This Is One Of The Best In-Car-Self-Portraits On Canvas: Cold Start

I’ve always been a bit surprised that self-portrait paintings of people in cars aren’t a more common trope in art. Really, they’re not common at all, which I feel is a grievous oversight, because I think many of us look and feel at our best when behind the wheel. Photography has plenty of portraits of people behind the wheel, but painting? It just never quite took in the same way. Still, there are some great examples, and I think the first one ever – and one of the best – was done in 1928 by Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka (or Łempicka), and is called Autoportrait or Tamara in a Green Bugatti.

The painting was commissioned by the German magazine Die Dame, for an issue highlighting women’s independence. Łempicka was spotted while on vacation in Monte Carlo by the editor of the magazine, who was familiar with Łempicka’s work because she’d done some covers for the magazine previously.

Here’s the cover itself, in case you can’t find your copy among all of your stacks of pre-WWII European fashion magazines:

© Tamara de Lempicka Estate LLC/ARS in the USA.

Łempicka’s self-portrait is a considered one of the iconic examples of Art Deco portraiture; the forms are simplified and geometric, and her face is a sort of an idealized, almost sculptural portrayal. Her look is absolutely incredible and devastating: confident, beautiful, and definitely a bit cold, maybe even judgy, because she knows she’s a badass behind the wheel of a Bugatti, and you’re just looking on as she speeds by.

In reality, Łempicka drove a little yellow Renault, but she knew that wasn’t the right car for what she was going for, hence the Bugatti.

Now, the car is referred to as a Bugatti in the painting, but it’s not clear what Bugatti is being portrayed. Bugattis of the era were right-hand-drive, and this is left, and most didn’t have suicide doors like what is seen in the painting as well. Later Bugattis, like the Type 57 from the ’30s to the ’40s, did, but those didn’t exist yet.

I think the closest match might be a Type 38, from 1925 or so. The curve of the door and windshield really don’t fit with the painting, but the size and proportions seem about right. The windshield is much more raked than the near-vertical windshield of the painting, too. It’s possible she stylized the car’s look to be just what she felt looked right, accuracy be damned. I mean, everything is quite stylized, and I suspect accuracy to the car was no more important than making her own face completely naturalistic, which clearly she wasn’t concerned with, either.

If I had to guess, I’d suspect that Łempicka was at least partially working from memory based on her experiences driving her Renault, which may have been a Type RA, which had a very vertical windshield, much like the one shown in the painting, and had the forward-mounted door handle of a suicide door:

I can’t prove this, but it feels like it could explain why the car was rendered in the way it was.

Even if the Bugatti’s details aren’t accurate, that’s fine! The power of this portrait isn’t in how accurate the car or anything is, it’s how it all feels, and Łempicka absolutely nails it in that context. The mood conveyed here is the essence of what every sports car or luxury car maker has been chasing for over a century, and what they want you, as someone who has money that could be hypothetically exchanged for one of their cars, to desire: that cool aplomb, the effortless power, the desirability, the aloof sexiness, everything.

I do think this may be the first self-portrait painting of an artist in a car; the closest analog I can think of is Matisse’s 1917 point-of-view painting out of the windshield of his Renault, The Windshield, On the Road to Villacoublay:

In this case, though, we see the artist’s view as opposed to the artist themselves; it’s a sort of self-portrait, but not really. I think Łempicka’s is still likely the first.

But first or not doesn’t really matter; it’s an incredible painting, and I hope everyone reading this gets to feel like that at least once in their car-driving lives.