Rembrandt Vs. Vincent Van Gogh

Self portrait is one of the form of art that artist would draw themselves in a creative perspective. In our today’s society, self portrait can be created in various medium. The most common and easiest one is photograph. However before the photograph was invented, paintings were the medium in which people would portray and draw themselves. Famous self portrait artists such as the Dutch artists Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh. These two artists spent most of their time working on painting themselves. However, these two Dutch painters have different artistic style and meaning when it comes to self portrait. Rembrandt was born on July 15, 1606 in Leiden, Netherland. Rembrandt did not grew up from a family artist; his father was a miller, and his

In Rembrandt’ self portrait, he is wearing a very fashionable clothes (Fig. 5). Same as the previous two self portraits; It has no background. In van Gogh’s self portrait, he is wearing a blue suit (Fig. 6). Also, he is standing at a different angle when comparing with his previous two self portraits. The most prominent features when comparing the three Rembrandt’s self portraits is the decline of his details. Wetering mentions on his book when Rembrandt was getting older, he started to lose his sharp blush strokes: “ Rembrandt uses the blush more loosely and fleetingly, and avoids sharpness in his contour and inner drawing” (172). If we compare the two of his self portraits (Fig. 1 and 5), then we can see in his earlier self portrait has some flawless details. However, when we see his other self portraits, it has some flaws especially on his face; the distortion on his eyelids and forehead. Furthermore, van Gogh has some progression with his blush strokes. For example, the previous self portraits (Fig. 4) has some rough, straight blush strokes, but the latest self portrait has wavy, curvy blushstrokes. This dramatically change of blush strokes is most likely when van Gogh’s mental health was starting to break down. As his health is getting worser, his wavy blush strokes get prominent

Similarly from his previous two self portraits, Rembrandt’s self portrait is a closed composition and with no background. Nonetheless, van Gogh’s self portrait is open composition because of his background that portrays that he is a void of space. When it comes to color between these two self portraits, there are distinct features. In Rembrandt’s self portrait, there are high contrast colors as he would with his other self portraits. While van Gogh is about saturated colors as the self portraits portrays.

Finally, another distinction between the two self portraits are the visual elements. Rembrandt’s self portrait has no line except for his body outline, while van Gogh has various lines like his curvy lines all around the portrait. There is chiaroscuro in Rembrandt’s self portrait being applied around his body, while van Gogh does not have any chiaroscuro. Both of these artists, Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh, did self portraits most of their lives. Although they are very distinct from each other based off composition and visual elements, they share a common goal. They drew self portraits because they felt it was their duty to paint themselves in a whole new perspective. Even though they had downfall of their lives, they left their legacy in which many people will cherish for many generations to