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The Zaza Hotel |
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The Johnson Space Center |
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Return to the Index Page for our Trip to Houston |
On this page, I want to take you through the Van Gogh exhibit. Between us, I think we photographed just about every artwork, descriptive plaque, photograph, drawing, and display in the exhibit. I putting this page together, drawing on all those photographs that we took, I think I can do a good job of allowing you to essentially walk through the exhibit yourself.
Most of the narrative on this page will be my transcription of the information on the descriptive plaques, although in some cases I may just show you a photograph of that plaque, rather than take the time to transcribe it. My difficulty was that since flash was not allowed in the exhibit, and since in some galleries the lighting wasn't very good, some of the pictures didn't turn out well; an artwork or two might be a bit fuzzy, and I may have to transcribe a plaque because you would have difficulty reading it on your own. Also, since almost all the artworks on this page will be Van Gogh's, I will only include an artist name if there happens to be a work that is not his.
So, apologizing in advance for the occasional poor photograph, please walk with us through the Van Gogh exhibit at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts!
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Introduction to the Exhibit
This introductory gallery presents five periods in the life of Fincent van Gogh: The Early Years, Paris, Arles, Saint-Remy, and Auvers-sur-Oise. In each section, you will see reproductions of representative works of these periods. The nine color reproductions in this room are facsimiles produced by the Van Gogh Museum of important and fragile paintings that cannot be borrowed. Together with the reproductions of drawings shown in this gallery, they illustrate key works from Van Gogh's career.
These facsimiles are installed over enlargements of letters by Van Gogh, who maintained a daily correspondence with his beloved brother Theo. It is thanks to these letters, more extensive than a diary, that so much is known about the artist. In addition, you will hear sounds that are evocative of the places and periods in which Van Gogh lived. Once you enter the exhibition proper, beginning with Van Gogh's early work in Nuenen in the next room, every work of art you will encounter is original and unique.
Carpenter's Yard and Laundry (1882) |
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Vincent briefly attends Fernand Cormon's studio, but it is his firsthand exposure to works by the Impressionists and Pointillists that is most crucial to his own artistic development.
Digger (1881) |
Boulevard de Clichy (1887) |
View of Paris with the Opera (1886) |
Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (1888) |
Van Gogh moves to Arles seeking the sun and warmth of southern France, where he hopes to establish an artist colony.
The Bedroom (1888) |
Sunflowers (1889) |
The Harvest (1888) |
Undergrowth (1889) |
Almond Blossom (1890) |
Landscape at Twilight (1890) |
Hoping to continue his recovery, Vincent leaves Saint-Remy in May 1890 and settles in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, under the care of the doctor and Impressionist art collector Paul Gachet.
Wheatfield under Thunderclouds (1890) |
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Early Years as an Artist: The Netherlands, 1881-85
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in 1853 into a Dutch Reformed family in the southern Netherlands. His father was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague. Of his three sisters and two brothers, Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo. While his father's salary was modest, the Church supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse, and a high social position.
Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child- schooled at home, in the village school, and then, beginning in 1864, in a boarding school (where he felt abandoned, and campaigned to come home). His interest in art began when he was encouraged to draw as a child; these early drawings are expressive, but do not approach the intensity of his later work. At boarding school, his teacher, who had been a successful artist in Paris, influenced Vincent towards "impressionistic" thinking, particularly regarding the nature of common objects. Van Gogh returned home in 1868, later writing that his youth was "austere and cold, and sterile".
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He immersed himself in religion, becoming increasingly pious and monastic, and developed a desire to become a pastor. He was sent to live with an uncle who was a respected theologian. He failed a university theology entrance exam, and, although he also failed to complete a course at a Protestant missionary school, took a post as a missionary in a poor mining area of Belgium in 1879. He was too monastic even for Church authorities, and was dismissed. But he had become interested in the people and scenes around him, and recorded them in drawings after Theo's suggestion that he take up art in earnest. He travelled to Brussels, and at the urging of the Dutch artist with whom he studied, registered at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts to study anatomy, modelling, and perspective.
Van Gogh returned home in 1881; he continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. he went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his cousin, Anton Mauve- a successful artist. Mauve advised him to spend some time working in charcoal and pastels, eventually taking him on as a student and introducing him to watercolor. In 1882, Mauve introduced him to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio. The two had a falling out, so Van Gogh borrowed money from Theo to continue work in the medium. He developed a technique of spreading the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. Eventually, Van Gogh, driven by loneliness, went to live again with his parents in Nuenen.
