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This is Ray. He contributes to our environment by eliminating our carbon footprints by burning things like plastic.
Night of Excellence celebrated excellence in athletics and the arts as we honored these four groups of students for their exemplary accomplishments.
Marching Band
Elizabeth Public Schools is dedicated to recognizing the excellence of those who continually contribute to the district’s vision of becoming one of the best school systems in America. The Night of Excellence Ceremony was created to honor students who have performed at a prestigious level through demonstrating exceptional dedication, determination, and perseverance.
The next group of talented, dedicated young men and women and the professionals who lead them in their high caliber performances have achieved not only a State championship title but also a National championship title. They are now the three-time defending state and national champions in US Bands Group 5A after winning the state and national championships in 2013! They have also gone undefeated in three consecutive seasons!
If that isn’t excellent enough, they were also the only high school group to be selected to perform at Super Bowl 48 here in New Jersey this past February. How big of a deal was it for this group to perform at the Media Day and Gameday events for Super Bowl 48? The game was watched by 112.2 million people in the United States, the largest television audience in United States history.
Alexander Hamilton Preparatory Academy
The next group of students are part of the school that was ranked among the best high schools in New Jersey and America by The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report. This school was ranked Number 11 in New Jersey and Number 613 in America by The Washington Post and Number 30 in New Jersey and Number 836 in America by U.S. News & World Report. In its performance on state assessments, the school attained the rankings of ‘Very High Performing’ in Academic Achievement in a peer comparison and ‘High Performing’ in a statewide comparison, while achieving a ‘High Performing’ ranking in College and Career readiness when compared to its peer schools.
Elizabeth High School
Next, we want to recognize another one of our high schools that was ranked among the best in New Jersey and America by The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report. This school was ranked Number 1 in New Jersey and Number 34 in America by The Washington Post and Number 11 in New Jersey and Number 221 in America by U.S. News & World Report. This school has a 96% graduation rate with a total enrollment of 769 students and it has attained an impressive 99% proficiency or advanced proficiency on the High School Proficiency Assessment. Lastly, this school was recently identified by the State of New Jersey as ‘Very High Performing’ in the category of Academic Achievement in both peer and statewide comparisons.
Terence C. Reilly School No. 7
Last, but not least, is a school that was one of 59 throughout the country to be nationally recognized as a National Title I Distinguished School for exceptional student achievement in 2013. This designation is awarded in honor of the efforts of schools across the country in making significant improvements for their students. The program has been in place since 1996, highlighting the success of hundreds of schools in the categories of exceptional student performance for two or more consecutive years and closing the achievement gap between students.
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published on behalf of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The card, which has a divided back, was printed in the Netherlands.
The Sheafbinder
The Sheafbinder was painted by Vincent van Gogh at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in September 1889. The work is oil on canvas, and is 44.5 cm x 33.1 cm.
At the psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh hardly ever had access to live models. Even so, he was keen to practise figure painting.
So he arrived at the idea of basing his paintings on engravings of works by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875). The Sheaf Binder comes from a 10-part series entitled Travaux des Champs (‘Work in the Fields’).
Vincent wrote to his brother Theo about his underlying reason for using the prints in this way:
"Since I am above all ill at present,
I’m trying to do something to console
myself, for my own pleasure’.
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh, who was born in Zundert, Netherlands on the 30th. March 1853, was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.
In just over a decade he created approximately 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life.
They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art.
Only one of his paintings was known by name to have been sold during his lifetime. Van Gogh became famous after his suicide at the age of 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful, but showed signs of mental instability.
As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion, and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium.
Later he drifted in ill-health and solitude. He was keenly aware of modernist trends in art and, while back with his parents, took up painting in 1881. His younger brother, Theo, supported him financially, and the two of them kept up a long correspondence by letter.
Van Gogh's early works consisted of mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the artistic avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were seeking new paths beyond Impressionism.
Frustrated in Paris and inspired by a growing spirit of artistic change and collaboration, Van Gogh moved to Arles in the south of France in February 1888 with the goal of establishing an artistic retreat and commune.
Once there, Van Gogh's art changed. His paintings grew brighter, and he turned his attention to the natural world, depicting local olive groves, wheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh invited Gauguin to join him in Arles and eagerly anticipated Gauguin's arrival in the fall of 1888.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. Though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly, and drank heavily.
His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy.
After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on the 27th. July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying at the age of 37 from his injuries two days later.
Van Gogh's art gained critical recognition after his death and his life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius, due in large part to the efforts of his widowed sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger.
His bold use of color, expressive line and thick application of paint inspired avant garde artistic groups like the Fauves and German Expressionists in the early 20th. century.
Van Gogh's work gained widespread critical and commercial success in the following decades, and he has become a lasting icon of the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.
Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.
Notable works of Van Gogh include:
-- Sunflowers (1887)
-- Bedroom in Arles (1888)
-- The Starry Night (1889)
-- Wheatfield with Crows (1890)
-- Sorrowing Old Man (1890)
Vincent van Gogh - The Early Years
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on the 30th. March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.
He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh (1822–1885), a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his wife, Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819–1907).
Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth. Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family.
Van Gogh's mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague. The two met when Anna's younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus' older brother.
Van Gogh's parents married in May 1851, and moved to Zundert. His brother Theo was born on the 1st. May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and Willemina.
In later life, Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo.
Van Gogh's mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasized the importance of family to the point of claustrophobia for those around her.
Theodorus' salary as a minister was modest, but the Church also supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse; Vincent's mother Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family's high social position.
Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child. He was taught at home by his mother and a governess, and in 1860, was sent to the village school. In 1864, he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen where he felt abandoned, and he campaigned to come home.
Instead, in 1866, his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg, where he was also deeply unhappy.
Vincent's interest in art began at a young age. He was encouraged to draw as a child by his mother, and his early drawings are expressive, but do not approach the intensity of his later work.
Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a successful artist in Paris, taught the students at Tilburg. His philosophy was to reject technique in favour of capturing the impressions of things, particularly nature or common objects.
Van Gogh's profound unhappiness seems to have overshadowed the lessons, which had little effect. In March 1868, he abruptly returned home. He later wrote that his youth was "austere and cold, and sterile".
In July 1869, Van Gogh's uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague. After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to Goupil's London branch on Southampton Street, and took lodgings at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell.
This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was successful at work and, at 20, was earning more than his father. Theo's wife, Jo Van Gogh-Bonger, later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent's life.
Vincent became infatuated with his landlady's daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but she rejected him after he confessed his feelings; she was secretly engaged to a former lodger.
He grew more isolated and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris in 1875, where he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the art dealers commodified art, and he was dismissed a year later.
In April 1876, Vincent returned to England to take unpaid work as a supply teacher in a small boarding school in Ramsgate. When the proprietor moved to Isleworth in Middlesex, Van Gogh went with him. The arrangement was not successful; he left to become a Methodist minister's assistant.
His parents had meanwhile moved to Etten; in 1876 he returned home at Christmas for six months and took work at a bookshop in Dordrecht. He was unhappy in the position, and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German.
Vincent immersed himself in Christianity, and became increasingly pious and monastic. According to his flatmate of the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate frugally, avoiding meat.
To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877, the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam.
Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination; he failed the exam and left his uncle's house in July 1878. He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Laken, near Brussels.
In January 1879, he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes in the working class, coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person and moved to a small hut, where he slept on straw.
Vincent's humble living conditions did not endear him to the church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood".
He then walked the 75 kilometres (47 mi) to Brussels, returned briefly to Cuesmes in the Borinage, but he gave in to pressure from his parents to return home to Etten. He stayed there until around March 1880, which caused concern and frustration for his parents. His father was especially frustrated, and advised that his son be committed to the lunatic asylum in Geel.
Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October. He became interested in the people and scenes around him, and he recorded them in drawings after Theo's suggestion that he take up art in earnest.
Vincent traveled to Brussels later in the year, to follow Theo's recommendation that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him – in spite of his dislike of formal schools of art – to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He registered at the Académie in November 1880, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective.
Etten, Drenthe and The Hague
Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents. He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived for a visit.
Vincent was thrilled, and took long walks with her. Kee was seven years older than he was, and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage. She refused with the words "No, nay, never."
After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be.
Mauve invited him to return in a few months, and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels; Van Gogh returned to Etten and followed this advice.
Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack. Within days he left for Amsterdam.
Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that "his persistence is disgusting". In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words:
"Let me see her for as long as I
can keep my hand in the flame."
He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. Kee's father made it clear that her refusal should be heeded, and that the two would not marry, largely because of Van Gogh's inability to support himself.
Mauve took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour, which he worked on for the next month before returning home for Christmas. However Vincent quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague.
In January 1882, Mauve introduced Vincent to painting in oil, and lent him money to set up a studio. However within a month Van Gogh and Mauve had fallen out, possibly over the viability of drawing from plaster casts.
Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved.
In June 1882 Van Gogh suffered a bout of gonorrhoea, and spent three weeks in hospital. Soon after, he first painted in oils, bought with money borrowed from Theo. He liked the medium, and he spread the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were.
Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik
By March 1882, Mauve had gone cold towards Van Gogh, and had stopped replying to his letters. He had learned of Van Gogh's new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik (1850–1904), and her young daughter.
Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter, and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who had died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this.
On the 2nd. July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem. When Van Gogh's father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him, and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children.
In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December, driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in Nuenen, North Brabant.
Poverty may have pushed Sien back into prostitution; the home became less happy and Van Gogh may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development. Sien gave her daughter to her mother, and baby Willem to her brother.
Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child. Willem believed that Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely.
Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.
Vincent van Gogh The Emerging Artist
In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages.
Van Gogh also completed The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, which was stolen from the Singer Laren in March 2020.
From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour's daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour.
Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychnine, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital. On the 26th. March 1885, Vincent's 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 distinguished his later work.
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.
In August 1885 Vincent's work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.
Vincent moved to Antwerp in November 1885 and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the Rue des Images. He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money that Theo had sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet.
In February 1886, Vincent wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful.
In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour 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.
Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings. By 1886 he was drinking heavily again, and was hospitalised when he was possibly also treated for syphilis.
Despite his antipathy towards academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and, in January 1886, matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.
Vincent started to attend drawing classes with plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on the 18th. January 1886. However Vincent quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlat, the director of the academy and teacher of a painting class, because of his unconventional painting style.
Van Gogh had also clashed with the instructor of the drawing class Franz Vinck. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models had been given by Eugène Siberdt.
However soon Siberdt and Van Gogh came into conflict when the latter did not comply with Siberdt's requirement that drawings express the contour and concentrate on the line.
