Vincent van Gogh is an 1886 oil on canvas portrait painting by Australian artist John Russell. It depicts Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who befriended Russell after meeting him at Fernand Cormon's atelier in Paris, which they both attended. Painted in a realist and academic manner, the portrait shows hints of the impressionist techniques that Russell and Van Gogh began experimenting with in the latter half of the 1880s.
It is the earliest of three portraits painted of Van Gogh from life by his contemporaries, the other two being Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Portrait of Vincent van Gogh (1887) and Paul Gauguin's The Painter of Sunflowers (1888). Van Gogh seems to have been particularly attached to Russell's portrait, which the Australian gifted to him as a mark of their friendship. The painting passed from Van Gogh to his brother Theo, then to their family, and is now in the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
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Background
Russell was born into a wealthy engineering family in 1858 in Sydney, New South Wales. The family business, P.N. Russell & Co, was responsible for much of the city's 19th-century ironwork. Although Russell had a strong interest in art from an early age, he met his parents' expectations and trained in the 1870s to become an engineer. His father’s death in December 1879 left him with a sizeable inheritance and gave him the freedom to travel and become an artist. He went to London in 1881 and enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, attending classes sporadically over several months, then returned to Sydney in 1882 before touring Europe the following year with fellow Australian artist Tom Roberts. In 1885, Russell moved to Paris to study under Fernand Cormon, whose small, all-French studio school was considered an unusual choice for international students in Paris, the majority of whom wanted to attend the elite Académie Julian. According to Russell expert Sarah Turnbull, his decision to study at Cormon's is "revealing – it shows guts and cultural openness."