In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages- among other subjects.
Jean-Francois Millet (c. 1865-66) Etching on Japanese paper The French Realist was an exceptionally talented draftsman, handling the etching needle with incredible deftness and lightness of touch. Van Gogh had immeasurable admiration for Millet, who is known for his scenes of peasants and physical labor in rural France. Throughout his career, Van Gogh would return to drawing and painting after images such as this one. |
(October, 1880) Graphite and black chalk on wove paper At the age of 17, Van Gogh resolved to become an artist after abandoning other career paths. He set out to learn how to draw, commenting that "drawing is the root of everything." One method was to copy prints after artists he admired, such as Millet. In this drawing, two men arduously till the earth, symbolizing the drudgery that humans endure in life. |
At Nuenen, Van Gogh executed many studies of heads- intending to paint 50, of which 47 are known. He continued these works until around the time of his father's death in early 1885. The subjects of these studies were villagers in Nuenen, whom Van Gogh depicted as primitive, coarse individuals, with almost animal-like expressions.
(1884-85) Oil on Canvas The sitter is Gordina de Groot, daughter of a Nuenen farming family, wearing one of the characteristic white gauze caps worn by the women of Nuenen. The De Groots were depicted in Van Gogh's first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, and she is clearly the woman at the left. |
(1884) Oil on canvas With its uncompromising technique and direct stare, this is one of the most arresting of Van Gogh's character heads. The shape of the bulky cap is well defined, and the face is strikingly constructed. The textured brushstrokes consciously imitate the wrinkles in the old woman's features. |
Beginning here, I had more light and time for my photos, and so I can show you larger images. Whenever you see a small image with the legend "(click to enlarge)" just below it, you can click on that small image to see the larger one.
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Van Gogh learned how to draw from copying lithographs of Old Master drawings and classical statues contained in artists' manuals. On this sheet, Van Gogh portrays a teenage girl from a drawing by the 16th-century artist Hans Holbein the Younger. He closely followed the form, paying attention to th emeasurements and broad outlines. Van Gogh believed it was essential draw in black and white before attempting to work in color.
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In 1881, desperately searching for a career, Van Gogh turned to his cousin Anton Mauve, an accomplished landscapist working in the Hague. Van Gogh's earliest works, including this still life, were painted under Mauve's tutelage. When Mauve praised his student's achievements, an elated Van Gogh wrote to his brother, "Of course they aren't masterpieces and yet I truly believe there's somthing sound and real in them, more at least than in what I've made up to now. And so I now consider myself to be at the beginning of making something serious."
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In April, 1881, Van Gogh moved in with his parents in Etten, in the Brabant region where he was born. He expanded his drawing practice there by using live moels in the rural countryside. In this drawing, Van Gogh used as his model Pier Kaufmann, the Van Gogh family's gardener who is believed to have posed for the artist between 30 and 50 times. At the outset of his training, Van Gogh worked only with pencil, but he began expanding his drawing materials after studying Armand Cassagne's Watercolor Treatise (1875) and being influence from the painter Anton Mauve.
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While living in The Hague, Van Gogh enjoyed drawing after people at the Dutch REformed Home for the Elderly. One of his favorite subjects was Adrianus Jacobus Sunderland. He wears a top hat and tails, formal wear usually equated with the affluent, but during this period these items were associated with people who were reliant on castoffs. Van Gogh favored the pencil for its exactitude. He often used carpenter's pencils that enabled him to sketch wide and narrow lines from the same instrument, sometimes fixing his drawings with milk, making the graphite more velvety black, while scratching into the surface for highlights.
Van Gogh made extensive use of his sketchbooks, but none of these were actually in this exhibit. There were some facsimiles of them, and a descriptive plaque that indicated why the originals weren't here:
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There was also a display case containing facsimiles of the wide variety of the drawing implements that Van Gogh employed during these years to create the pictures shown in this second gallery. Alongside that display was an interesting plaque that talked about Van Gogh as a draftsman. The display is below, and the plaque in the scrollable window to the right:
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While living in The Hague, Van Gogh began experimenting with lithography and incorporating lithographic materials into his drawing practice. He enjoyed the lithographic crayon because it was greasy, extremely black, and could transfer his pencil's texture. His range of materials increased the tonal range in his drawings, and Van Gogh called them "paintings in black." Here he also used opaque watercolor, or gouache. Inspired by British prints of the working class, Van Gogh made a series of six Dutch fishermen wearing sou'westers, collapsible waterproof rain hats worn at sea. His models were men from the Dutch Reformed Home for the Elderly.