When Van Gogh was required to draw the Venus de Milo during a drawing class, he produced the limbless, naked torso of a Flemish peasant woman. Siberdt regarded this as defiance against his artistic guidance, and made corrections to Van Gogh's drawing with his crayon so vigorously that he tore the paper. Van Gogh then flew into a violent rage and shouted at Siberdt:
'You clearly do not know what a young
woman is like, God damn it! A woman
must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in
which she can carry a baby!'
According to some accounts, this was the last time Van Gogh attended classes at the academy, and he left later for Paris.
On the 31st. March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.
Vincent van Gogh in Paris (1886–1888)
Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo's Rue Laval apartment in Montmartre and studied at Fernand Cormon's studio.
In June 1886 the brothers took a larger flat at 54 Rue Lepic. In Paris, Vincent painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still life paintings, views of Le Moulin de la Galette, scenes in Montmartre, Asnières and along the Seine.
In 1885 in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and had used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them.
He tried his hand at Japonaiserie, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustre, The Courtesan or Oiran (1887), after Keisai Eisen, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting.
After seeing the portrait of Adolphe Monticelli at the Galerie Delareybarette, Van Gogh adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as his Seascape at Saintes-Maries (1888).
Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli's works to add to his collection.
Van Gogh had learned about Fernand Cormon's atelier from Theo. He worked at the studio in April and May 1886, where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist John Russell, who painted his portrait in 1886.
Van Gogh also met fellow students Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at Julien "Père" Tanguy's paint shop, which was, at that time, the only place where Paul Cézanne's paintings were displayed.
In 1886, two large exhibitions were staged there, showing Pointillism and Neo-impressionism for the first time, and bringing attention to Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Theo kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on boulevard Montmartre, but Van Gogh was slow to acknowledge the new developments in art.
Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be "almost unbearable". However by early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to Asnières, a north-western suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac.
He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small coloured dots are applied to the canvas so that when seen from a distance they create an optical blend of hues. The style stresses the ability of complementary colours – including blue and orange – to form vibrant contrasts.
While in Asnières Van Gogh painted parks, restaurants and the Seine, including Bridges across the Seine at Asnières. In November 1887, Theo and Vincent befriended Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris.
Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition alongside Bernard, Anquetin, and probably Toulouse-Lautrec, at the Grand-Bouillon Restaurant du Chalet, 43 Avenue de Clichy, Montmartre.
In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris. There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh exchanged work with Gauguin.
Discussions on art, artists, and their social situations started during this exhibition, continued and expanded to include visitors to the show, like Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Signac and Seurat.
In February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.
Vincent van Gogh's Artistic Breakthrough
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."
The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh's more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours. Vincent was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve.
They include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area, including The Old Mill (1888), one of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on 4 October 1888 in an exchange of works with Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Charles Laval and others.
The portrayals of Arles are influenced by Vincent's Dutch upbringing; the patchworks of fields and avenues are flat and lacking perspective, but excel in their use of colour.
In March 1888, he painted landscapes using a gridded "perspective frame"; three of the works were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April, he was visited by the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who was living nearby at Fontvieille.
On the 1st. May 1888, for 15 francs per month, he signed a lease for the eastern wing of the Yellow House at 2, Place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished, and had been uninhabited for months.
On the 7th. May, Van Gogh moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare, having befriended the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. The Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, but he was able to use it as a studio.
He wanted a gallery to display his work, and started a series of paintings that eventually included Van Gogh's Chair (1888), Bedroom in Arles (1888), The Night Café (1888), Café Terrace at Night (September 1888), Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), and Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers (1888), all intended for the decoration of the Yellow House.
Van Gogh wrote that:
"With The Night Café I tried to express
the idea that the café is a place where
one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit
a crime".
When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June, he gave lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant – Paul-Eugène Milliet – and painted the village and boats on the sea. MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who sometimes stayed in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in July.
Gauguin's visit (1888)
When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship, and to realize his idea of an artists' collective. Van Gogh prepared for Gauguin's arrival by painting four versions of Sunflowers in one week.
Vincent wrote in a letter to Theo:
"In the hope of living in a studio of
our own with Gauguin I'd like to do
a decoration for the studio.
Nothing but large Sunflowers."
When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study The Poet Against a Starry Sky.
In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station's postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted.
On the 17th. September 1888, he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House. When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the Décoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook. He also completed two chair paintings: Van Gogh's Chair and Gauguin's Chair.
After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on the 23rd. October 1888 and, in November, the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion.
Among these "imaginative" paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten. Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the companion pieces Les Alyscamps. The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was his portrait of Van Gogh.
Van Gogh and Gauguin visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre. However their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh.
They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of "excessive tension", rapidly headed towards crisis point.
Van Gogh's Ear
The exact sequence that led to the mutilation of Van Gogh's ear is not known. Gauguin said, fifteen years later, that the night followed several instances of physically threatening behaviour.
Their relationship was complex, and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who suspected that the brothers were exploiting him financially. It seems likely that Vincent realised that Gauguin was planning to leave.
The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House. Gauguin recalled that Van Gogh followed him after he left for a walk and "rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand."
This account is uncorroborated; Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely staying in a hotel.
After an altercation on the evening of the 23rd. December 1888, Van Gogh returned to his room where he seemingly heard voices and either wholly or in part severed his left ear with a razor, causing severe bleeding.
He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel that Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented. Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital, where he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training.
The ear was brought to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to re-attach it as too much time had passed. Van Gogh researcher and art historian Bernadette Murphy discovered the true identity of the woman named Gabrielle, who died in Arles at the age of 80 in 1952, and whose descendants still live just outside Arles.
Gabrielle, known in her youth as "Gaby," was a 17-year-old cleaning girl at the brothel and other local establishments at the time Van Gogh presented her with his ear.
Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown. The hospital diagnosis was "acute mania with generalised delirium", and within a few days, the local police ordered that Vincent be placed in hospital care.
Gauguin immediately notified Theo, who, on the 24th. December, had proposed marriage to his old friend Andries Bonger's sister Johanna. That evening, Theo rushed to the station to board a night train to Arles. He arrived on Christmas Day and comforted Vincent, who seemed to be semi-lucid. That evening, he left Arles for the return trip to Paris.
During the first days of his treatment, Van Gogh repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked for Gauguin, who asked a policeman attending the case to:
"Be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken
this man with great care, and if he asks
for me tell him I have left for Paris; the
sight of me might prove fatal for him."
Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again. However they continued to correspond, and in 1890, Gauguin proposed that they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin.
Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on the 7th. January 1889. He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning.
In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as le fou roux "the redheaded madman"; Van Gogh returned to hospital.
Paul Signac visited him twice in March; in April, Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr. Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home. Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Around this time, he wrote:
"Sometimes moods of indescribable
anguish, sometimes moments when
the veil of time and fatality of
circumstances seemed to be torn
apart for an instant."
Van Gogh gave his 1889 Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey to Dr Rey. However the physician was not fond of the painting, and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away. In 2016, the portrait was housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and estimated to be worth over $50 million.
Vincent van Gogh at Saint-Rémy (May 1889 – May 1890)
Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on the 8th. May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Arles, and was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron.
Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio. The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital's interiors, such as Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Rémy (September 1889), and its gardens, such as Lilacs (May 1889).
Some of his works from this time are characterised by swirls, such as The Starry Night. He was allowed short supervised walks, during which time he painted cypresses and olive trees, including Valley with Ploughman Seen from Above, Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889, Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), and Country road in Provence by Night (1890).
In September 1889, he produced two further versions of Bedroom in Arles and The Gardener.
Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter. Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artists' paintings, such as Millet's The Sower and Noonday Rest, and variations on his own earlier work.
Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules Breton, Gustave Courbet and Millet, and he compared his copies to a musician's interpretation of Beethoven.
His Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré) (1890) was painted after an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883). Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself.
Between February and April 1890, Van Gogh suffered a severe relapse. Depressed and unable to bring himself to write, he was still able to paint and draw a little during this time, and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases "from memory ... reminisces of the North".
Among these was Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset. Hulsker believes that this small group of paintings formed the nucleus of many drawings and study sheets depicting landscapes and figures that Van Gogh worked on during this time.
He comments that this short period was the only time that Van Gogh's illness had a significant effect on his work. Van Gogh asked his mother and his brother to send him drawings and rough work he had done in the early 1880's so that he could work on new paintings from his old sketches.
Belonging to this period is Sorrowing Old Man ("At Eternity's Gate"), a colour study Hulsker describes as:
"Another unmistakable
remembrance of times
long past".
Vincent's late paintings show an artist at the height of his abilities, according to the art critic Robert Hughes: "longing for conciseness and grace".
After the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote:
"I started right away to make a picture
for him, to hang in their bedroom,
branches of white almond blossom
against a blue sky."
1890 Exhibitions and Recognition
Albert Aurier praised Vincent's work in the Mercure de France in January 1890, and described him as "a genius". In February, Van Gogh painted five versions of L'Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when she sat for both artists in November 1888.
Also in February, Van Gogh was invited by Les XX, a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, to participate in their annual exhibition. At the opening dinner, a Les XX member, Henry de Groux, insulted Van Gogh's work.
Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh's honour if Lautrec surrendered. De Groux apologised for the slight and left the group.
From the 20th. March to the 27th. April 1890, Van Gogh was included in the sixth exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Van Gogh exhibited ten paintings. Claude Monet said that his work was the best in the show.
Vincent van Gogh in 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 his brother 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 not well, and was:
"Iller than I am, it seemed to
me, or let's say just as much."
The painter Charles Daubigny moved to Auvers in 1861, and in turn drew other artists there, including Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of Daubigny's Garden, one of which is likely his final work.
During his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, Vincent's thoughts returned to "memories of the North", and several of the approximately 70 oils, painted during as many days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes.
In June 1890, he painted several portraits of his doctor, including Portrait of Dr. Gachet, and his only etching. In each the emphasis is on Gachet's melancholic disposition. There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including Thatched Cottages by a Hill.
In July, Van Gogh wrote that:
"I have become absorbed in the
immense plain against the hills,
boundless as the sea, delicate
yellow".
He had first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, Vincent described to Theo "vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies".
He wrote that:
"They represent my sadness and extreme
loneliness. The canvases will tell you what
I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy
and invigorating I find the countryside".
Wheat field with Crows, although not his last oil work, is from July 1890, and Hulsker discusses it as being associated with "melancholy and extreme loneliness".
The Death of Vincent van Gogh
On the 27th. July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. The shooting may have taken place in the wheat field in which he had been painting, or in a local barn.
