Pyeongye
01Where you've seen it
In 2023, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam turned 50 and teamed up with Pokémon. Its Pikachu in a gray felt hat was dressed up as Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat.
The museum handed out a Pikachu promo card to visitors, and it became so popular that resellers swarmed in. In the end the museum stopped giving the card out. A self-portrait more than a century old had people lining up around the block.
02The real story
The Van Gogh hanging at Pyeongye wears a yellow straw hat, not felt. He painted it in Paris in 1887. He was living with his brother Theo then, and with no money for models, he painted his own face in the mirror again and again.
Turn this canvas over and there is another picture. It is The Potato Peeler, painted two years earlier in the Dutch countryside in heavy, dark colors. One piece of cloth holds both of him: the country painter in the dark, and the Paris painter who had just found bright color.