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Van Gogh's earliest explorations in landscape began in Holland, where he portrayed the panoramic, windswept plains and broad, open skies. On his return trip home to Etten after visiting his mentor Anton Mauve in The Hague, Van Gogh exited the train to depict the windmills of Dordrecht. He probably used only a pencil to jot down the main ideas of the composition while in transit, later working in the details with diverse drawing materials. Instead of exploiting the transparent and luminous qualities of watercolor. Van Gogh preferred the opaque version, called gouache, which he diluted to achieve varying consistencies.
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This superb early drawing is a precursor to the graphic sensibility of Van Gogh's later pen drawings from Arles. It was made during his excursion to a huge marsh called the Passievaart, outside of Etten, with the artist Anthon van Rappard, whom he had met in Brussels. They drew from the same vantage point, dividing the vast marsh into horizontal planes. In this drawing, Van Gogh used a variety of line work to evoke elements of the wet, fertile landscape. Hatching and cross-hatching was used instead of wash for tonal value. He signed it "Vincent," added framing lines, and gave it to his sister Wil.
In 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour's daughter ten years his senior, fell in love with Van Gogh and he reciprocated. Their families were not in favor, and the relationship ended. In 1885, his father died of a heart attack. Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in 1885. During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours, and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguish his later work.
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All of Van Gogh's attempts at finding a suitable career having ended in failure, in late 1883 he was forced to live with his parents in Nuenen, a village in North Brabant, where his father was pastor of the Reformed Church. Despite the difficult family situation, Van Gogh was able to devote himself entirely to painting and captured at least 14 different sites of this village. The muted, Old-Masterly tonality of browns and earth colors that Van Gogh used for the depiction of this humble cottage is typical for his works from Nuenen.
There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885. Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit. In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work, The Potato Eaters, and a series of "peasant character studies" which were the culmination of several years of work. When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark, and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism.
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In 1885, Van Gogh moved to Antwerp, where he lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. His health deteriorated on a poor diet while he applied himself to the study of color theory and spent time in museums— particularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubens— and broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. Heavy drinking put him in the hospital in early 1886. After his recovery, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, but constant friction between himself and his instructors led to his quitting the Academy and his departure for Paris.
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Van Gogh delighted in drawing the subjects of the harvest in rural Nuenen. He posed his models in a studio setting before heading out into the fields to experience their activities for himself. Van Gogh considered the reaper, who gathers and cuts stalks, as the counterpart to the sower, who disseminates seeds to propagate the earth. The reaper was seen as the figure of death, and the corn he is gleaning represents humanity.
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Landscape with Cattle
(c. 1870, oil on canvas)
This bucolic landscape is by Anton Mauve, Vincent van Gogh's cousin, who was a respected and successful painter associated with The Hague School. In late 1881, Van Gogh went to The Hague to study painting with Mauve. Up to this moment, Van Gogh had concentrated entirely on drawing. Mauve introduced him to the technique of oil painting and guided his first steps as a painter. Vincent soon had a falling-out with Mauve, which limited the amount of instruction he received, and he disdained to follow in Mauve's footsteps as an artist concentrating on the beauties of the Dutch landscape.
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The old medieval church, just outside the village of Nuenen, could be seen from the vicarage where Van Gogh's parents lived. When he arrived in December, 1883, it was already being demolished, and by June 1885 the demolition was complete. One of Van Gogh's first major paintings, it depicts, like teh slightly earlier Potato Eaters, the primitive peasant world. He described his intention to express "how perfectly simple death and burial is, as simple as the falling of the autumn leaves- just some earth dug up- a little wooden cross." Van Gogh's father, Theodorus van Gogh, was buried in this churchyard in 1885, just before Vincent painted this picture.