The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs – possibly stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors.
One of them, Dr. Gachet, served as a war surgeon in 1870, and had extensive knowledge of gunshot wounds. Vincent was possibly attended to during the night by Dr Gachet's son Paul Louis Gachet and the innkeeper, Arthur Ravoux.
The following morning, Theo rushed to his brother's side, finding him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent's health began to fail, suffering from an infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of the 29th. July 1890. According to Theo, Vincent's last words were:
"The sadness will last forever".
Van Gogh was buried on the 30th. July, in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. The funeral was attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Paul Gachet, among twenty family members, friends and locals.
Theo suffered from syphilis, and his health began to decline further after his brother's death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent's absence, he died on the 25th. January 1891 at Den Dolder and was buried in Utrecht.
In 1914, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had Theo's body exhumed and moved from Utrecht to be re-buried alongside Vincent's at Auvers-sur-Oise.
Vincent van Gogh's Illness
There have been numerous debates as to the nature of Van Gogh's illness and its effect on his work, and many retrospective diagnoses have been proposed.
The consensus is that Van Gogh had an episodic condition with periods of normal functioning. Perry was the first to suggest bipolar disorder in 1947, and this has been supported by the psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer.
Biochemist Wilfred Arnold has countered that the symptoms are more consistent with acute intermittent porphyria, noting that the popular link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be spurious.
Temporal lobe epilepsy with bouts of depression has also been suggested. Whatever the diagnosis, Vincent's condition was likely worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and alcohol.
Vincent van Gogh's Style and Works
Van Gogh drew and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive, and the authorship of some of them has been challenged. When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level.
In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. However Van Gogh's work did not live up to expectations.
Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters and different drawing materials.
For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white, which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces.
In August 1882, Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working en plein air. Vincent wrote that he could now "go on painting with new vigour".
From early 1883, he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting.
Van Gogh turned to well-known Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and he received technical advice from them as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both of the Hague School's second generation.
Vincent moved to Nuenen after a short period of time and began work on several large paintings, but destroyed most of them. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived.
Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals.
Vincent was aware that many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise, so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to develop his skills.
Theo criticised The Potato Eaters for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style. Accordingly during Van Gogh's stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette.
His Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette, and is evidence of an evolving personal style.
Charles Blanc's treatise on colour interested Vincent greatly, and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that:
"Colour expresses something in itself".
According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a "psychological and moral weight", as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of The Night Café, a work he wanted to "express the terrible passions of humanity".
Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God.
Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature; during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life. His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols.
Vincent's renditions of the sower, at first copied from Jean-François Millet, reflect the influence of Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on the heroism of physical labour, as well as Van Gogh's religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun.
These were themes and motifs that he returned to often in order to rework and develop. His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian iconography he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life.
In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint The Sower.
Van Gogh stayed within what he called the "guise of reality," and was critical of overly stylised works. He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of Starry Night had gone too far and that reality had "receded too far in the background".
Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy:
"The stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent
of Hokusai's Great Wave, the movement in
the heaven above is reflected by the
movement of the cypress on the earth below,
and the painter's vision is translated into a
thick, emphatic plasma of paint".
Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an oeuvre, a collection that reflected his personal vision and which could be commercially successful.
He was influenced by Blanc's definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes.
Van Gogh applied the word "purposeful" to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies.
He painted many series of studies, most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends. The work in Arles contributed considerably to his oeuvre: those he thought the most important from that time were The Sower, Night Cafe, Memory of the Garden in Etten and Starry Night.
With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought.
Major Series
Van Gogh's stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe. He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout.
His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill.
Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation.
Portraits
Van Gogh said that portraiture was his greatest interest. In 1890 he wrote:
"What I'm most passionate about,
much much more than all the rest
in my profession is the portrait, the
modern portrait.
It is the only thing in painting that
moves me deeply and that gives
me a sense of the infinite."
He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.
Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs.
Van Gogh painted Arles' postmaster Joseph Roulin and his family repeatedly. In five versions of La Berceuse (The Lullaby), Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin quietly holding a rope that rocks the unseen cradle of her infant daughter. Van Gogh had planned for it to be the central image of a triptych, flanked by paintings of sunflowers.
Self-portraits
Van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889. They were usually completed in series, such as those painted in Paris in mid-1887, and continued until shortly before his death. Generally the portraits were studies, created during periods when he was reluctant to mix with others, or when he lacked models, and so painted himself.
The self-portraits reflect a high degree of self-scrutiny. Often they were intended to mark important periods in his life; for example, the mid-1887 Paris series were painted at the point where he became aware of Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Signac.
In Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, heavy strains of paint spread outwards across the canvas. It is one of his most renowned self-portraits of that period. It features highly organized rhythmic brushstrokes, and the novel halo derived from the Neo-impressionist repertoire was what Van Gogh himself called a 'purposeful' canvas.
The self-portraits contain a wide array of physiognomic representations. Van Gogh's mental and physical condition is usually apparent; he may appear unkempt, unshaven or with a neglected beard, with deeply sunken eyes, a weak jaw, or having lost teeth.
Some show him with full lips, a long face or prominent skull, or sharpened, alert features. His hair is sometimes depicted in a vibrant reddish hue, and at other times ash colored.
Van Gogh's self-portraits vary stylistically. In those painted after December 1888, the strong contrast of vivid colours highlight the haggard pallor of his skin. Some depict the artist with a beard, others without. He can be seen with bandages in portraits executed just after he mutilated his ear. In only a few does he depict himself as a painter.
Those painted in Saint-Rémy show the head from the right, the side opposite his damaged ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror.
Flowers
Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e.
There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887, and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles, and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light. Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the "texture of the seed-heads".
In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather, the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin, who was about to visit.
The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888:
"I'm painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when it's a
question of painting large sunflowers.
If I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels.
The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue
and yellow.
I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because
the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the
whole thing in one go."
The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin's visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the Yellow House's guest room in Arles.
Gauguin was deeply impressed, and later acquired two of the Paris versions. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and included them in his Les XX in Brussels exhibit.
Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds.
Cypresses and Olives
Fifteen canvases depict cypresses, a tree he became fascinated with in Arles. He brought life to the trees, which were traditionally seen as emblematic of death.
The series of cypresses he began in Arles featured the trees in the distance, as windbreaks in fields; however when he was at Saint-Rémy he brought them to the foreground. Vincent wrote to Theo in May 1889:
"Cypresses still preoccupy me, I should
like to do something with them like my
canvases of sunflowers. They are beautiful
in line and proportion like an Egyptian
obelisk."
In mid-1889, and at his sister Wil's request, Van Gogh painted several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses. The works are characterised by swirls and densely painted impasto, and include The Starry Night, in which cypresses dominate the foreground.
In addition to this, other notable works on cypresses include Cypresses (1889), Cypresses with Two Figures (1889–90), and Road with Cypress and Star (1890).
During the last six or seven months of the year 1889, he had also created at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, a subject which he considered as demanding and compelling.
Among these works are Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889), about which in a letter to his brother Van Gogh wrote:
"At last I have a landscape with olives".
While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh spent time outside the asylum, where he painted trees in the olive groves. In these works, natural life is rendered as gnarled and arthritic as if a personification of the natural world, which are, according to Hughes, filled with "a continuous field of energy of which nature is a manifestation".
Orchards
The Flowering Orchards and Orchards in Blossom are among the first groups of work completed after Van Gogh's arrival in Arles in February 1888. The 14 paintings are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the burgeoning spring. They are delicately sensitive and unpopulated.
Vincent painted swiftly, and although he brought to this series a version of Impressionism, a strong sense of personal style began to emerge during this period. The transience of the blossoming trees, and the passing of the season, seemed to align with his sense of impermanence and belief in a new beginning in Arles.
During the blossoming of the trees that spring, he found:
"A world of motifs that could not
have been more Japanese".
Vincent wrote to Theo on the 21st. April 1888 that he had 10 orchards and:
"One big painting of a cherry
tree, which I've spoiled".
During this period Van Gogh mastered the use of light by subjugating shadows and painting the trees as if they are the source of light – almost in a sacred manner. Early the following year he painted another smaller group of orchards, including View of Arles, Flowering Orchards.
Van Gogh was enthralled by the landscape and vegetation of the south of France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. In the vivid light of the Mediterranean climate his palette significantly brightened.
Wheat Fields
Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond.
At various points, Van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in The Wheat Field series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.
Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of Van Gogh's death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns.
Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His Wheat Fields at Auvers with White House shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony.
In July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo of
"Vast fields of wheat under troubled skies".
Wheat Field with Crows shows the artist's state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as:
"A doom-filled painting with threatening
skies and ill-omened crows".
Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace.
Vincent van Gogh's Reputation and Legacy
After Van Gogh's first exhibitions in the late 1880's, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh's alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy.
In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by "fire, intensity, sunshine".
Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890. French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh's work.
After Van Gogh's death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels.
In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh's suicide was:
"An infinitely sadder loss for art ... even
though the populace has not crowded
to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent
van Gogh, whose demise means the
extinction of a beautiful flame of genius,
has gone to his death as obscure and
neglected as he lived."
Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent's most vocal and well-connected champion. Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long, and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh.
Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting Van Gogh's reputation, and Johanna's brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work.
Aurier, one of Van Gogh's earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27.
In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his Van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger.
In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from Van Gogh's estate. In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany.
Russell had been a close friend of Van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman's work, and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.
In Paris in 1901, a large Van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism.
Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914.
Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about Van Gogh, and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to Van Gogh's art; she became an avid collector of his work. The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to Van Gogh's work.
Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928.
Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before the Great War, helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914. His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th.-century writings of their kind.
The letters began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young. In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh's life titled Lust for Life, based on Van Gogh's letters to Theo.
The novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of Van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.
In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War.
Bacon was inspired by an image he described as "haunting", and regarded Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with Van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo:
"Real painters do not paint things as
they are ... They paint them as they
themselves feel them to be."
Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet, Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million by using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg.
In 2015, L'Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.
Minor planet 4457 Van Gogh is named in his honour.
In October 2022, two activists protesting the effects of the fossil fuel industry on climate change threw a can of tomato soup on Van Gogh's Sunflowers in the National Gallery, London, and then glued their hands to the gallery wall. As the painting was covered by glass it was not damaged.
The Van Gogh Museum
Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978), inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925. During the early 1950's he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages.
He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection. Theo's son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions.
The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design the museum, and after his death in 1964, Kisho Kurokawa took charge. Work progressed throughout the 1960's, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening.
