Self-Portrait

In the early twentieth century, Jerome Myers drew inspiration from the people and scenes he encountered near his home in lower Manhattan. In terms both of ideology and subject matter, he closely resembled his contemporaries and associates of the Ashcan School, such as Robert Henri, John Sloan, and George Luks. Myers is reputed to have been one of the first American artists to gain commercial success representing unglamorous, unidealized urban scenes. In his self-portraits, as in this painting from late in his career, Myers adopts a beret and emphasizes his facial features to resemble the famous self-portraitist Rembrandt.