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Van Gogh recorded peasant life while living in Nuenen; notably, he painted his famed Potato Eaters (1885) there. Although Van Gogh commonly used a pencil for drawing early in his career, he had begun sketching in black chalk by 1885. Its gestural ease and the ability to produce thin as well as broad, soft lines appealed to his freer, spontaneous style. As in this example, he would use fixative on his drawings to prevent them from smudging and, at times, to increase the darkness of the lines. Black evoked the rusticity and poverty of the rural existence, furthering Van Gogh's kinship to the Realist tradition.
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There is no obvious indication that the woman portrayed here in three-quarter profile, wearing a light blue dress with a modest decollete, is a prostitute. Her expression, though somewhat puzzled, is not wanton. Only her bright red lips and her painted eyelids, unthinkable at this time for "decent" women, point to her "fallen" state. Van Gogh, who had lived with a former prostitute named Sien Hoornik for several years during his time in The Hague, had great empathy for these women cast out by society.
In Search of Renewal: Paris, 1886-1887
As we moved into the next gallery, we were following Van Gogh's move to Paris- and a sea change in his art.
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Flower still lifes played a decisive role in th epivotal change that Van Gogh's style underwent during his years in Paris, 1886-1888. He painted at least 30 of these works during the summer of 1886, and this painting is believed to be one of the earliest of that group. It documents his reaction to current color theories and the lightened palette of the Impressionists, but also the powerful influence of Adolphe Monticelli, a little-known painter from Marseilles, whose heavy application of paint Van Gogh admired greatly.
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Painted just a few months later than Roses with Peonies, this still life represents a major step forward for Van Gogh. The darker tonality is now replaced with an overall light palette. Not satisfied with his original arrangement of the bouquet, Van Gogh added the yellow stalk, which is painted on top of the cobalt-blue background. It was a stroke of brilliance. Instead of leaving a void at the center, Van Gogh allows the bouquet to rotate around this stalk of dazzling yellow flowers.
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The Hill of Montmartre (1886, oil on canvas) |
The Hill of Montmartre (1886, black chalk with a brown tinge on laid paper) |
In Paris, Van Gogh lived with Theo on the rue Lepie, halfway up the hill of Montmartre in an apartment that commanded splendid views of Paris. He would often walk around the hill to the northern slope, where he would see this view of vegetable gardens, the long building of the Ferme Debray, and the three windmills along the skyline. He depicted this side of Montmartre several times from different vantage points both in paintings and drawings. The drawing (above, right) was once considered a later copy of the painting, but recent research has confirmed that it is a detailed preliminary study for the painting.
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The Impasse des Deux Freres was an east-west lane that linked the three windmills on the top of the hill of Montmartre. In this view, the Poivre mill is visible on the right, its sails facing west and its entrance decorated with four flags. An advertisement in the form of a wheeled model of a windmill stands in the foreground. The trees are leafless, although people are strolling and sitting out at tables, suggesting that it may be an early spring day. Living nearby, Van Gogh sketched and painted these surroundings often. The lightness of touch typifies the impressionistic and colorful style he adopted in Paris.
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This vibrant study of a man's head in profile is popularly described as a portrait of Theo van Gogh, bearing a striking resemblance to him when compared with contemporary photographs. Although the identification cannot be mae with complete certainty, this is undoubtedly a careful posed portrait rather than a random sketch, and Theo remains the most likely candidate. The bright tonality is consistent with Van Gogh's discovery of color in Paris, and the technique is confident and bold with pronounced diagonal hatching.
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Van Gogh did not attempt any self-portraits before his time in Paris. However, once he embarked on this genre, he proceeded in an almost frenzied manner, painting 27 self-portraits between the fall of 1886 and 1888. His gaunt face, receding hairline, red beard, and green eyes are painted with very fine brushstrokes, while those of the jacket are much looser. A halo of light blue dabs enliven the neutral background. This effect, however, was not Van Gogh's intention, but resulted from the fading of a purple underlayer of the red pigment cochineal. The background was originally blue with touches of dark red paint, but the red has become almost completely transparent.
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Agostina Segatori, the Italian owner of Le Tambourin cafe, a restaurant and cabaret on the Boulevard de Clichy, was a famous former painters' model and, at the time this was painted, Van Gogh's lover. She is fashionably dressed, sitting at a tambourine-shaped table with tambourine-shaped stools, the establishment's trademark furnishings. Agostina allowed Van Gogh to exhibit works in the cafe, and some of his Japanese prints are visible in the background. When the relationship inevitably became stormy, Van Gogh tried to retrieve his paintings, but Agostina kept them until she was forced to sell them along with Le Tambourin after it went bankrupt.
