Self-portrait in white coat and hat

1923

He has the pose and wears the garb of the typical proud artiste-peintre. But he looks grim and is red-eyed, plunged in harsh conflict with the critics. The many self-portraits of Dick Beer vary in appearance as much as the painting styles. When we examine photos, starting in 1913 (young, fierce, handsome) and going to 1938 (looking much older than his 45), we realize that in real life also the artist changed so much physically that it is hard to believe it’s the same person. Here is how Bertil Bull Hedlund decribed him in the Paris of 1913 : “An artistic appearance in velvet suit, pearl-grey and fashionable cut, arriving directly from a party with Rodolphe and Mimi. Also broad-brimmed hat, clay pipe and Vandyke beard.
Beau gosse ! But what most impressed me as a twenty-year-old was this breath of international artist culture inherited from his painter-home in London’s Victorian Age.”