This work belongs to a small series of self-portraits that Kossoff executed in the first three years of the nineteen-seventies. Kossoff has painted himself perennially throughout his career, though with long intervals between these bursts of creativity. These works have been markedly consistent, retaining the same full-face format that he adopted for one of his earliest self-portrait (c. 1952, Tate Collection). The focus of attention is his pensive expression, an image of engaging melancholy. Concentrating his image so tightly, even to the exclusion of his shoulders, these works deliver a compact presentation of the artist. Even as he leans his head forward, his eyes shoot in the opposite direction, as if he has just caught something in the corner of his eye.

Intriguingly, though he is most likely working from a mirror image of himself, Kossoff’s eyes are averted and look away from the viewer. It is common for artists to stare out of their self-portraits, an unavoidable indication of the mirror which they are working from. You cannot view yourself in a mirror as you look away, after all. In this case, however, Kossoff appears to have done just that, depicting his head in an informal bow, his eyes slanting away from the viewers’. His face is structured by the deep black surface of his beard, which covers his jaw bone. This is a powerful, brooding work, rooted in the painter’s fascinating, elusive discourse with himself.