self-portrait

American  

[self-pawr-trit, -treyt, -pohr-, self-] / ˌsɛlfˈpɔr trɪt, -treɪt, -ˈpoʊr-, ˈsɛlf- /

noun

• self-portraits
  plural

1. a portrait of oneself done by oneself.

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self-portrait British  

noun

1. a portrait one draws or paints of oneself

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• self-portraits
  plural

Etymology

Origin of self-portrait

First recorded in 1830–40

Explanation

If you draw a picture of yourself, it's a self-portrait. Vincent van Gogh was well-known for his many self-portraits, painting more than 40 of them over the course of a few years. Whenever an artist creates a portrait of herself, whatever medium she uses, the result is a self-portrait. A six year-old can draw a self-portrait in crayon, and a famous sculptor can sculpt one out of clay. In the mid-15th century, Early Renaissance painters were the first to focus on creating deliberate self-portraits; this was probably due partly to the fact that mirrors had just recently become affordable and fairly easy to find.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

self-portrait self-portraits

The final sections of the research consider whether modern descendants share physical similarities with Leonardo's famous self-portrait.

From Science Daily ● May 4, 2026

He would sit by the lake watching the sunset, and one stormy evening - while eating takeaway Pad Thai - decided it would make a "funny, sad" self-portrait.

From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2026

Therrien’s exploratory, artistic bird-flipping isn’t parody, like German artist Anselm Kiefer’s prickly self-portrait photographs raising a Hitler salute in front of ruined landscapes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 25, 2025

The show opens with a Warhol self-portrait from 1986—an imposing nearly 7-foot-tall image of the artist in teal, his spiked hair making him seem like another New York icon, Lady Liberty.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

And right now, even my self-portrait wears earmuffs.

From "Muffled" by Jennifer Gennari

To create one of his characters, “the last lost boy,” Cardoza took self-portraits wearing a three-faced mask and a tattered brown jacket.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2026

Or it could simply indicate that collectors feel safer splurging on a household-name artist like Rembrandt, a Renaissance man famed for his pensive, realistic self-portraits in earthen hues.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026

And at Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Kazakh artist Waldemar Zimbelmann offers viewers a slinky series of self-portraits in which the artist twists, spins and transforms himself in a series of highly textured guises.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 3, 2025

Think of these eccentric beards as Therrien’s self-portraits.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 25, 2025

He makes more self-portraits, too, many of them.

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman