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Shown from this chest up, a man holding a paint palette and brushes angles to our left toward an easel in this vertical painting. The portrait is loosely painted with short strokes and visible dashes in cool, green-edged yellow and blue. The man looks at or toward us from the corners of his electric-blue eyes, which are deep-set under bushy blond eyebrows. He has a bumped nose, high cheekbones, and a narrow chin. A ginger-orange mustache and beard frame his pale pink lips, which are closed. He also has short-cropped blond hair. His face is painted with strokes on mint green and straw yellow, and his features are outlined in plum purple. His high-necked blue smock fastens at his throat over a white garment. The topaz and steel-blue strokes of the smock are overlaid with horizontal, harvest-yellow dashes. The man’s thumb pokes through the rectangular palette he holds in his left hand, closer to us. Daubs of yellow, red, blue, red, and white are smeared on the palette. The edge of the canvas on which the man works angles in from the left edge of the composition. The background is painted thickly with pale celery green.

Imitator of Vincent van Gogh

Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1925/1928

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 59.1 x 47.5 cm (23 1/4 x 18 11/16 in.)

framed: 79.1 x 68.6 x 7.6 cm (31 1/8 x 27 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Collection

Accession Number

1963.10.153

Artists / Makers

Anonymous Artist (painter)

Vincent van Gogh (related artist) Dutch, 1853 - 1890

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Otto Wacker, Berlin; acquired by (Joseph Stransky, New York);[1] sold May 1928 to Chester Dale [1882-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.

[1] Although the Chester Dale papers give his source as the Wildenstein gallery, the painting was actually sold to Mr. Dale by Joseph Stransky, a dealer who sometimes acted as an agent for Wildenstein & Co. and whose own firm was French Galleries, Inc. The letterhead of the invoice to Dale, dated 28 May 1928, reads "French Galleries, Inc. at Wildenstein & Co." and the check was to be made payable to French Galleries, Inc. (copy in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Dale, Chester
Stransky, Josef
Wacker, Otto

Exhibition History

1928: Loan Exhibition of Modern French Art from the Chester Dale Collection for the Benefit of the French Hospital of New York, Wildenstein Galleries, New York, 1928, no. 15.

1929: Vincent van Gogh, Vereeniging voor der Kunst, Utrecht, 1929.

Bibliography

1928: Bie, Oscar. "Letter from Berlin." Apollo 7 (1928): 85, repro.

1928: Faille, J.-B. de la. L'Oeuvre de Vincent Van Gogh, catalogue raisonné. 4 vols. Paris and Brussels, 1928: 1:no. 523; 2:repro.

1928: Meier-Graefe, Julius. "Vincent van Gogh, der Zeichner." Berlin, 1928: frontispiece.

1929: Dale, Maud. Before Manet to Modigliani from the Chester Dale Collection. New York, 1929: no. 66, repro., as Self-Portrait by Vincent van Gogh.

1929: "Dale van Gogh traced by Letters." Art News (13 April 1929): 1+.

1929: Glaser, Curt. "Die van Gogh-Affäre." Kunst und Künstler 27 (1929): 131-136, repro.

1929: Scherjon, W. De Zelfportretten van Vinvent van Gogh Uit St. Remy. Utrecht, 1929: 12-13, repro.

1930: Faille, J.-B. de la. Les Faux Van Gogh. Paris and Brussels, 1930: 6.

1932: Veth, Cornelis. Falsche Expdertisen?- Falsche Experten!. Berlin, 1932: 35, 37-39, frontispiece and appendix.

1934: Craven, Thomas. Modern Art. New York, 1934: repro. opposite p. 91.

1937: Scherjon, W., and Jos de Gruyter. Vincent van Gogh's Great Period: Arles, St. Rémy and Auvers sur Oise (Complete Catalogue). Amsterdam, 1937: 231, repro.

1942: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 77, repro., as by van Gogh.

1944: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 180, color repro., as by van Gogh.

1944: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944: 77, repro., as Self-Portrait by van Gogh.

1944: Jewell, Edward Alden. French Impressionists and their Contemporaries Represented in American Collections. New York, 1944: repro. 169.

1953: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953: 87, repro., as by van Gogh.

1954: Bromig-Kolleritz, Katharina. "Die Selbstbildnisse Vincent van Gogh." Ph.D. dissertation, Ludwig0Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 1954.

1963: Erpel, Fritz. Die Selbstbildnisse Vincent van Goghs. Berlin, 1963: no. 42, repro.

1965: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 128, repro., as by van Gogh.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 60, as by van Gogh.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 51, repro., as by van Gogh.

1969: Erpel, Fritz. Van Gogh and the Self-Portraits. Greenwich, Connecticut, 1969: 64, no. 40.

1970: Faille, J.-B. de la. The Works of Vincent van Gogh: Paintings and Drawings. Amsterdam, 1970: 592, no. 523 (rejected work).

1971: Lecaldano, Paolo. L'opera pittorica completa di Van Gogh e i suoi nessi grafici. 2 vols. Milan, 1971: 1:no. 464A.

1973: Pickvance, Ronald. "The new de la Faille." The Burlington Magazine 115 (March 1973): 117.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 156, repro., as by van Gogh.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 181, repro.

1987: Haywood, Ian. Faking It: Art and the Politics of Forgery. Brighton, 1987: 112-113.

1989: Feilchenfeldt, Walter. "Van Gogh fakes: the Wacker affair, with an illustrated catalogue of the forgeries." Simiolus [Netherlands quarterly for the history of art] 19, no. 4 (1989): 304, repro.

2002: Koldehoff, Stefan. "The Wacker Forgeries: a catalogue." The Van Gogh Museum Journal (2002): 139+, repro.

2015: Koldehoff, Stefan. Ich und Van Gogh: Bilder, Sammler und ihre abenteuerlichen Geschichten. Berlin, 2015: 67-69, color repro. 67.