this many Van Gogh self-portraits be gathered in London again? Not in my lifetime, I imagine. Maybe never. So you have to beg, borrow or steal a ticket, of course; and you have until May 8.
It would be easy to phone-in a Van Gogh self-portraits show, but the Courtauld’s is rigorous and thoughtful, with smart pairings and groupings. And it has a compelling argument: that we inevitably see the artist’s paintings of himself through the prism of his mental health and suicide, but they should instead be seen as him pursuing a unique artistic language despite rather than because of his illness. Yes, they were vehicles for expression, but it was a more rational pursuit rather than one governed only by torment.
