Van Gogh: Self-Portraits review – ghostly encounters with greatness

Courtauld Gallery, London
This small, unmissable show of 16 of Van Gogh’s 37 surviving self-portraits, all made during the last four years of his life, reveals a world of extreme feelingWhat did Vincent van Gogh look like? Only one photograph of the artist exists, and in it he’s unrecognisable. At 19, the beard has not yet appeared; the familiar inverted triangle of his skull still goes incognito beneath the fleshiness of youth. Later, several of his friends would make portraits of h