Self-Portrait

Bellows’s Self-Portrait wittily presents himself in the very act of creating it. Reflected in a scallop-framed mirror, the artist intently studies his likeness while recording it on the thick lithographic stone that would be prepared and inked to make this print. He sports the bow tie often worn during this period of his career, and a cigarette dangles from his free hand. Bellows frequently attempted to break his smoking habit, writing on one occasion to a friend, “. . . all winter I have been making evasive gestures at cigarettes usually with the left hand and lighting them with the right.”