Autoportrait (sur fond rouge)
(Self-portrait on a red background)

1939, oil painting on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
Private coll.
N ° inv. 52

As a young artist, Bertrand was interested in questioning his own face. Over a period of about ten years (1937-1946), he produced at least twenty self-portraits. In this work, just as in many other self-portraits that he drew or painted during that period, Bertrand depicted himself in a one-quarter profile position looking towards the spectator with some slightly haughty distance which provides a mysterious and even suspicious atmosphere to the painting: this oblique and elusive posture reflects the typical mental distance that characterizes the artist and his work. Such a position emphasises the nose profile, a rather narrow and sharp-ended nose, elongated by highly-positioned nostrils – which the artist generally tended to exacerbate – with two thin lines representing the typical moustache (David Niven-style) worn by the artist for the rest of his life.
This self-portrait long belonged to his friend and biographer Robert Delevoy, who was in charge of the Apollo Gallery in Brussels and exhibited his works several times.
During the war, on the occasion of the Apport Fairs and other events, Robert Delevoy already exhibited the works of some young painters who he considered as the most promising ones. This painting was sold at the public auction organized by the Simonson bookshop in March 1990.