"Lend Me Your Ear" (study)

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I've written about Vincent van Gogh in past posts and still I can't get over the fact that this brilliant artist completed nearly 900 paintings, 1,100 drawings and countless etchings between the ages of 28 through 37 years old.  And the majority of paintings were done in the last two years of his life.  And.... he only sold one painting in his lifetime.  Remarkable.

Van Gogh painted 30 self-portraits during the last several years of his life - in large part to not being able to pay a model.  Each and every portrait gives the viewer great insight to his state at that time.  The self-portrait above was done in 1887 while he lived in France and largely due to being influenced by the young artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh approached this painting with the play between the complimentary colors of blue-greens and the orange-reds.  He adopted elements of Pointillism, using small, colored strokes inside the background and clothing, something that can't be seen from a distance, but up close, is so very effective.  

From the Art Institute of Chicago,  a man closely views Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait.  This is a small study of a larger version I am currently working on - I wanted to make sure I could get the tilt of the man's head right before I tackled a larger painting.