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VINCENT VAN GOGH
(Groot Zundert 1 85 3-1 890 Auvers-sur-Oise)
From 1869-1876 Van Gogh worked as an art
dealer, first in The Hague, later in London
and finally in Paris. In 1876 he worked as an
assistant teacher in England, in 1877 as an
assistant in a bookshop at Dordrecht.
From 1878-1879 Van Gogh was active as a lay
preacher in the Belgian mining district of the
Borinage, where his career as a painter began.
Living in Brussels he befriended Anthon van
Rappard, then in 1881 he lived with his parents
at Etten in the Netherlands. From 1881-1883
he worked in The Hague, where he got some advice
from his cousin Anton Mauve and where he met
G.H. Breitner. 1883 saw him in the province
of Drente, from 1883-1885 he lived again with
his parents, now at Nuenen. In 1885 he went
to Paris via Antwerp, living with his brother
Theo til 1888. That year he moved to Arles,
in the south of France, then, from 1889-1890,
he was at Saint Remy. In 1890, longing for a
more northern atmosphere, he finally settled
at Auvers near Paris.
Painting Art Images
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Peasant Woman Seated: right profile
Oil on paper on panel, 36 X 26.5 cm
Unsigned; to be dated December 1884 or March
1885 Lit: De la Faille F 144a.
Exh: Tokyo 1979, no. 59.
Dienst Verspreide Rijkskollekties, The Hague
From December 1883 to November 1885 Van Gogh
lived at Nuenen in the southern part of the
Netherlands, where he had joined his parents
after a period of estrangement. In Nuenen he
painted the
local peasants and farm hands, using dark
colours and strong, earthy modelling. The series
of drawings and oilsketches he made there culminated
in the famous "Potato-Eaters". Compared
to the treatment of similar themes by painters
of the Hague School, Van Gogh never attempted
to sentimentalize peasant life or make it seem
picturesque. His Nuenen folk do not muse or
dream, but live a life of harsh reality, which
Van Gogh sought to render in equal terms in
his bold painting style. When Van Gogh at one
point got into difficulties with the population
the local pastor forbid them to pose for him.
Art Images 33
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The old Church Tower at Nuenen
Oil on canvas, 63 x 79 cm
Signed: Vincent; to be dated: May 1885
Lit: Vanbeselaere, pp. 297-8, 354, 377, 401,
414; Van Gogh Letters 408, 411, 414; De la Faille
F 84; Rosenblum pp. 73-74.
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
At Nuenen Van Gogh made several paintings
of the local church and of a deserted old church
tower, which was in fact being pulled down in
1885. The latter is shown here already without
its spire. Robert Rosenblum, in his "Modern
Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition",
stresses the symbolic status of this picture,
calling it typical of a northern view in art.
He quotes a letter of Van Gogh to his brother
Theo of June 1885: "I wanted to express
how these ruins show that for ages the peasants
have been laid to rest in the very fields which
they dug up when alive ... I wanted to express
what a simple thing death and burial is, just
as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf —
just a bit of earth dug up — a wooden cross.
The field around, where the grass of the churchyard
ends, beyond the little wall, form a last line
against the horizon — like the horizon of the
sea. And now these ruins tell me how a faith
and a religion mouldered away — strongly founded
though they were — but how the life and the
death of the peasants remain forever the same,
budding and withering regularly, like the grass
and the flowers growing there in that churchyard."
Art Images 34
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Olive Picking in Orchard: Orange Sky Oil
on canvas, 73 x 92 cm
Unsigned; to be dated September-December
1889
Lit: De la Faille F 587; Van Gogh Letters
607, 608, 615, 621, 629, T25, B 21.
Exh: Amsterdam 1930, no. 241; Amsterdam 1953;
Vienna 1958, no. 98; Aix 1959, no. 45; Montreal
1960, no. 61; Belgrade 1966, no. 74. Rijksmuseum
Kroller-Muller, Otterlo
The olive tree held a great emotional and
symbolic meaning for Van Gogh. Some fourteen
works showing this motif are known. In a letter
to his brother he wrote: "... the olive
trees are very characteristic and I struggle
to catch them. They are like silver, now blue
now greenish, bronze, whitish on a yellow, pink,
violetic or orangic soil up to matted red. But
very difficult, very difficult. But that I like
and it attracts me to work up in gold or silver".
In another letter of a month or so later he
compares the olive tree to "our willow
or pollard-willow in the north".
Of this painting, made at Saint Remy several
versions exist, either with or without figures.
At this time Van Gogh departed from Gauguin's
and Bernard's method of painting from imagination.
His first full size version Van Gogh painted
now direct from nature, experimenting further
with colour-contrasts in his following versions.
Compared to his often very thickly applied paint,
Van Gogh here painted very thinly, in evenly
distributed brush strokes.
GEORGE HENDRIK BREITNER (Rotterdam 1 8 5
7 - 1 923 Amsterdam)
In 1876 Breitner enrolled at the Hague Academy
on the advice of the painter Charles Rochussen.
In The Hague he befriended the painters Willem
de Zwart, Suze Robertson and Isaac Israels.
In 1880 he worked in the studio of Willem Maris.
In 1882 Breitner met Vincent van Gogh, with
whom he made excursions, drawing scenes from
street life. The following year he gave lessons
at the Rotterdam Academy of Art. From May to
November 1884 the artist worked in Paris, where
he spent one month at the studio of Cormon.
From 1886 onwards Breitner lived in Amsterdam,
where in 1895 he signed a contract with the
art dealer Van Wisselingh. In 1897 he visited
London in the company of Willem Witsen and the
etcher Marius Bauer, in 1900 he was in Norway.
In 1901 a large exhibition of his work was held
in Amsterdam. This marked the high point of
his career, his artistic powers dwindling in
the years that followed.
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Vincent van Gogh Paintings
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