Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat

Van Gogh painted this self-portrait in the winter of 1887-1888, when he had been living in Paris for nearly two years. Since his arrival in the city he had devoted much study to the dotted Pointillist technique, thereby learning how he might apply it in his own fashion. His use of brushstrokes running in a variety of directions created a self-portrait with a halo-like circle round his head. This variation and the dynamics it created were Van Gogh's own contribution to the new style of painting.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks but received little recognition during his lifetime.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge". His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists.

Van gogh attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.