The theme of this exhibit is “Sense of Self," in which the works are composed of self-portraits from Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890). These seven works were chosen out of the hundreds of paintings that he created in his lifetime because of how personal they are to the artist. He embraced self-portraits in order to further his skill, especially in his groundbreaking use of color, and take advantage of the fact that self-portraits were always available and always free to him. When he was committed to a mental asylum in May of 1889, he created over 140 paintings in only three months. The first image in the gallery, Self-Portrait (1889), Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 – 1890),Oil on canvas, was created during his stay in the Saint-Paul-de_Mausole mental asylum in South France. This particular work of Van Gogh’s is an excellent example of the gallery because of the sense of self in the painting. During his time in a psychiatric hospital when he created dozens, and dozens of works was when we was most strongly looking inwards for himself during his battle with mental illness. Even though Van Gogh created this image in such a personally troubling time, it is one of his most-famous self-portraits.