The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973. It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year.
In 2015 it had an attendance of a record 1.9 million individuals. Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries.
Nazi-Looted Art
During the Nazi period (1933–1945) a great number of artworks by Van Gogh changed hands, many of them looted from Jewish collectors who were forced into exile or murdered.
Some of these works have disappeared into private collections. Others have since resurfaced in museums, or at auction, or have been reclaimed, often in high-profile lawsuits, by their former owners.
The German Lost Art Foundation still lists dozens of missing Van Goghs, and the American Alliance of Museums lists 73 van Goghs on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal.
Contributing Building - Ashland Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #83003284
Built ca 1910
Style: Colonial Revival
The small machine shop was built in 1905. It was used to produce small, detailed products for the settlement.
Koreshan Unity Settlement Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Small Machine Shop is a contributing property.
The Castletown-Geoghegan GAA 5KM road race and fun run was held in Castletown Geoghegan in County Westmeath, Ireland at 19:00 on Friday September 7th 2012. The village of Castletown-Geoghegan lies south west of Lough Ennell and is only a short distance from the town of Mullingar. The event was very well attended by local athletes of all ages and abilities. Congratulations to the local community and the Hurling club for the very high level of organisation - with excellent levels of stewarting of the roads. The race took a right handed loop which started about 1 mile from the Village. The course was a tough up-hill course for the first 2 km with a very runner friendly final 3km which finished at the crossroads in the Village outside of Claffey's Pub. The proceeds from the race was in aid of Castletown Geoghegan and St. Malachy's/Ballinagore Juvenile clubs
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Some useful links
Where is Castletown-Geoghegan? See some maps? maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.447,-7.489&spn=1,1&t=m...
The GAA Club www.castletowngeoghegan.westmeath.gaa.ie/
Posters Contributed by Jury Panel and Friends
USE OF WEB SITE CONTENT. All Content on the Web Site, is the proprietary property of the Artists involved or The International Reggae Poster Contest. No Content may be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the Contest organizers or the owner of the Content. Except as otherwise set forth in the Agreement with then artists, any use of the Content is strictly prohibited. All trademarks, logos, trade dress and service marks on the Web Site are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Contest or its licensors and may not be copied, imitated, or used, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the Contest.
Lisa Reilly and Mary B Shepard contributed a paper on this tracery light to the 27th CVMA International Colloquium in York in July 2014. Their view is that the tonal disparity between the blazing rays of the sunburst and the creamy yellow of the central disc suggest they are not original to each other. They date the disc to the early 15th century and note analogues for the parallel guidelines and the budded, inverted S-shaped verse enders, which here separate each word, in All Saints' North Street windows and in the Minster East window. The inscription in the disc "Sufferance fait ease en tempe" (most likely translation "In time, from suffering comes ease") is explored with "its promise to tell us much about the visualization of devotional language in late-medieval England." The use of Anglo-French was particularly strong in devotional and religious writing.
Contributing Building - Guyton Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #82002408
Contributing Building - Waldo Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #01000034
Contributing Building - Model Land Company Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #83001439
IMMIGRANTS CONTRIBUTE: AMERICA, WE SING BACK! community event at the All Souls Unitarian Church at 1500 Harvard Street, NW, Washington DC on Saturday afternoon, 28 September 2013 by Elvert Barnes Photography
Performances
George "G." Yamazawa Jr. (Japan)
Follow DC Office of Human Rights / IMMIGRANTS CONTRIBUTE: AMERICA, WE SING BACK! facebook event page at www.facebook.com/events/530488973690958/
Posters Contributed by Jury Panel and Friends
USE OF WEB SITE CONTENT. All Content on the Web Site, is the proprietary property of the Artists involved or The International Reggae Poster Contest. No Content may be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the Contest organizers or the owner of the Content. Except as otherwise set forth in the Agreement with then artists, any use of the Content is strictly prohibited. All trademarks, logos, trade dress and service marks on the Web Site are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Contest or its licensors and may not be copied, imitated, or used, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the Contest.
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Contributing Building - Rockledge Drive Residential District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #92001045
1101 Rockledge Dr
Built ca 1900
Contributing Building - Call Street Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
Barber shop built circa 1890
Bakery built circa 1906
NRIS #85003329
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The driving force behind EMULSIVE is knowledge transfer, specifically engendering more of it in the film photography community. I do what I can through this website and the @EMULSIVEfilm Twitter account but we need more. This is where you come in.
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From established artists to grassroots talent, jetpac magazine is designed to promote creativity from around the world.
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Photo credit: W.Osborne
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IMMIGRANTS CONTRIBUTE: AMERICA, WE SING BACK! community event at the All Souls Unitarian Church at 1500 Harvard Street, NW, Washington DC on Saturday afternoon, 28 September 2013 by Elvert Barnes Photography
Assemblance Before
Follow DC Office of Human Rights / IMMIGRANTS CONTRIBUTE: AMERICA, WE SING BACK! facebook event page at www.facebook.com/events/530488973690958/
The Cardboard City exhibition at Soldiers Rd gallery, run by Daniel O'Toole, aka Ears, in the Hibernian House art community building at 342 Elizabeth St, suite 405.
Each artist in the show contributed 10 pieces painted on cardboard and sold at $100 each. The artists included:
Ears, Bennett, Mark Alsweiler, Max Berry, Numskull, Phibs, Jumbo, Bridge Stehli, Tom Ferson, SMC, Houl, Bafcat, Birdhat, Joe Wilson, Chanelle Collier, Ella Condon, Syke, Benjamin Reeve, Claire Nakazawa, Choq, Tim Andrew, Kaffeine, Michael Hazel, Mih Fluhrer and Sid Tapia.
Contributing Building - Caples'-Ringlings' Estates Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #82001039
A guest contributes his thoughts and asks questions during the open discussion moderated by Ellal Aklilu. Photo Credit: Rosa Pineda Photography.
The Ethiopian American Youth Initiative held a public meeting in Washington, D.C. at the Embassy of Ethiopia on Saturday, January 2, 2010. The meeting featured Samuel Gebru, President of EAYI; David Shinn, former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia; Georgis Kefale, an Ethiopian physician; and Wondimu Asamnew, Ethiopia's charge d'affaires.
Contributing Building - St Augustine Town Plan Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #70000847
Contributing Building - Winchester Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #80004318
Built 1902
Style: Renaissance Revival
A&D UT113 Specifications
Disposable Protection: Contribute
Infrared measuring: Contribute
Measuring options: Armpit, Oral, Rectal
Number of memory locations: Contribute
Temperature: Contribute
Features: Floating top
Water resistant: Contribute
Battery type: Contribute
A&D UT113...
Contributing Building - Morganton Downtown Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #87001930
Built ca 1889
Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, patriot, revolutionary and republican. He contributed to Italian unification and the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. He is considered to be one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland", along with Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and Giuseppe Mazzini. Garibaldi is also known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military enterprises in South America and Europe.
Garibaldi was a follower of the Italian nationalist Mazzini and embraced the republican nationalism of the Young Italy movement. He became a supporter of Italian unification under a democratic republican government. However, breaking with Mazzini, he pragmatically allied himself with the monarchist Cavour and Kingdom of Sardinia in the struggle for independence, subordinating his republican ideals to his nationalist ones until Italy was unified. After participating in an uprising in Piedmont, he was sentenced to death, but escaped and sailed to South America, where he spent 14 years in exile, during which he took part in several wars and learned the art of guerrilla warfare. In 1835 he joined the rebels known as the Ragamuffins (farrapos), in the Ragamuffin War in Brazil, and took up their cause of establishing the Riograndense Republic and later the Catarinense Republic. Garibaldi also became involved in the Uruguayan Civil War, raising an Italian force known as Redshirts, and is still celebrated as an important contributor to Uruguay's reconstitution.
In 1848, Garibaldi returned to Italy and commanded and fought in military campaigns that eventually led to Italian unification. The provisional government of Milan made him a general and the Minister of War promoted him to General of the Roman Republic in 1849. When the war of independence broke out in April 1859, he led his Hunters of the Alps in the capture of major cities in Lombardy, including Varese and Como, and reached the frontier of South Tyrol; the war ended with the acquisition of Lombardy. The following year, 1860, he led the Expedition of the Thousand on behalf of, and with the consent of, Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia. The expedition was a success and concluded with the annexation of Sicily, Southern Italy, Marche and Umbria to the Kingdom of Sardinia before the creation of a unified Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861. His last military campaign took place during the Franco-Prussian War as commander of the Army of the Vosges.
Garibaldi became an international figurehead for national independence and republican ideals, and is considered by twentieth-century historiography and popular culture as Italy's greatest national hero. He was showered with admiration and praise by many contemporary intellectuals and political figures, including Abraham Lincoln, William Brown, Francesco de Sanctis, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Malwida von Meysenbug, George Sand, Charles Dickens, and Friedrich Engels.
Garibaldi also inspired later figures like Jawaharlal Nehru and Che Guevara. Historian A. J. P. Taylor called him "the only wholly admirable figure in modern history". In the popular telling of his story, he is associated with the red shirts that his volunteers, the Garibaldini, wore in lieu of a uniform.
Early life
Garibaldi was born and christened Joseph-Marie Garibaldi on 4 July 1807 in Nice, which had been conquered by the French Republic in 1792, to the Ligurian family of Domenico Garibaldi from Chiavari and Maria Rosa Nicoletta Raimondi from Loano. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna returned Nice to Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. (Nice would be returned to France in 1860 by the Treaty of Turin, over the objections of Garibaldi.)
Garibaldi's family's involvement in coastal trade drew him to a life at sea. He participated actively in the Nizzardo Italians community and was certified in 1832 as a merchant navy captain.
He lived in the Pera district of Constantinople from 1828 to 1832. He became an instructor and taught Italian, French, and mathematics.
In April 1833, he travelled to Taganrog, in the Russian Empire, aboard the schooner Clorinda with a shipment of oranges. During ten days in port, he met Giovanni Battista Cuneo from Oneglia, a politically active immigrant and member of the secret Young Italy movement of Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was a passionate proponent of Italian unification as a liberal republic via political and social reform. Garibaldi joined the society and took an oath dedicating himself to the struggle to liberate and unify his homeland from Austrian dominance.
In November 1833, Garibaldi met Mazzini in Genoa, starting a long relationship that later became troubled. He joined the Carbonari revolutionary association, and in February 1834 participated in a failed Mazzinian insurrection in Piedmont. A Genoese court sentenced Garibaldi to death in absentia, and he fled across the border to Marseille.
