Self-Portrait

This is Self-Portrait, painted by Walter Shirlaw in eighteen seventy eight. You are at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the number on the label should read 1887.234. Take a moment to confirm you are standing in front of the right canvas.

I do not have the details of its size or its exact gallery in front of me, so let your eyes do the finding. If it is a smaller, quieter picture, that would not be unusual for a painted self-portrait from this period. Give yourself a second to adjust to it before you read on.

What you are looking at is an artist's record of his own face, made by his own hand. That is the plain fact of a self-portrait, and it is worth sitting with. He chose how to light himself, how to dress, where to look, or where not to look.

Start close. Look at the eyes first, since that is usually where a painter spends the most care in a self-portrait, working from a mirror, trying to catch something true. Then step back and take in the whole figure, the clothing, the background, whatever he chose to include or leave out around himself.

Here is the thing most people miss with self-portraits. This is not simply a likeness. It is an argument the painter is making about himself, for anyone who might look later. The pose, the expression, the setting, none of it is accidental. He is presenting himself the way he wanted to be seen, or perhaps the way he was struggling to see himself.

I do not want to hand you invented facts about Shirlaw's life or this particular sitting, since I am not certain of them. What I can tell you is that this comes from eighteen seventy eight, a specific year, painted by a specific hand, and that alone is worth holding onto as you look.

So stand with it a little longer. Study the face for whatever mood it holds, confidence, doubt, weariness, calm. Then ask yourself a simple question. Does this look like a man showing you who he is, or a man still deciding.