Nakamura Tsune, the third son of a former Mito domain retainer, lost his parents, older sister, and older brother when quite young. He himself suffered from tuberculosis. Recuperating in various places, he made watercolor sketches and decided to become a painter. After training at the Hakubakai and Taiheiyogakai institutes, he moved into a studio behind the Nakamura-ya bakery in Shinjuku where he interacted with other young artists attracted by the landlord, Soma Aizo, and his wife Kokko.
Tsune produced this self-portrait when he was about twenty-two. The composition, in which the subject is at a slight angle to the picture plane, with strong light shining from above on the artist’s forehead, shows the influence of a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Nicknamed “sourpuss” because of Tsune’s expression, it echoes similarly warped expressions in Rembrandt’s early self-portraits. According to Nakahara Teijiro, a sculptor and friend, Tsune purchased an expensive catalogue of Rembrandt paintings at the Maru-zen bookstore in about 1909 and studied them carefully, looking through the book so many times it was blackened by his fingerprints. During this period, Tsune produced multiple self-portraits in the style of Rembrandt. This highly polished work is the culmination of that series; Tsune himself wrote, “It is my masterpiece.” He showed it in the fourth Bunten, in 1910, where it won a prize, along with his Impressionist-style Seashore Village (Houses with White Plaster Walls) (1910, Tokyo National Museum), which received the third prize.