Self-portraits

Self-portraits are among the most fascinating examples of portrait painting. In them, artists expose themselves, or rather, how they want to be seen. They grapple with their physiognomy, their art, and their position in society. Whether posing or deliberately not posing, furnished with all of the insignia of artistic representation or consciously minimal and experimental—self-portraits as biographical documents and artistic commentaries are a traditional focus of the Wien Museum’s collection. Here, a selection of examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.