South America
Garibaldi first sailed to the Beylik of Tunis before eventually finding his way to the Empire of Brazil. Once there, he took up the cause of the Riograndense Republic in its attempt to separate from Brazil, joining the rebels known as the Ragamuffins in the Ragamuffin War of 1835.
During this war, he met Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro da Silva, commonly known as Anita. When the rebels proclaimed the Catarinense Republic in the Brazilian province of Santa Catarina in 1839, she joined him aboard his ship, Rio Pardo, and fought alongside him at the battles of Imbituba and Laguna.
In 1841, Garibaldi and Anita moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where Garibaldi worked as a trader and schoolmaster. The couple married in Montevideo the following year. They had four children; Domenico Menotti (1840–1903), Rosa (1843–1845), Teresa Teresita (1845–1903), and Ricciotti (1847–1924). A skilled horsewoman, Anita is said[by whom?] to have taught Giuseppe about the gaucho culture of Argentina, southern Brazil and Uruguay. Around this time he adopted his trademark clothing—the red shirt, poncho, and sombrero commonly worn by gauchos.
In 1842, Garibaldi took command of the Uruguayan fleet and raised an Italian Legion of soldiers—known as Redshirts—for the Uruguayan Civil War. This recruitment was possible as Montevideo had a large Italian population at the time: 4,205 out of a total population of 30,000 according to an 1843 census.
Garibaldi aligned his forces with the Uruguayan Colorados led by Fructuoso Rivera and Joaquín Suárez, who were aligned with the Argentine Unitarian Party. This faction received some support from the French and British in their struggle against the forces of former Uruguayan president Manuel Oribe's Blancos, which was also aligned with Argentine Federales under the rule of Buenos Aires caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas. The Italian Legion adopted a black flag that represented Italy in mourning, with a volcano at the centre that symbolized the dormant power in their homeland. Though contemporary sources do not mention the Redshirts, popular history asserts that the legion first wore them in Uruguay, getting them from a factory in Montevideo that had intended to export them to the slaughterhouses of Argentina.[citation needed] These shirts became the symbol of Garibaldi and his followers.
Between 1842 and 1848, Garibaldi defended Montevideo against forces led by Oribe. In 1845, he managed to occupy Colonia del Sacramento and Martín García Island, and led the infamous sacks of Martín García island and Gualeguaychú during the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata. Garibaldi escaped with his life after being defeated in the Costa Brava combat, delivered on 15 and 16 August 1842, thanks to the mercy of Admiral William Brown. The Argentines, wanting to pursue him to finish him off, were stopped by Brown who exclaimed "let him escape, that gringo is a brave man." Years later, a grandson of Garibaldi would be named William, in honour of Admiral Brown. Adopting amphibious guerrilla tactics, Garibaldi later achieved two victories during 1846, in the Battle of Cerro and the Battle of San Antonio del Santo.
Induction to Freemasonry
Garibaldi joined Freemasonry during his exile, taking advantage of the asylum the lodges offered to political refugees from European countries. At the age of 37, during 1844, Garibaldi was initiated in the L' Asil de la Vertud Lodge of Montevideo. This was an irregular lodge under a Brazilian Freemasonry not recognized by the main international masonic obediences, such as the United Grand Lodge of England or the Grand Orient de France.
While Garibaldi had little use for Masonic rituals, he was an active Freemason and regarded Freemasonry as a network that united progressive men as brothers both within nations and as a global community. Garibaldi was eventually elected as the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy.
Garibaldi regularized his position later in 1844, joining the lodge Les Amis de la Patrie of Montevideo under the Grand Orient of France.
Election of Pope Pius IX, 1846
The fate of his homeland continued to concern Garibaldi. The election of Pope Pius IX in 1846 caused a sensation among Italian patriots, both at home and in exile. Pius's initial reforms seemed to identify him as the liberal pope called for by Vincenzo Gioberti, who went on to lead the unification of Italy. When news of these reforms reached Montevideo, Garibaldi wrote to the Pope:
If these hands, used to fighting, would be acceptable to His Holiness, we most thankfully dedicate them to the service of him who deserves so well of the Church and of the fatherland. Joyful indeed shall we and our companions in whose name we speak be, if we may be allowed to shed our blood in defence of Pius IX's work of redemption.
Mazzini, from exile, also applauded the early reforms of Pius IX. In 1847, Garibaldi offered the apostolic nuncio at Rio de Janeiro, Bedini, the service of his Italian Legion for the liberation of the peninsula. Then news of the outbreak of the Sicilian revolution of 1848 in January and revolutionary agitation elsewhere in Italy, encouraged Garibaldi to lead approximately 60 members of his legion home.
Return to Italy
Garibaldi returned to Italy amidst the turmoil of the revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states and was one of the founders and leaders of the Action Party. Garibaldi offered his services to Charles Albert of Sardinia, who displayed some liberal inclinations, but he treated Garibaldi with coolness and distrust. Rebuffed by the Piedmontese, he and his followers crossed into Lombardy where they offered assistance to the provisional government of Milan, which had rebelled against the Austrian occupation. In the course of the following unsuccessful First Italian War of Independence, Garibaldi led his legion to two minor victories at Luino and Morazzone.
After the crushing Piedmontese defeat at the Battle of Novara on 23 March 1849, Garibaldi moved to Rome to support the Roman Republic recently proclaimed in the Papal States. However, a French force sent by Louis Napoleon threatened to topple it. At Mazzini's urging, Garibaldi took command of the defence of Rome. In fighting near Velletri, Achille Cantoni saved his life. After Cantoni's death, during the Battle of Mentana, Garibaldi wrote the novel Cantoni the Volunteer.
On 30 April 1849, the Republican army, under Garibaldi's command, defeated a numerically far superior French army at the Porta San Pancrazio gate of Rome. Subsequently, French reinforcements arrived, and the Siege of Rome began on 1 June. Despite the resistance of the Republican army, the French prevailed on 29 June. On 30 June the Roman Assembly met and debated three options: surrender, continue fighting in the streets, or retreat from Rome to continue resistance from the Apennine mountains. Garibaldi, having entered the chamber covered in blood, made a speech favouring the third option, ending with: Ovunque noi saremo, sarà Roma. (Wherever we will go, that will be Rome).
The sides negotiated a truce on 1–2 July, Garibaldi withdrew from Rome with 4,000 troops, and ceded his ambition to rouse popular rebellion against the Austrians in central Italy. The French Army entered Rome on 3 July and reestablished the Holy See's temporal power. Garibaldi and his forces, hunted by Austrian, French, Spanish, and Neapolitan troops, fled to the north, intending to reach Venice, where the Venetians were still resisting the Austrian siege. After an epic march, Garibaldi took temporary refuge in San Marino, with only 250 men having not abandoned him. Anita, who was carrying their fifth child, died near Comacchio during the retreat.
North America and the Pacific
Garibaldi eventually managed to reach Porto Venere, near La Spezia, but the Piedmontese government forced him to emigrate again. He went to Tangier, where he stayed with Francesco Carpanetto, a wealthy Italian merchant. Carpanetto suggested that he and some of his associates finance the purchase of a merchant ship, which Garibaldi would command. Garibaldi agreed, feeling that his political goals were, for the moment, unreachable, and he could at least earn a living.
The ship was to be purchased in the United States. Garibaldi went to New York City, arriving on 30 July 1850. However, the funds for buying a ship were lacking. While in New York, he stayed with various Italian friends, including some exiled revolutionaries. He attended the Masonic lodges of New York in 1850, where he met several supporters of democratic internationalism, whose minds were open to socialist thought, and to giving Freemasonry a strong anti-papal stance.
The inventor Antonio Meucci employed Garibaldi in his candle factory on Staten Island (the cottage where he stayed is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and is preserved as the Garibaldi Memorial). Garibaldi was not satisfied with this, and in April 1851 he left New York with his friend Carpanetto for Central America, where Carpanetto was establishing business operations. They first went to Nicaragua, and then to other parts of the region. Garibaldi accompanied Carpanetto as a companion, not a business partner, and used the name Giuseppe Pane.
Carpanetto went on to Lima, Peru, where a shipload of his goods was due, arriving late in 1851 with Garibaldi. En route, Garibaldi called on revolutionary heroine Manuela Sáenz. At Lima, Garibaldi was generally welcomed. A local Italian merchant, Pietro Denegri, gave him command of his ship Carmen for a trading voyage across the Pacific, for which he required Peruvian citizenship, which he obtained that year. Garibaldi took the Carmen to the Chincha Islands for a load of guano. Then on 10 January 1852, he sailed from Peru for Canton, China, arriving in April.
After side trips to Xiamen and Manila, Garibaldi brought the Carmen back to Peru via the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, passing clear around the south coast of Australia. He visited Three Hummock Island in the Bass Strait. Garibaldi then took the Carmen on a second voyage: to the United States via Cape Horn with copper from Chile, and also wool. Garibaldi arrived in Boston and went on to New York. There he received a hostile letter from Denegri and resigned his command. Another Italian, Captain Figari, had just come to the U.S. to buy a ship and hired Garibaldi to take the ship to Europe. Figari and Garibaldi bought the Commonwealth in Baltimore, and Garibaldi left New York for the last time in November 1853. He sailed the Commonwealth to London, and then to Newcastle upon Tyne for coal.
Tyneside
The Commonwealth arrived on 21 March 1854. Garibaldi, already a popular figure on Tyneside, was welcomed enthusiastically by local working men — although the Newcastle Courant reported that he refused an invitation to dine with dignitaries in the city. He stayed in Huntingdon Place Tynemouth for a few days, and in South Shields on Tyneside for over a month, departing at the end of April 1854. During his stay, he was presented with an inscribed sword, which his grandson Giuseppe Garibaldi II later carried as a volunteer in British service in the Second Boer War. He then sailed to Genoa, where his five years of exile ended on 10 May 1854.
Second Italian War of Independence
Garibaldi returned to Italy in 1854. Using an inheritance from the death of his brother, he bought half of the Italian island of Caprera (north of Sardinia), devoting himself to agriculture. In 1859, the Second Italian War of Independence (also known as the Franco-Austrian War) broke out in the midst of internal plots at the Sardinian government. Garibaldi was appointed major general and formed a volunteer unit named the Hunters of the Alps (Cacciatori delle Alpi). Thenceforth, Garibaldi abandoned Mazzini's republican ideal of the liberation of Italy, assuming that only the Sardinian monarchy could effectively achieve it. He and his volunteers won victories over the Austrians at Varese, Como, and other places.
