#72 Self-Portrait — Mug

He painted himself more than thirty times in four years, and the reason was money: he could not afford models. This one is from his Paris period, when he had just met the Impressionists and thrown out the dark browns he had been painting in for years. The whole face is built from short strokes of pure colour laid side by side, a technique he had learned weeks earlier and was testing on the only face always available to him. Art Institute of Chicago.