Van Gogh’s Straw Hat Has More Than One Color
The familiar face is only the beginning. Follow the little strokes around it.
Before you settle on “yellow hat,” have another look at the brim. Ochre, orange, greenish touches and pale marks crowd into that familiar shape. Van Gogh has given even the hat a busy afternoon.
Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat dates to 1887, during Vincent van Gogh’s years in Paris. The Metropolitan Museum of Art places it among the many self-portraits he made there while developing his figure-painting skills. Using himself as a sitter also answered a practical problem: paying a model cost money.
The museum connects the picture to his interest in Neo-Impressionist technique and color theory. You can approach that through the marks themselves. Around the beard, warm strokes sit close to cooler ones. Across the coat and background, short lines change direction and build up a surface that never becomes quite still.
The face is the center of attention, but it is worth letting your eye leave it. Follow the outer edge of the hat, then the shoulder, then the background beside the head. The direction of the brushwork helps separate those areas even where the colors come close.
From farther away, the marks gather into a convincing person. Closer in, they become small decisions about color and direction. Moving between those two views is part of the fun. The portrait keeps giving you a face and then reminding you how much paint is involved in making one.
There is another piece of working life in the object itself. The museum records an earlier painting, The Potato Peeler, on the other side of the canvas. This surface carried more than one attempt to make a picture.
Return to the hat after looking at the coat. That yellow may feel a little less straightforward now. A familiar image can still produce a surprise when you give one small part of it your full attention.
Explore the object: Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler), 1887. Artist: Vincent van Gogh. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967. Accession 67.187.70a. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, Public Domain / CC0. Collection record. Image use terms.