Garibaldi was very displeased as his home city of Nice (Nizza in Italian) had been surrendered to the French in return for crucial military assistance. In April 1860, as deputy for Nice in the Piedmontese parliament at Turin, he vehemently attacked Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, for ceding the County of Nice (Nizzardo) to Emperor Napoleon III of France. In the following years, Garibaldi (with other passionate Nizzardo Italians) promoted the Italian irredentism of his native city, supporting the Niçard Vespers riots in 1871.
Campaign of 1860
On 24 January 1860, Garibaldi married 18-year-old Giuseppina Raimondi. Immediately after the wedding ceremony, she informed him that she was pregnant with another man's child and Garibaldi left her the same day. At the beginning of April 1860, uprisings in Messina and Palermo in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies provided Garibaldi with an opportunity. He gathered a group of volunteers called i Mille (the Thousand), or the Redshirts as popularly known, in two ships named Il Piemonte and Il Lombardo, and left from Quarto, in Genoa, on 5 May in the evening and landed at Marsala, on the westernmost point of Sicily, on 11 May.
Swelling the ranks of his army with scattered bands of local rebels, Garibaldi led 800 volunteers to victory over an enemy force of 1,500 at the Battle of Calatafimi on 15 May. He used the counter-intuitive tactic of an uphill bayonet charge. He saw that the hill was terraced, and the terraces would shelter his advancing men. Though small by comparison with the coming clashes at Palermo, Milazzo, and Volturno, this battle was decisive in establishing Garibaldi's power on the island. An apocryphal but realistic story had him say to his lieutenant Nino Bixio, "Here we either make Italy, or we die.": 253 In reality, the Neapolitan forces were ill-guided, and most of its higher officers had been bribed.
The next day, he declared himself dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. He advanced to the outskirts of Palermo, the capital of the island, and launched a siege on 27 May. He had the support of many inhabitants, who rose up against the garrison, but before they could take the city, reinforcements arrived and bombarded the city nearly to ruins. At this time, a British admiral intervened and facilitated a truce, by which the Neapolitan royal troops and warships surrendered the city and departed. The young Henry Adams — later to become a distinguished American writer — visited the city in June and described the situation, along with his meeting with Garibaldi, in a long and vivid letter to his older brother Charles. Historians Clough et al. argue that Garibaldi's Thousand were students, independent artisans, and professionals, not peasants. The support given by Sicilian peasants was not out of a sense of patriotism but from their hatred of exploitive landlords and oppressive Neapolitan officials. Garibaldi himself had no interest in social revolution and instead sided with the Sicilian landlords against the rioting peasants.
By conquering Palermo, Garibaldi had won a signal victory. He gained worldwide renown and the adulation of Italians. Faith in his prowess was so strong that doubt, confusion, and dismay seized even the Neapolitan court. Six weeks later, he marched against Messina in the east of the island, winning a ferocious and difficult Battle of Milazzo. By the end of July, only the citadel resisted.
Having conquered Sicily, he crossed the Strait of Messina and marched north. Garibaldi's progress was met with more celebration than resistance, and on 7 September he entered the capital city of Naples, by train. Despite taking Naples, however, he had not to this point defeated the Neapolitan army. Garibaldi's volunteer army of 24,000 was not able to defeat conclusively the reorganized Neapolitan army — about 25,000 men — on 30 September at the Battle of Volturno. This was the largest battle he ever fought, but its outcome was effectively decided by the arrival of the Royal Sardinian Army.
Following this, Garibaldi's plans to march on to Rome were jeopardized by the Piedmontese, who, while technically his ally, were unwilling to risk war with France, whose army protected the Pope. The Piedmontese themselves had conquered most of the Pope's territories in their march south to meet Garibaldi, but they had deliberately avoided Rome, the capital of the Papal state. Garibaldi chose to hand over all his territorial gains in the south to the Piedmontese and withdrew to Caprera and temporary retirement. Some modern historians consider the handover of his gains to the Piedmontese as a political defeat, but he seemed willing to see Italian unity brought about under the Piedmontese Crown. The meeting at Teano between Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II is the most important event in modern Italian history but is so shrouded in controversy that even the exact site where it took place is in doubt.
Aftermath
Garibaldi deeply disliked the Sardinian Prime Minister, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour. To an extent, he simply mistrusted Cavour's pragmatism and realpolitik, but he also bore a personal grudge for Cavour's trading away his home city of Nice to the French the previous year. On the other hand, he supported the Sardinian monarch, Victor Emmanuel II, who in his opinion had been chosen by God for the liberation of Italy.[citation needed] In his famous meeting with Victor Emmanuel at Teano on 26 October 1860, Garibaldi greeted him as King of Italy and shook his hand. Garibaldi rode into Naples at the king's side on 7 November, then retired to the rocky island of Caprera, refusing to accept any reward for his services.
At the outbreak of the American Civil War (in 1861), he was a very popular figure. The 39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment was named Garibaldi Guard after him. Garibaldi expressed interest in aiding the Union, and he was offered a major general's commission in the U.S. Army through a letter from Secretary of State William H. Seward to Henry Shelton Sanford, the U.S. Minister at Brussels, 27 July 1861. On 9 September 1861, Sanford met with Garibaldi and reported the result of the meeting to Seward:
He said that the only way in which he could render service, as he ardently desired to do, to the cause of the United States, was as Commander-in-chief of its forces, that he would only go as such, and with the additional contingent power—to be governed by events—of declaring the abolition of slavery—that he would be of little use without the first, and without the second it would appear like a civil war in which the world at large could have little interest or sympathy.
But Abraham Lincoln was not ready to abolish slavery; Sanford's meeting with Garibaldi occurred a year before Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Sanford's mission was hopeless, and Garibaldi did not join the Union army. A historian of the American Civil War, Don H. Doyle, however, wrote, "Garibaldi's full-throated endorsement of the Union cause roused popular support just as news of the Emancipation Proclamation broke in Europe." On 6 August 1863, after Lincoln had issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln, "Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure."
On 5 October 1860, Garibaldi set up the International Legion bringing together different national divisions of French, Poles, Swiss, Germans and other nationalities, with a view not just of finishing the liberation of Italy, but also of their homelands. With the motto "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic", the unification movement set its gaze on Rome and Venice. Mazzini was discontented with the perpetuation of monarchial government, and continued to agitate for a republic. Garibaldi, frustrated at inaction by the king, and bristling over perceived snubs, organized a new venture. This time, he intended to take on the Papal States.
Expedition against Rome
Garibaldi himself was intensely anti-Catholic and anti-papal. His efforts to overthrow the Pope by military action mobilized anti-Catholic support. There were major anti-Catholic riots in his name across Britain in 1862, with the Irish Catholics fighting in defense of their Church. Garibaldi's hostility to the Pope's temporal domain was viewed with great distrust by Catholics around the world, and the French Emperor Napoleon III had guaranteed the independence of Rome from Italy by stationing a French garrison there. Victor Emmanuel was wary of the international repercussions of attacking Rome and the Pope's seat there, and discouraged his subjects from participating in revolutionary ventures with such intentions. Nonetheless, Garibaldi believed he had the secret support of his government. Once he was excommunicated by the Pope, he chose the Protestant pastor Alessandro Gavazzi as his army chaplain.
In June 1862, he sailed from Genoa to Palermo to gather volunteers for the impending campaign, under the slogan Roma o Morte (Rome or Death). An enthusiastic party quickly joined him, and he turned for Messina, hoping to cross to the mainland there. He arrived with a force of around two thousand, but the garrison proved loyal to the king's instructions and barred his passage. They turned south and set sail from Catania, where Garibaldi declared that he would enter Rome as a victor or perish beneath its walls. He landed at Melito di Porto Salvo on 14 August and marched at once into the Calabrian mountains.
Far from supporting this endeavour, the Italian government was quite disapproving. General Enrico Cialdini dispatched a division of the regular army, under Colonel Emilio Pallavicini, against the volunteer bands. On 28 August, the two forces met in the rugged Aspromonte. One of the regulars fired a chance shot, and several volleys followed, killing a few of the volunteers. The fighting ended quickly, as Garibaldi forbade his men to return fire on fellow subjects of the Kingdom of Italy. Many of the volunteers were taken prisoner, including Garibaldi, who had been wounded by a shot in the foot. The episode was the origin of a famous Italian nursery rhyme: Garibaldi fu ferito ("Garibaldi was wounded").
A government steamer took him to a prison at Varignano near La Spezia, where he was held in a sort of honourable imprisonment and underwent a tedious and painful operation to heal his wound. His venture had failed, but he was consoled by Europe's sympathy and continued interest. After he regained his health, the government released Garibaldi and let him return to Caprera.
En route to London in 1864 he stopped briefly in Malta, where many admirers visited him in his hotel. Protests by opponents of his anticlericalism were suppressed by the authorities. In London, his presence was received with enthusiasm by the population. He met the British Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston, as well as revolutionaries then living in exile in the city. At that time, his ambitious international project included the liberation of a range of occupied nations, such as Croatia, Greece, and Hungary. He also visited Bedford and was given a tour of the Britannia Iron Works, where he planted a tree (which was cut down in 1944 due to decay).
Final struggle with Austria
Garibaldi took up arms again in 1866, this time with the full support of the Italian government. The Austro-Prussian War had broken out, and Italy had allied with Prussia against the Austrian Empire in the hope of taking Venetia from Austrian rule in the Third Italian War of Independence. Garibaldi gathered again his Hunters of the Alps, now some 40,000 strong, and led them into the Trentino. He defeated the Austrians at Bezzecca, and made for Trento.
The Italian regular forces were defeated at Lissa on the sea, and made little progress on land after the disaster of Custoza. The sides signed an armistice by which Austria ceded Venetia to Italy, but this result was largely due to Prussia's successes on the northern front. Garibaldi's advance through Trentino was for nought, and he was ordered to stop his advance to Trento. Garibaldi answered with a short telegram from the main square of Bezzecca with the famous motto: Obbedisco! ("I obey!").
After the war, Garibaldi led a political party that agitated for the capture of Rome, the peninsula's ancient capital. In 1867, he again marched on the city, but the Papal army, supported by a French auxiliary force, proved a match for his badly armed volunteers. He was shot in the leg in the Battle of Mentana, and had to withdraw from the Papal territory. The Italian government again imprisoned him for some time, after which he returned to Caprera.
In the same year, Garibaldi sought international support for altogether eliminating the papacy. At the 1867 congress for the League of Peace and Freedom in Geneva he proposed: "The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished."
