“I wish they would only take me as I am,” Vincent van Gogh once said. But how did he take himself? The Dutch painter was mercurial, as we see in the first major exhibition at London’s newly refurbished Courtauld Gallery, which brings together 16 of Van Gogh’s self-portraits—many of which haven’t been together since they were in the artist’s studio more than a century ago—for the first time. “Van Gogh: Self-Portraits” pairs works on loan from around the world with Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Head, the prized possession of the museum’s namesake, the industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld.
“It is incredibly emotional to see the works together,” says the exhibition’s curator, Karen Serres. “You look around the rooms and have the same person looking at you but in different guises and using different artistic styles.”
