Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Paul Gauguin)

Vincent Willem van Gogh ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890 was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died at the age of 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted . His work was then known to only a handful of people and... appreciated by fewer still. Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes of flowers, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
more

The Fogg Museum, opened to the public in 1896, is the oldest of Harvard University's art museums. The Fogg joins the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums. The museum was originally housed in an Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Richard Morris Hunt. In 1925, the building was replaced by a Georgian Revival-style structure across Quincy Street, designed by Coolidge, Shepley,... Bulfinch, and Abbott. In 2008, the building closed for a major renovation project to create a new museum building designed by architect Renzo Piano that will house all three Harvard art museums in one facility. During the renovation, selected works from all three museums are on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. The Fogg Museum is renowned for its holdings of Western paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographs, prints, and drawings from the Middle Ages to the present.
more