Franco-Prussian War
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in July 1870, Italian public opinion heavily favoured the Prussians, and many Italians attempted to sign up as volunteers at the Prussian embassy in Florence. After the French garrison was recalled from Rome, the Italian Army captured the Papal States without Garibaldi's assistance. Following the wartime collapse of the Second French Empire after the Battle of Sedan, Garibaldi, undaunted by the recent hostility shown to him by the men of Napoleon III, switched his support to the newly declared Government of National Defense of France. On 7 September 1870, within three days of the revolution in Paris that ended the Empire, he wrote to the Movimento of Genoa, "Yesterday I said to you: war to the death to Bonaparte. Today I say to you: rescue the French Republic by every means."
Subsequently, Garibaldi went to France and assumed command of the Army of the Vosges, an army of volunteers. French socialist Louis Blanc referred to Garibaldi as a "soldier of revolutionary cosmopolitanism" based on his support for liberation movements throughout the world. After the war he was elected to the French National Assembly, where he briefly served as a member of Parliament for Alpes-Maritimes before returning to Caprera.
Involvement with the First International
When the Paris Commune erupted in 1871, Garibaldi joined with younger radicals such as Felice Cavallotti in declaring his full support for the Communards and internationalism. Garibaldi suggested a grand alliance between various factions of the left: "Why don't we pull together in one organized group the Freemasonry, democratic societies, workers' clubs, Rationalists, Mutual Aid, etc., which have the same tendency towards good?". He began organizing a Congress of Unity, which was supported by many of the radical, free-thinking, and socialist groups throughout Italy such as La Plebe. The Congress was held in the Teatro Argentina despite being banned by the government, and endorsed a set of radical policies including universal suffrage, progressive taxation, compulsory lay education, administrative reform, and abolition of the death penalty.
Garibaldi had long claimed an interest in vague ethical socialism such as that advanced by Henri Saint-Simon and saw the struggle for liberty as an international affair, one which "does not make any distinction between the African and the American, the European and the Asian, and therefore proclaims the fraternity of all men whatever nation they belong to". He interpreted the International Workingmen's Association as an extension of the humanitarian ideals for which he had always fought. Although he did not agree with their calls for the abolition of property, Garibaldi defended the Communards and the First International against the attacks of their enemies: "Is it not the product of the abnormal state in which society finds itself in the world? Shouldn't a society (I mean a human society) in which the majority struggle for subsistence and the minority want to take the larger part of the product of the former through deceptions and violence but without hard work, arouse discontent and thoughts of revenge amongst those who suffer?".
Garibaldi wrote a letter to Celso Ceretti in which he declared: "The International is the sun of the future [sole dell'avvenire]!" The letter was printed in dozens of workers' news sheets and papers, and was instrumental in persuading many fence-sitters to join the organization. After Garibaldi's death, many of his disciples embraced the libertarian socialist ideas of Mikhail Bakunin. As Italy still lacked an industrial proletariat, "Garibaldi's socialism represented most accurately craft trade-unionism and a general focus on economic egalitarianism". His socialism was a "socialism wherein the struggle against every injustice, and a love for freedom, predominated. Garibaldi was not an unpractical man, but an active witness of that kind of generosity in feelings and firm wish for justice". In the first volume of Carl Landauer's European Socialism, Garibaldi is mentioned alongside Mazzini as outstanding "Italian revolutionaries".
According to Denis Mack Smith, "the difference is not so large when we find what Garibaldi meant by the term. Socialism for him was nothing very revolutionary, and perhaps he flaunted the word partly because he delighted to feel that it would shock the Mazzinians". In describing the move to the left of Garibaldi and the Mazzinians, Lucy Riall writes that this "emphasis by younger radicals on the 'social question' was paralleled by an increase in what was called 'internationalist' or socialist activity (mostly Bakuninist anarchism) throughout northern and southern Italy, which was given a big boost by the Paris Commune". The rise of this socialism "represented a genuine challenge to Mazzini and the Mazzinian emphasis on politics and culture; and Mazzinis' death early in 1872 only served to underline the prevailing sense that his political era was over. Garibaldi now broke definitively with Mazzini, and this time he moved to the left of him. He came out entirely in favour of the Paris Commune and internationalism, and his stance brought him much closer to the younger radicals, especially Felice Cavallotti, and gave him a new lease on political life. From his support was born an initiative to relaunch a broad party of the radical left."
Despite being elected again to the Italian parliament, first as part of the Historical Left and then of the Historical Far Left, Garibaldi spent much of his late years on Caprera. However, he still managed to serve the Italian parliament with extreme distinction and supported an ambitious project of land reclamation in the marshy areas of southern Lazio. In 1879, Garibaldi founded the League of Democracy, along with Cavallotti, Alberto Mario and Agostino Bertani, which reiterated his support for universal suffrage, abolition of ecclesiastical property, the legal and political emancipation of women and a plan of public works to improve the Roman countryside that was completed.
On the Ottoman Empire
In a 6 October 1875 letter from Caprera, "To my brothers of the Herzegovina and to the oppressed of Eastern Europe", Garibaldi wrote:
The Turk must go away to Broussa. He descended like a wolf, passing the Bosphorus, devastating, murdering, and violating those populations who gave us the Pelasgi, who were, perhaps, the first civilisers of Europe. He must no longer tread upon that part of the world kept by him in misery. At Broussa, with his vices, depredations, and cruelties, he will find enough people of Asia Minor to torment and plunge into desolation. Rise, then, heroic sons of Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Servia, Therapia, Macedonia, Greece, Epirus, Albania, Bulgaria, and Roumania! All of you have a most splendid history. Among you were born Leonidas, Achilles, Alexander, Scanderbeg, and Spartacus. And today even, among your robust populations, you may still find a Spartacus and a Leonidas. Do not trust to diplomacy. That old woman without a heart certainly deceives you. But with you are all the men of heart throughout the world. England herself, till today favourable to the Turks, has manifested to you by means of the obolus and sympathy of one of her great men that she ought to prefer the alliance and gratitude of a confederation of free peoples to the decrepit confederation of The Empire of the Crescent. Then to Broussa with the Turk! Only thus can you make yourself independent and free. On this side of the Bosphorus the fierce Ottoman will always be under the stimulant of eternal war, and you will never obtain the sacred rights of man.
Death
Ill and confined to bed by arthritis, Garibaldi made trips to Calabria and Sicily. In 1880, he married Francesca Armosino, with whom he previously had three children. Before the wedding, he stated he was not a Catholic and was willing to become a Protestant. Though raised a Catholic he abjured Christianity towards the end of his life and became a deist and a supporter of Freemasonry. On his deathbed, Garibaldi asked for his bed to be moved to where he could view the sea. On his death on 2 June 1882 at the age of almost 75, his wishes for a simple funeral and cremation were not respected. He was buried on his farm on the island of Caprera alongside his last wife and some of his children.
In 2012, Garibaldi's descendants announced that, with permission from authorities, they would have Garibaldi's remains exhumed to confirm through DNA analysis that the remains in the tomb are indeed Garibaldi's. Some anticipated that there would be a debate about whether to preserve the remains or to grant his final wish for a simple cremation.[65] In 2013, personnel changes at the Ministry of Culture sidelined the exhumation plans. The new authorities were "less than enthusiastic" about the plan.
Legacy
Garibaldi's popularity, skill at rousing the common people and his military exploits are all credited with making the unification of Italy possible. He also served as a global exemplar of mid-19th century revolutionary liberalism and nationalism. After the liberation of southern Italy from the Neapolitan monarchy in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Garibaldi chose to sacrifice his liberal republican principles for the sake of unification. Garibaldi's acclaim stretched across Europe with his name revered in Britain to America and France, the tale of an Italian vagabond trekking the South American plains from battle to battle with his pregnant wife in tow, and then returning home and for the love of his homeland forsaking his ambition of making Italy a republic. His exploits became legendary, and when he toured Britain in his older days he was received as a hero.
Garibaldi subscribed to the anti-clericalism common among Latin liberals and did much to circumscribe the temporal power of the Papacy. His personal religious convictions are unclear to historians. In 1882, he wrote that "Man created God, not God created Man", yet he is quoted as saying in his autobiography: "I am a Christian, and I speak to Christians – I am a true Christian, and I speak to true Christians. I love and venerate the religion of Christ, because Christ came into the world to deliver humanity from slavery. You have the duty to educate the people—educate the people—educate them to be Christians—educate them to be Italians. Viva l'Italia! Viva Christianity!".
Garibaldi was a popular hero in Britain. In his review of Lucy Riall's Garibaldi biography for The New Yorker, Tim Parks cites the English historian A. J. P. Taylor as saying that "Garibaldi is the only wholly admirable figure in modern history". British historian Denis Mack Smith wrote:
At the height of glory, Giuseppe Garibaldi was perhaps the most famous person in Italy. His name was much more famous than that of Cavour and Mazzini, and many more people would have heard of him than Verdi or Manzoni. Abroad, Garibaldi symbolized the Risorgimento Italy of those dramatic years and the intrepid audacity that contributed so much to the formation of the Italian nation. A professional liberator, he fought for the oppressed people wherever he found them. Despite having the temperament of the fighter and the man of action, he managed to be an idealist distinctly distinct from his colder-minded contemporaries. Everything he did, he did it with passionate conviction and unlimited enthusiasm; a career full of color and unexpected shows us one of the most romantic products of the time. Moreover, he was a lovable and charming person, of transparent honesty, who was obeyed without hesitation and for whom he died happy.
About G. M. Trevelyan's work on Garibaldi, David Cannadine wrote:
Trevelyan's great work was his Garibaldi trilogy (1907–11), which established his reputation as the outstanding literary historian of his generation. It depicted Garibaldi as a Carlylean hero—poet, patriot, and man of action—whose inspired leadership created the Italian nation. For Trevelyan, Garibaldi was the champion of freedom, progress, and tolerance, who vanquished the despotism, reaction, and obscurantism of the Austrian empire and the Neapolitan monarchy. The books were also notable for their vivid evocation of landscape (Trevelyan had himself followed the course of Garibaldi's marches), for their innovative use of documentary and oral sources, and for their spirited accounts of battles and military campaigns.
