Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1887

A yellow straw hat against a blue jacket, painted on artist's board in Paris in August or September 1887. The hat was practical gear for painting outdoors, and this picture comes from the summer of his trips to paint along the river outside the city. He traded it to his friend Émile Bernard for one of Bernard's own works. In 1922 the Detroit Institute of Arts bought it for $4,200, the first purchase of a Van Gogh by a public museum in the United States. Detroit Institute of Arts.