Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear — What Vincent wrote

In his own words

Vincent wrote to Theo constantly, and the letters around 1889 are full of the thinking that produced Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. He described what he was after in plain language, without the art-historical vocabulary that later writers wrapped around him.

The recurring theme is that feeling mattered more than correctness. He was willing to distort a proportion or push a colour past what he could see, if the result carried more of the thing itself.

What the letters do not explain

They are not a key to the pictures. Vincent wrote about intention, and intention is the least reliable guide to what a painting actually does. He also wrote for an audience of one — his brother — and shaped the story accordingly.

Read the letters as context, not as caption. The picture has to stand without them, and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear does.

A line worth keeping

The letters are published in full and freely searchable, which makes them unusually easy to check. If a quotation about Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is circulating online without a letter number, treat it as suspect.

Vincent's own phrasing is plainer than the paraphrases. He wrote about being tired, about money, about wanting to make something that would look well on a wall — not about posterity.

How to read the letters yourself

The complete correspondence is published online with letter numbers and dates. Searching a phrase will usually get you to the original within a minute, which makes it easy to check any quotation you see.

Read a few letters in sequence rather than one in isolation. Vincent repeats himself, contradicts himself, and revises his account of the same event depending on how the money was going.

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is one of 43 pictures from the Arles years in this library. The palette runs to green, orange, blue; the original is at Courtauld Institute of Art, London. The largest reproduction we print is 60 × 90 cm, which is enough to read the composition and not enough to read every stroke — that is the honest trade a print makes.

Source note: catalogue data from the holding museum; quotations from Vincent van Gogh's correspondence; image files from open-access museum releases where available. Dated, not completed — see the note on dating in the article above.