Along with Giuseppe Mazzini and other Europeans, Garibaldi supported the creation of a European federation. Many Europeans expected that the 1871 unification of Germany would make Germany a European and world leader that would champion humanitarian policies. This idea is apparent in the following letter Garibaldi sent to Karl Blind on 10 April 1865:
The progress of humanity seems to have come to a halt, and you with your superior intelligence will know why. The reason is that the world lacks a nation which possesses true leadership. Such leadership, of course, is required not to dominate other peoples, but to lead them along the path of duty, to lead them toward the brotherhood of nations where all the barriers erected by egoism will be destroyed. We need the kind of leadership which, in the true tradition of medieval chivalry, would devote itself to redressing wrongs, supporting the weak, sacrificing momentary gains and material advantage for the much finer and more satisfying achievement of relieving the suffering of our fellow men. We need a nation courageous enough to give us a lead in this direction. It would rally to its cause all those who are suffering wrong or who aspire to a better life, and all those who are now enduring foreign oppression. This role of world leadership, left vacant as things are today, might well be occupied by the German nation. You Germans, with your grave and philosophic character, might well be the ones who could win the confidence of others and guarantee the future stability of the international community. Let us hope, then, that you can use your energy to overcome your moth-eaten thirty tyrants of the various German states. Let us hope that in the centre of Europe you can then make a unified nation out of your fifty million. All the rest of us would eagerly and joyfully follow you.
Through the years, Garibaldi was showered with admiration and praises by many intellectuals and political figures. Francesco De Sanctis stated that "Garibaldi must win by force: he is not a man; he is a symbol, a form; he is the Italian soul. Between the beats of his heart, everyone hears the beats of his own." Admiral William Brown called him "the most generous of the pirates I have ever encountered". Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara stated: "The only hero the world has ever needed is called Giuseppe Garibaldi".
Commemoration
Five ships of the Italian Navy have been named after him, including a World War II cruiser and the former flagship, the aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi. Statues of his likeness, as well as the handshake of Teano, stand in many Italian squares, and in other countries around the world. On the top of the Janiculum hill in Rome, there is a statue of Garibaldi on horseback. Many theatres in Sicily take their name from him and are named Garibaldi Theatre.
Several worldwide military units are named after Garibaldi, including the Polish Garibaldi Legion during the January Uprising and the French foreign Garibaldi Legion during World War I. The 39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the American Civil War was named Garibaldi Guard after him. Also, a bust of Giuseppe Garibaldi is prominently placed outside the entrance to the old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC, a gift from members of the Italian Society of Washington.
Greek Freemasons, in order to honour Garibaldi's struggles for freedom and in commemoration of the Redshirts' assistance during the Greco-Turkish War (1897), the Balkan Wars and the First World War, established a Lodge named after the great patriot in 1980. Lodge Giuseppe Garibaldi (no. 130) is still active and operates in Athens under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Greece.
Ten-peso banknote, printed in Uruguay in 1887, with the image of Garibaldi (who is considered an important contributor towards the independence of Uruguay) and Camillo Benso
In 1865, the English football team Nottingham Forest chose their home colours from the uniform worn by Garibaldi and his men in 1865. The Garibaldi School in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire is also named after him.
The Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy (Italian: Trofeo Garibaldi; French: Trophée Garibaldi) is a rugby union trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Six Nations Championship match between France and Italy.
The Garibaldi biscuit was named after him, as was a style of beard. Garibaldi is also a name of a cocktail made of orange juice and Campari.
The Brazilian soccer club Associação Garibaldi de Esportes was named after him.
A species of bright red-orange fish in the damselfish family received the vernacular name Garibaldi in memory of the Garibaldi red shirts. Also, a species of hoverfly, Sphiximorpha garibaldii, was described from a specimen collected in Italy shortly after Garibaldi's victory in the Battle of Varese, and named in his honour.
Namesakes
Several places worldwide are named after him, including:
Garibaldi, Victoria, Australia
Garibaldi, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Garibaldi Square, Sofia, Bulgaria
Giuseppe Garibaldi Park, Montreal, Canada
Garibaldi, British Columbia, an abandoned settlement in British Columbia, Canada
Mount Garibaldi, British Columbia, Canada
Garibaldi Névé
Garibaldi Lake
Garibaldi Provincial Park
Garibaldi Secondary School, British Columbia, Canada
Garibaldi, a station on line 13 of the Paris Métro, France
Garibaldi, Oregon, United States
The Garibaldi School, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom
The Garibaldi Hotel, Northampton, United Kingdom
Giuseppe Garibaldi Street and Garibaldi Bridge, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Cultural depictions
Garibaldi is a major character in two juvenile historical novels by Geoffrey Trease: Follow My Black Plume and A Thousand for Sicily. He also appears in the novels Heart by Edmondo De Amicis and Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson.
In movies, Garibaldi is played by Osvaldo Valenti in the 1940 film Antonio Meucci, by Ugo Sasso in the 1950 film Cavalcade of Heroes, by Raf Vallone in the 1952 film Red Shirts, by Renzo Ricci in the 1961 film Garibaldi, and by Gabriel Braga Nunes in the 2013 film Anita e Garibaldi. He is also played by Franco Nero in the 1987 miniseries Il generale, Thiago Lacerda in the 2003 Brazilian miniseries A Casa das Sete Mulheres and by Giorgio Pasotti in the 2012 miniseries Anita Garibaldi.
On 18 February 1960, the American television series Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre aired the episode "Guns for Garibaldi" to commemorate the centennial of the unification of Italy. This was the only such program to emphasize the role of Italians in pre-Civil War America. The episode is set in Indian Creek, a western gold mining town. Giulio Mandati, played by Fernando Lamas, takes over his brother's gold claim. People in Indian Creek wanted to use the gold to finance a dam, but Mandati plans to lend support to General Garibaldi and Italian reunification. Garibaldi had asked for financing and volunteers from around the world as he launched his Redshirts in July 1860 to invade Sicily and conquer the Kingdom of Naples for annexation to what would finally become the newly born Kingdom of Italy with King Victor Emmanuel II.
In the Capcom arcade game Knights of the Round, the final boss character is named Garibaldi.
Contributing Building - Springfield Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #86003640
Currently a middle school
Built 1923
PS #25
Contributing Building - West DeLand Residential District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #92001617
Built: 1895
Style: Colonial Revival
These kids from Mogotio division in larger Uasin Gishu county are carrying my life on their hands, please kids plant it faster to save me from dying from lack of oxygen and water, And May you as our next generation enjoy the sweet sound of a humming bird….the
next generation will bring a solution to this mess!!
This photo was taken in Kenya for the category Forests.
Contributing Building - Thomasville Commercial Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #84001258
The green building (Queen Anne style) on the left was originally home to Inman's Drug Store.
The building in the middle was originally a grocery and then the CoCroft music store for over 100 years.
The building on the right (Victorian style) was originally Duran and Jeffers Grocery.
1022-546-21
Virginia contributed over 19,000 men to the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, the largest contingent from the twelve Confederate states. Almost 4,500 of these – almost 1 out of 4 – became casualties, the second highest state total.
Below Lee as he studies the distant Union lines are seven Confederate soldiers. According to the marker at the base of the monument:
The group represents various types who left civil occupations to join the Confederate Army. Left to right;
a professional man, a mechanic, an artist, a boy, a business man, a farmer, a youth.
The mild weather no doubt contributes to the large number of homeless people in San Francisco. The Samovar Tea Lounge is a beautiful and amazing place for tea and treats at the Yerba Beuna Gardens. It is very expensive, however, and the condition of the gentleman in the foreground shows in stark contrast to the average Samovar customer.
49/52 Smith 52 Week Challenge, the word is "Heterogeneous," meaning varied or diverse. While I love the diversity we find in the US, from the geography to culture, accents to food, there are some sorts of disparity that are very sad indeed.
Contributing Building - Macon Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #74000658
Built in 1837 for the Monroe Banking and Railroad Co.
Served briefly as temporary state capitol during the Civil War.
Amsterdam's festival of light
2015/2016 marks the fourth edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival, celebrating a theme of 'Friendship'. A whole host of international artists are contributing to this edition, such as Swedish light artist Aleksandra Stratimirovic, whose 'Northern Lights' sculpture will cross the River Amstel.
Tours & events during the Amsterdam Light Festival
Look out for dedicated canal cruises and a walking route taking in the selection of spectacular illuminated artworks. The renowned Water Colors canal cruises can be enjoyed for the entirety of the Amsterdam Light Festival, ensuring you can see the city at its best – from the water – and get up close to all of the major artworks. To explore the festival on foot, don't miss the Illuminade walking route, which is open from 10 December 2015 until 3 January 2016. Also keep an eye out for guided tours and an extensive side-programme that will see a host of activities and events take place at museums, theatres, restaurants, shops and other locations in Amsterdam.
Illuminade
The walking route Illuminade takes you past 20 light artworks through the culturally rich neighborhoods Weesper and Plantage. The outdoor exhibition showcases artworks that have been created specifically for Amsterdam Light Festival by (inter)national talent. From bright projections on historical buildings to dynamic lighting systems in city parks to works that you can actually walk through, the artworks add an extra dimension to the public space. Illuminade offers visitors the opportunity to enjoy contemporary culture and the beauty of light, for free.
See Amsterdam in a whole other light and be sure to share this special experience with family and friends. Illuminade will take place from 10 December 2015 to 3 January 2016.
If you like to walk the Illuminade by yourself, you can buy our program book for €3,50. This book includes information about the artworks and two maps with the routes. The program book is for sale at our Festival Kiosk. The kiosk will be located next to the Stopera at Waterlooplein, this is the starting point of the walking route.
Prefer an Amsterdam canal cruise? Book a ticket for the boat route Water Colors!
Water Colors
Get to know Amsterdam in the most unique way possible with the boat route, Water Colors. The latest light innovations add a whole new dimension to the historical city. From the Herengracht to the Oosterdok to Amstel, experience Amsterdam like never before!
For both visitors and Amsterdam residents, the boat route is a unique way to experience the city. Boats will depart daily (except New Year's Eve) from 17.00 to 22.00. The 75-minute boat tour takes you along, under and through spectacular light artworks. Water Colors will take place from 28 November 2015 to 17 January 2016.
Ready for an enlightening canal cruise? Book your ticket with one of the participating shipping companies.
Contributing Building - Cherry Valley Village Historic District - National Register of Historic Places
NRIS #88000472
Built 1873
Style: Second Empire
The University of Minnesota opened in 1869. Under the Land Grant Act of 1862 the school was mandated to provide military instruction. The castle-like armory was built in 1896 for military and athletic instruction. The building is three stories in height and is constructed of yellow brick with yellow sandstone trim. Each corner of the building is embellished by a crenelated turret. The main entry is through a low semi-circular arch flanked on the right by a low turret and on the left by a four story tower with conical roof. The roofline is decorated by a corbelled cornice. During World War I and II hundreds of military personnel took classes in the building. The building served as multi purpose facility throughout the years. The Armory is located in the University of Minnesota Old Campus Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a contributing property. (Source National Register of Historic Places Inventory- Nomination Form No. 84001483)