William Dobson's haunting self-portrait must be saved for the nation

An introspective masterpiece by a rare British painter of the English civil war era, this work deserves a public home where it can speak to our own troubled timesThe top 10 self-portraits in artHis big dark eyes dream beneath a mane of shaggy brown hair, his ruddy face is moustachioed, and a white cravat is wrapped around his throat under a monastic-looking coat. The man in this painting is a romantic. He looks a bit like the 19th-century painter Gustave Courbet. Indeed, his intensity is not a m