“Self Portrait”

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HERE'S THE STORY
It seems like every one of the Master’s did at least one self-portrait. Usually it wasn’t from vanity but rather economics in that you can’t get a cheaper model than yourself, for free. This was surely the case with Vincent Van Gogh. Rembrandt made several self-portraits throughout his career. It is interesting to see him grow old through these paintings. During his time, it was not unusual for the patron of any given painter to ask for a self-portrait of that painter so that the patron had a record of who he was collecting. It was sort of pre-business card days.

A self-portrait was the required assignment in one of the classes I took. Specifically, Drawing the Figure with Saud Al Hunaini. It was then that I realized how few photos a photographer has of him/herself. I had to ask a photography friend of my, Chris Bartlett, to take the reference photo for me. It made me think of the funny story: Two young children were looking at a picture of Mary holding the baby Jesus. The younger brother asked his older sister where was Joseph? She replied, “Silly! He’s the one taking the picture.”