‘I suspect the existence of most self-portraits is due to the absence of another model, whether by cancellation or in the case of dedicated portrait painters, a temporary drying up of commissions.’ Tom Phillips, R.A

Although self-portraiture can be traced back to Greek art, it was not until the Renaissance that it became a genre of its own, nurtured by treatises such as Vasari’s The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters (1550) and the subsequent creation of a cult of celebrity. From this came the tradition, most commonly associated with Dürer and Rembrandt, that artists were melancholic geniuses battling with the meaning of their existence, usually through a deeply introspective gaze. Such is the mood of several works in Through My Eyes: 40 Self-Portraits, where artists assert their identities and craft in a personal, sometimes somber, manner. On a more intimate scale, but with a similar mood of stygian gloom, there are the self-portraits of Edgar Holloway and Evelyn Gibbs, whose honesty and introspection convey a deep engagement with the self.