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In the spring and summer of 1887, Van Gogh, following in the footsteps of the Impressionists, traveled often from the center of Paris and painted motifs along the banks of the Seine. A favorite destination was the riverside town of Asnieres. In and around the town, he painted canvases of torist sights and landmarks, including views of bridges and the famous REstaurant de la Sirene, a large Victorian establishment with long verandas packed with day trippers out from the city and spectators watching regattas and events on the river.
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In the spring and summer of 1887, Van Gogh began to venture farther afield from the apartment on the rue Lepic, exploring the territory of the Impressionists out along the banks of the Seine. He returned often to Asnieres, where he painted scenes of bourgeois leisure and also six woodland scenes, including this work. The painting is a faithful exercise in Impressionist technique: the variety of brushstrokes- including a sprinkling of Pointillist dots- and the complementary colors of red-green and yellow-violet attest to Van Gogh's eagerness to embrace current developments in the Parisian art world.
Light and Color in the South: Arles, 1888-1889
Ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, in February 1888 Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles. He seems to have moved with thoughts of founding an art colony. The Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months, and at first Arles appeared exotic. In a letter, he described it as a foreign country: "The Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world."
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Reacting to the strong southern light of Provence, Van Gogh lets the red poppies- each a single dab of the brush- contrast sharply with the dark greens of the unripened wheat as this field stretches out under the intense blue of the Mediterranean sky. The bright red of the flowers is echoed in the roofs of the houses nestled near an outcropping of trees. Although modest in size, this landscape is informed by a variety of brushstrokes, indicative of Van Gogh's striving for a personal form of expression.
In the summer of 1888, Van Gogh frequently walked from Arles to Montmajour, a ruined abbey set on a limestone escarpment five kilometers northeast of the town. There he made a number of paintings and drawings, both of the hillside and its ruins and of the plain of the Crau below. His Les Rochers (The Rocks) (now in the collection of the MFA, Houston) was one of these, depicting a wild rocky slope with a stunted tree, as was the famous Harvest, which shows the extensive plain, with Montmajour on a hill in the far distance. The drawings included panoramic views from the hilltop, one of which shows the spires of Arles in the distance.
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When painting this landscape, Van Gogh worked in the quintessential Impressionist manner, directly in front of the motif, but complained to his brother, "How I'd make a painting of it if there wasn't this bloody wind! That's the thing that's annoying here when you plant your easel somewhere. And it's definitely for that reason that the painted studies aren't as finished as the drawings. The canvas shakes all the time." Despite the wind and the added annoyance of mosquitoes, Van Gogh battled on, creating some of the most iconic images of the Provencal landscape.
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Some three weeks before Paul Gauguin joined him in the Yellow House in Arles in October, 1888, Van Gogh wrote, "I am feverishly active these days. Right now, I'm struggling with a blue sky above an immense green, purple, and yellow vineyard with black and orange vines. Little figures of ladies carrying red parasols and grape pickers in their small cart make it even gayer." The vineyard was across the flat plain from Arles, near the hill of Montmajour where Van Gogh often walked. Vincent wrote to Theo on October 3, "Ah, my study of the vineyard- I sweat blood and tears over it, but it's finally finished."
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Van Gogh traveled south by coach from Arles to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a seaside town on the Mediterranean, and stayed for three days from May 30 or 31 to June 4 or 5, 1888. As well as depicting the sea itself, he also painted this superb landscape of the northern view of the town. Rows of purple-blue bushes lead the eye toward the central church. The painting is dominated by the "green blue of the sky heated white hot," as the artist described th elight of Provence in one of his letters.
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Van Gogh describe this painting of a harvested field as reduced to "furrows in the color of old wooden shoes under a forget-me-not blue sky with white flakes." He explained his new technique in a letter to Theo: "The present studies actually consist of a single flow of impasto. The brushstroke isn't greatly divided, and the tones are often broken. And in the end, without intending to, I'm forced to lay the paint on thickly, a la Monticelli," referring to Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886), whose heavy brushwork he admired.
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The color yellow held a particular fascination for Vincent van Gogh. Experiencing the intense sunlight of the South, he famously wrote to his brother Theo in Paris, "Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word I can only call yellow- pale sulphur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!" This color, which elicited an intense feeling of warmth and happiness in Van Gogh, dominates this still life of lemons in a basket to such a degree that it can be seen as an experiment in painting yellow on yellow.
