The self-portrait: the only work in the collection explicitly titled Self P. in the CSV, the only watercolor, and one of the most visually extraordinary works in the entire archive. The face fills the composition — a broad, full-featured face looking directly at the viewer with wide, slightly reddened eyes, the whites of the eyes described with pink-red washes that give them a quality of openness or intensity. The skin is built from orange, amber, and sienna washes layered to create a warm, luminous complexion. The short hair at the crown is painted in grey-blue wavy marks. A teal and pink striped or spiraled collar element frames the neck below. The clothing below is a deep magenta or rose pink, the background a warm olive-gold.
The watercolor medium — the only occurrence in the collection — gives this self-portrait a quality of painted light rather than drawn line. Where all the other works in the archive are line-based, this one is area-based: the colors applied as washes that build form through value and hue rather than through contour. The face is constructed from overlapping color zones — the highlights as lighter orange, the shadow zones as deeper sienna and brown, the eyes as pink-washed ovals — and the result is a face built from inside out rather than from outside in.
The directness of the gaze — both eyes open and facing forward, the face fully presented — makes the self-portrait an act of self-examination rather than self-portrayal. Sidney is looking at himself and recording what he sees: the wide eyes, the full nose and lips, the specific quality of the complexion, the particular way the face occupies the picture plane. This is the same attentiveness he brought to hundreds of other faces, now turned on his own.
As the collection's only self-portrait and its only watercolor, this work occupies a completely unique position. It connects Sidney's extensive practice of observing others to the act of observing himself, completing a circle that the figure drawing and portrait practice began. The craquelure visible at the edges of the paper suggests age and handling — this work has lived in the world in a way that many of the drawings have not.