Self-Portrait as a Painter, 1886

Van Gogh at the easel in a dark felt hat, painted in Paris in 1886. Look at the palette: his thumb comes through one hole, two brushes through the other, and a small jar of turpentine for thinning paint is clipped on top. Almost everything else sinks into shadow, which makes the bright version of the same pose, painted at the end of his Paris stay and shown further down, a good measure of how far Paris changed him. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.