Self-Portrait with Pipe, 1886

Painted in Paris between September and November 1886, months after Van Gogh moved in with his brother Theo. The pale face leaps out of a warm, dark red ground, a lesson in color and light he took from the Marseille painter Adolphe Monticelli, whose work he had just discovered in Paris. The palette is still the earthy one he brought from the Netherlands, which makes it the right starting point. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.