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Drawbridges, a common feature in Dutch landscapes, must have been a motif deeply embedded in Van Gogh's childhood memories. In Arles, he depicted this modest bridge repeatedly. Not working in the spontaneous manner often ascribed to him, Van Gogh carefully planned this composition. A grid of pencil lines visible under the paint indicates that he used a perspective frame, a device developed by REnaissance painters. The unmixed colors applied directly in front of the otif, however, are typical of his famously rapid and emotive working method.
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This still life was painted at a particularly troubled moment in the artist's life, just days after his release from the hospital where he had been treated for the self-inflicted injury to his ear. Prominently displayed next to the plate with onions is the Manuel annuaire de la sante by Francois-Vincent Raspail, a hand book for homeopathic medicines and an obvious indication of his struggles with numerous health problems. The envelope belongs to a letter he had received from his brother Theo, who supported him lovingly throughout his life.
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Van Gogh traveled to Arles in February 1888 and lodged at the Hotel-Restaurant Carrel, near the northern edge of town. His first paintings (he wrote to Theo) included this portrait of "an old woman of Arles," probably Elisabeth Garcin, the hotel owner's mother-in-law, who was 68 years old at the time. The knotted black kerchief on her head was a typical part of a widow's mourning dress, and wisps of gray hair project above her ringed ears. She wears a white blouse and is draped in a voluminous blue dress. Part of a bed can be seen in the background.
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In a letter to Theo of October 13, 1888, Van Gogh refers to one of his favorite books, Tartarin de Tarascon (1872) by Alphonse Daudet, with "the old Tarascon diligence. Well, I've just painted that red and green carriage in the yard of the inn." The stagecoach stopped at Arles, midway along its route from Nimes. It appears to be early afternoon, the shutters of the inn closed and the shadows short. This canvas was one of about 15 large works that Van Gogh had already painted as decoration for the Yellow House, where Paul Gauguin would arrive ten days later.
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The sitter is probably Joseph-Michel Ginoux, proprietor of the Cafe de la Gare in the Place Lamartine, Arles, where Van Gogh lived from May to September 1888, after which he moved to the Yellow House to await the arrival of Paul Gauguin. Ginoux's wife, Marie Ginoux, is the subject of Van Gogh's celebrated portrait L'Arlesienne. When Van Gogh painted this portrait, Gauguin was positioned right beside him, painting the same pose- angular head leaning back, eyes half closed, looking down his large nose womewhat arrogantly- with the same black coat, fashionable high white collar, and knotted bow tie.
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Joseph Roulin managed the mail at the train station in Arles. He became a drinking companion at the Cafe de la Gare and a close friend to Van Gogh. The artist portrayed him, his wife, Augustine, and their three children numerous times. Van Gogh often made drawings after his painted compositions, as he did here. He swiftly rendered Roulin in his uniform with varied hatch marks. Van Gogh found him reminiscent of the philosopher Socrates, with his high forehead, full beard, and fervent republican views. Color notations are scribbled at the bottom of the sheet.
Nature as a Source of Enduring Inspiration:
Saint-Rémy, 1889-90
Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his carer, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman.
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After Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum at Saint-Rémy, he immediately looked for subjects to paint behind the walls of the institution. He made a number of paintings of the garden on the asylum's west side, both general views and close-up studies of plants and bushes. The famous Irises and Lilacs were painted here. Van Gogh's activities were of great interest to his fellow patients. He wrote to his sister-in-law Jo, "They all come to see when I'm working in the garden, and I can assure you are more discreet and more polite to leave me in peace than, for example, the good citizens of Arles."
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This reed-pen drawing of a solemn tree with soft, drooping branches is one of the last Van Gogh made in Arles. His bold outlines and quick, staccato pen marks are part of his animated graphic vocabulary and rival strokes of color in his paintings. Van Gogh had already experimented with reed pens while in Holland, but he started using them freequently in ARles, cutting the pens himself from stalks of reeds he found near the canals. He decorated his hospital room in Arles with Japanese prints, and he mentioned hanging "two large reed-pen drawings," including this one. He then carried them to Saint-Rémy, subsequently sending them to his brother Theo.
