Self-Portrait
William Bailey American
Not on view
Regarded for his long tenure as a professor of art at Yale University, Bailey is known primarily as a painter of finely rendered and hyper-illusionistic, but fictional, still lifes. Thus, this self-portrait is quite anomalous in his oeuvre. Bailey shows himself bearded and wearing a blue jacket, as he returns the viewer’s gaze plainly against a warm, light-brown ground. The palette is generally muted, reminiscent of Picasso’s Rose and Blue Periods, which imbues the image with a contemplative quietude.