Self-Portrait

Pinkas painted portraits since his law studies. In 1848 he made cartoons of the deputies at the Kroměříž Diet, later he portrayed in charcoal and oils his friends, outstanding personalities of Prague cultural life (e.g. the historian František Palacký) and members of his family. In 1853 he studied privately art in Munich, where he painted several portraits, among them his self-portrait. The brushwork is deft, with red contours in the drawing of the face, found in Purkyně’s portraits from the 1850s. This self-portrait is a good psychological study of an intelligent and self-confident young man.