1890
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Self-Portrait is a 1890 by Camille Pissarro, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Here’s an old man in a floppy hat and round glasses, staring right at you. His beard is streaky white, his eyes tired but sharp. This is Pissarro at sixty—one of the few times he drew himself. He scratched the image onto metal, not painted it, and only made about thirty copies. Most went to friends, not galleries. Look up *impasto* next to see how thick paint can feel like skin.
This print is one of Camille Pissarro’s few self-portraits and his only etched one. Made when he was around 60 years old, Pissarro presents himself as an aged and bearded artist wearing a soft hat and peering out of the picture frame through his half-moon spectacles. Pissarro made only 28 impressions of the print during his lifetime, most of which he gave to friends and family members.
The rich, inky darkness of the print’s background contrasts with the softer tones of the artist’s hat and face, revealing Pissarro’s interest in the work of Rembrandt van Rijn, especially the northern artist’s self-portraiture.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( piss-AR-oh; French: ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies).
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