Author
Post-Impressionism
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is an 1889 self-portrait by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The painting is in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art and on display in the Gallery at Somerset House.
Intro source: Wikipedia (EN)
The work matters because it condenses personal color systems, form as construction, and subjective intensity and makes that artistic language legible even outside the museum context.
Highlights
Surprising facts & legends
Short but striking stories around the work — the things that make it come alive.
Interesting facts
The story around the work
Interesting facts & legends
- Van Gogh painted it in January 1889, only weeks after he cut off part of his own ear with a razor during a breakdown in Arles.
- The bandage covers his right ear, but he worked from a mirror: the ear he actually mutilated was the left one.
- A Japanese woodblock print hangs on the wall behind him, a reminder that even in crisis he kept the art he revered within sight.
- By one persistent account he carried the severed ear to a brothel and handed it to a woman there, telling her to guard it carefully.
- Despite the fresh wound he shows himself composed: fur cap, buttoned coat, pipe smoking quietly, as if proving he was in control again.
- The picture belongs to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and hangs in its gallery at Somerset House.
More details Open the extended reading, official sources, and visual context around the work
Historical context
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear inside its era
The connection between Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Vincent van Gogh, and Courtauld Gallery, London makes the work a strong point of entry into post-impressionism.
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is an 1889 self-portrait by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The painting is in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art and on display in the Gallery at Somerset House. The location in Courtauld Gallery, London matters too, because it frames the work not as an isolated icon but as part of a living institutional history.
Path to recognition
How the work became widely known
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear remains widely known because it helps explain not only the artist, but the visual order of post-impressionism itself.
Value
Why the work matters now
The work matters because it condenses personal color systems, form as construction, and subjective intensity and makes that artistic language legible even outside the museum context.
Connections and legacy
How to read the work more broadly
Vincent van Gogh showed that painting can speak not only about what the artist sees, but about how the artist feels the world. His style makes inner vibration the central artistic material.
Official sources
Where to verify the institutional context
- Official institution site The Courtauld Gallery
Visual context
Related images and nearby entry points
Vincent van Gogh
What to look at
Three entry points into the work
Even a very famous artwork opens more fully when the viewer knows where to look for tension, meaning, and compositional focus.
- Notice how the composition distributes emphasis across the whole surface.
- See how light, color, and brush rhythm shape the emotional tone.
- Read the work not only as an isolated image, but as part of the history of post-impressionism.
More by the artist
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Continue the exhibition
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