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Feeling too weak to live on his own, Van Gogh checked himself into the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental hospital at Saint-Rémy in May 1889. He was allowed to paint out-of-doors, but was confined to the garden of the hospital, where he painted several versions of this sous-bois of tree trunks and undergrowth. The overall effect of this composition in dark shades of greens and browns, without any hint of sky, is rather gloomy.
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After a few weeks, Van Gogh was permitted to leave the confines of the asylum and paint outside. He was particularly fascinated by a quarry near the asylum, painting its swirling angular forms and rich but subdued palette of colors twice, in mid-July (this work) and again in October. On the windy day he was working on this painting, he suffered a severe attack of his illness. He finished the painting but quickly retreated to the asylum, where he was confined to his room for a month and not allowed to paint. The doctor had his painting materials taken away because he would attempt to poison himself swallowing them.
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Van Gogh painted these clogs during his voluntary confinement at the mental institution at Saint-Rémy, and it is assumed that they were his own shoes. He depicted these rustic, wooden-soled leather clogs meticulously with wide, parallel brushstrokes that follow the different parts of the shoes. Their deeper meaning has long been considered by scholars who have asked whether they can be seen as referring to specific walks taken by the artist, as symbols of his spiritual wanderings, or even his entire concept of a walk, a path, or of his journey through life.
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In September 1889, after a period of illness in the Saint-Rémy asylum, Van Gogh made about 20 paintings, copying prints by or after Jean-Francois Millet, an artist he revered. This work and Peasant Woman Binding Sheaves (after Millet) are based on Millet's "Work in the Fields" series. Van Gogh wrote, "I put the black-and-white by Delacroix or Millet in front of me as a subject. And then I improvise color on it." Although the compositions are Millet's, the exuberant colored patterns of yellow and blue and the sheer energy of the brushwork are all Van Gogh's.
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Like The Sheaf-Binder (after Millet), this work was painted by Van Gogh after a print in Jean-François Millet's "Work in the Fields" series. From the beginning of his artistic career, Van Gogh had been greatly inspired by Millet's sensitive depiction of humble peasants bending to their chores. He wrote, "one must paint the peasants as if one were one of them, as feeling, thinking as they do themselves...I so often think that the peasants are a world in themselves, so much better in many respects than the civilized world."
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Van Gogh devoted several canvases to olive orchards, whose gnarled trees fascinated him. He wrote, "The olive tree is variable like our willow or pollard in the north. You know that willows are very picturesque, despite the fact that it appears monotonous, it's the tree typical of the country. Now what the willow is in our native country, the olive tree and the cypress have exactly the same importance here." The addition of the olive pickers moves this work beyond the realm of pure landscape, invoking the eternal rhythm of country life.
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In the south of France, Van Gogh returned to the rural subjects of his earlier Dutch period, while reflecting on the dramatic wheat fields and skies of Provence. He produced subjects from memory atthis time, as he was too ill to work outside. His agitated, staccato lines were made either with a carpenter's pencil, with which he could manipulate the thickness of the strokes, or with three pencils of varied widths. Van Gogh's closeness with nature and with peasants who worked the land conveyed a spirituality that connected with his own search for life's purpose.
The Final Months: Auvers-sur-Oise, May-July 1890
In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer to both Dr Paul Gachet in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise and to Theo. Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him. Van Gogh's first impression was that Gachet was "iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let's say just as much."
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In Auvers, Van Gogh met Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a homeopathic doctor specializing in "nervous disorders" who was also an amateur artist and the owner of a printmaking press and a notable art collection.
Van Gogh was eager to experiment with Dr. Gachet's etching press. This work was his last print and only etching. The artist, with Dr. Gachet's aid, probably printed 14 of these etchings, experimenting with ink colors, varying the wiping of the plate, and reinforcing areas with drawn materials- such as, in this impression, with black chalk on and above the right shoulder. After Van Gogh's death, Dr. Gachet and his son continued to print impressions.
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Immediately following his arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890, Van Gogh explored the little town with great enthusiasm. Within days he completed four painted studies, including this work and another larger and more finished version. Most of the canvas is taken up by the massive foliage of the trees with their distinctive candle-like flowers. The cool tonality, symptomatic of the northern light, is reduced to green, blue, and white, with a bit of bare canvas visible at the lower right, indicative of the work's purpose as a sketch.
