Philip Akkerman paints exclusively self-portraits, every workday between nine and five, for almost forty years. He does this in his studio in The Hague. Akkerman paints with the technique of the old masters, namely in three steps: first a drawing, then a layer in one color to divide dark and light and finally the color. The technical structure of the painting is therefore fixed, just like the subject. But otherwise Akkerman lets himself be guided by his intuition. He does ‘what he feels like’. Akkerman does not believe in styles: “Styles are a university invention”.

In the meantime, he has made thousands of paintings in this way. The mastery of the painting technique gives him enormous freedom. This freedom ensures an enormous variety within this one subject, from realistic to extremely imaginative, from pointillist to cubist and from an intensely dark to a popping colour palette. We offer this auction from a private collection seven paintings and two drawings (lot numbers 6802-6808).