A case of mistaken identity: Concerning the photographic portrait of Vincent van Gogh, age thirteen

Abstract

Oud Holland 2018 3/4 volume 131 1 John Peter Russell, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1886, oil on canvas, 60.1 x 45.6 cm, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation), inv. s0273V/1962. What did Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) actually look like? We have self-portraits dating back to his time in Paris, when he was already thirty-three, but these ‘selfijies’ do not always give a consistent impression of the person depicted. The painterly aspect proved more important to Van Gogh than a faithful likeness. All the same, there are certain constants: the ginger hair and beard, a high and slightly sloping forehead, and somewhat deep-set green eyes.1 Interestingly, Van Gogh’s contemporary Archibald Standish Hartrick felt that the most faithful resemblance was found not in one of the self-portraits, but in the portrait that John Peter Russell made of Van Gogh toward the end of 1886, in which he looks searchingly over his shoulder at the viewer (fijig. 1).2 TEIO MEEDENDORP & YVES VASSEUR