Self Portrait (San Feliu)

Kitaj’s self-portraits often take influence from previous artists, drawing on a wide range of sources from Chaïm Soutine to Masaccio. This self-portrait emulates Jozef Israëls’ The Hearth (1883). Israëls was a leading painter of the Hague School whose use of chiaroscuro and portrayal of Jewish peasantry earned him comparisons to his fellow Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn. Towards the later part of his career Kitaj came to explore his Jewish identity in further depth. In 1989, he curated the Jewish School of London exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London, celebrating the influence of Jewish identity in the works of his contemporaries, including Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. He wrote, 'One’s life, and thus one’s art-life, has been a preparation for becoming a kind of Jew, etc., what kind, I have to try and invent!'