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Van Gogh loved irises- elegant, lily-like spring flowers that grow in luscious profusion in Provence. As a collector of Japanese woodblock prints, he was aware of the importance of irises in Japanese art, but no doubt he was also conscious of their Christian symbolism, representing the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. He may, however, have seen them merely as harbingers of spring, warmth, and hope. Van Gogh created a complex composition by emphasizing the sharp angles of the leaves in contrast to the amorphous mass of blossoms and the rounded form of the vase, uniting it in the resounding color contrasts of yellow, blue (originally more purple), and green.
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The source for this painting had long been in Van Gogh's possession. He owned a lithograph of the Eugéne Delacroix composition, and it had been among the works decorating his hospital room in Arles in May 1889. As with his copies of Millet, Van Gogh's version of Delacroix was very much his own interpretation, since all he had in front of him was a black-and-white image. He had probably never seen the rich reds and borwns of Delacroix's original, and the colors here consist of cool blues and violets and dull oranges, with just one red accent in the turban of the Samaritan.
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A rough, presumably unfinished work, rapidly painted in tones of green and gray-blue, with one complementary accent in the red chimney (a color not repeated in the composition), this may be one of the first studies Van Gogh made shortly after arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise from Paris on May 20, 1890. In his first letter from the town, he wrote, "Auvers is really beautiful- among other things many old thatched roofs, which are becoming rare. I'd hope, then, that in doing a few canvases of that really seriously, there would be a chance of recouping some of the costs of my stay."
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In June 1890, Van Gogh wrote from Auvers-sur-Oise, "I'm trying to do studies of wheat like this...nothing but ears, blue-green stems, long leaves like ribbons, green and pink by reflection, yellowing ears lightly bordered with pale pink due to the dusty flowering. A pink bindweed at the bottom, wound around a stem." Wheat was a constant theme in Van Gogh's work, from vast fields, which he painted repeateedly, to close-up studies of individual stalks and ears. For him, wheat was a symbol of life- from sowing, through germination and growth, to reaping and harvesting- representing humankind's eternal struggle with the earth.
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Van Gogh intended his study of ears of wheat to be the background design for figure paintings: "On it, on a very alive and yet tranquil background, I would like to paint portraits." In late June 1890, he realized his plan and painted this canvas of a young woman sitting among wheat stalks. He described it in a letter to Theo of July 2: "a figure of a peasant woman, big yellow hat with a knot of sky=blue ribbons, very red face. Coarse blue blouse with orange spots, background of ears of wheat."
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One of Van Gogh's last works, this long, narrow sketch on paper shows straight rows of flowering potato plants and fields of green wheat, set against the characteristic scenery of the Vexin plateau near Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh had seen these two women walking and described them in a letter to Theo just a month before he died. The modeling of the figures is simplified, with the nearer woman defined by a single outline that calls to mind the work of Paul Gauguin or Émile Bernard. It was in one of the Auvers wheat fields that he shot himself with a revolver on July 27, 1890.
We came to the exit from the last gallery and, as you would expect, we were funneled into the exhibit gift shop. I wasn't interested in buying anything, so I went out into the hallway to wait for everyone. Sitting on the floor, I just happened to notice three young ladies standing and talking; one of them had some of the thinnest stilettos I've ever seen, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of the three of them. The Van Gogh exhibit was well worth our time, and I hope you enjoyed looking at the artwork and reading all of the descriptive information about each piece and about Van Gogh's life.
Vincent van Gogh: The Interactive Room
We were interested to find that there was one more "gallery" to the Van Gogh exhibit- this one being a gallery for kids (and adults who don't mind looking a little silly). After a few hours in a somber, intellectual series of galleries, coming into this bright, noisy, room full of interactive opportunities was an unexpected surprise.
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This room was just full of Van-Gogh-related things that kids and adults could do, pose with, or investigate, and we went from one thing to another interacting and taking pictures. Most of these pictures are pretty self-explanatory, so I've just whittled all of them down to a reasonable number and put them below in a slideshow. To go from one image to another, just use the little arrows in the lower corners of each one. So take a few minutes and wander around with us!
Well, I hope you enjoyed visiting the Van Gogh exhibit. We also went to the Johnson Space Center, but before we head down there, let's go across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts to visit the open-air Cullen sculpture garden.
You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.
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The Zaza Hotel |
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The Johnson Space Center |
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Return to the Index Page for our Trip to Houston |
