Self Portrait 1904

Boris Kustodiev made this self-portrait using what looks like pencil or crayon, smudging and layering to find the face. The gaze is intense and the texture on the paper gives a kind of soft focus, almost like he’s trying to soften his own features. You can see how he’s worked the brow line, digging in with the pencil to create shadow and depth, and then smudging it to create this sense of volume. I wonder what it was like for Kustodiev to look at himself so intently, trying to capture not just his likeness, but something of his inner self. What does he see when he looks in the mirror? What is he trying to communicate? There’s a vulnerability in self-portraiture. The painter is both subject and object, creator and critic. When an artist stares into the mirror like that, they are in conversation with a long history of artists doing the same thing. They are asking the same questions about the self, about identity, and about the nature of representation. It is not just a portrait of one person; it's an invitation to contemplate the human condition.