Artwork story
About Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler)
The artist and artwork
Vincent van Gogh painted Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat in Paris in 1887, using oil on a small canvas just sixteen inches high. Short of money for models but determined to improve as a figure painter, he repeatedly used his own reflection. The Met records more than twenty self-portraits from his Paris stay of 1886 to 1888. Here a yellow straw hat broadens the silhouette while blue, green, red, and orange strokes move across his face, jacket, and background. The close crop makes the act of looking in a mirror feel immediate rather than ceremonial.
The world around it
Van Gogh made this portrait in the artistic ferment of Third Republic Paris. The city was still rebuilding after the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune, while its schools, galleries, and independent exhibitions attracted artists from many countries. The eighth and final Impressionist exhibition had taken place in 1886, where Georges Seurat's divided touches and optical color announced Neo-Impressionism. Van Gogh lived with his art-dealer brother Theo, saw the newest painting firsthand, and lightened the dark palette of his Dutch years. This portrait is a record of that rapid change, not the fixed style of an already famous master.
A detail to notice
The canvas carries two different moments in Van Gogh's development. On its reverse is The Potato Peeler, a darker peasant study painted in the Netherlands in 1885. Rather than buy a fresh support, he turned the canvas over and used the other side for this bright Paris self-portrait. The change is visible in the newer picture's broken, separate strokes and complementary colors. Yellow in the hat and beard meets blue and violet in the jacket and background, while red and green sharpen the eyes and face. One physical object therefore preserves both the earthy realism Van Gogh brought from Nuenen and the experimental color he pursued in Paris.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on canvas and held in the European Paintings department.
Recorded dimensions include 16 x 12 1/2 in. (40.6 x 31.8 cm).
Subject terms include Men and Self-portraits. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-24.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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