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On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
Paul Signac's Antibes, the Pink Cloud (1916). "In a 1916 letter to a critic, Signac annotated a sketch of this 'portrait of a cloud' to reveal the cloud's 'personalities.' He referred to the vaporous form at upper left as Loie Fuller -- an American dancer who had taken Paris by storm in the 1890s -- and pointed out some 'Michelangelesque' in the dark underside of the cloud at right."
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
P1000479 (2)
The interior of all Proust's homes had been somewhat kitschy, so Mendini used a fake baroque armchair as his starting point. He covered it with small colourful dots inspired by the pointillist painter Paul Signac (1863 - 1935), one of Proust's comtemporaries. A unique giant version is a nice photographers playground.
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
from the permanent display of the Batliner Collection at Albertina, Vienna
for educational purpose only
please do not use without permission
The Postcard
A photograph on a postally unused postcard by Louis Lévy showing a tomb-lined path in Alyscamps, Arles, which leads to the St. Honorat Church.
Arles is in Provence, France.
Alyscamps
This path is all that remains of the Nécropole des Alyscamps, a Gallo-Roman cemetery which was painted four times by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).
The name is a corruption of Elisii Campi (Elysian Fields). Alyscamps is located on the final stretch of the Aurelian Way, leading to the city gates.
Roman laws forbade burials within the city limits, and it was therefore common for the roads immediately outside the city to be lined with tombs and mausoleums.
The Alyscamps was Arles' burial ground for well-off citizens from all over Europe for 1500 years. The distances that were often involved led to the curious practice of bringing the dead in specially designed barrels along the Rhône to Arles, where they were fished out of the water by people specially employed for the purpose, and duly interred.
After St. Trophime's body was transferred to St. Etienne in the 12th. Century, the cemetery lost its status and fell into disrepair - marble sarcophagi were neglected, sold or destroyed. The only coffins remaining (in the picture) are the plain stone ones from the Middle Ages - the best ones are in local museums.
The Painting
Vincent Van Gogh painted the scene in the photograph from almost exactly the same spot while working side by side with Paul Gauguin. He painted it in 1888, a month before he cut off his ear.
In May 2015, the painting sold at Sotheby's in New York to an Asian collector for £15m. above its estimate. The hammer price of £45.7m. was however less than the £54.6m. record for a Van Gogh. And to think that he used to give his paintings to local café owners in return for a meal!
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.
"L'âge d'or n'est pas dans le passé, il est dans l'avenir".
Lue ce matin sur le chemin du métro cette belle phrase de Paul Signac, très optimiste et en rupture avec le climat ambiant... je pense notamment à l'article de Monique Dagnaud publié lundi sur Slate.fr : La valise ou le retrait : la jeunesse française face à 2013" qui me trotte dans la tête depuis un moment.
Cette phrase figure sur l'affiche des voeux 2013 de la municipalité de Montreuil, illustrée par un montage de son oeuvre de 1893 : "Au temps de l'harmonie".
Cette toile, ce n'est pas n'importe laquelle à Montreuil. C'est celle qui a été vandalisée l'année dernière et fait depuis l'objet d'une bataille judiciaire initiée par la famille du peintre, qui souhaite voir le tableau au musée d'Orsay plutôt qu'à l'hôtel de ville de Montreuil, estimant qu'il y serait davantage protégé des dégradations et plus à même de rayonner auprès du grand public. Tous les aspects de ce procès sont bien résumés dans cet article du Journal des Arts.
Le choix par la municipalité de faire figurer cette oeuvre sur ses voeux 2013 n'est donc pas anodin et entre bien dans le cadre d'une politique destinée à faire découvrir cette oeuvre au grand public (et mettre au passage en difficulté l'argument "rayonnement" de la famille Signac) : utilisation du visuel sur des supports de communication externe, organisation de visites de scolaires, réalisation d'un petit documentaire sur Montreuil.tv :
webtv.montreuil.fr/--au-temps-d-harmonie,--l-%C3%A2ge-d-o...
Le tribunal de grande instance de Paris sera-t-il sensible à ces arguments ? Réponse le 15 janvier.
Details on part of the painting called Les Andelys, painted by Paul Signac in 1886 using the Divisionist technique.
Neo-Impressionism is the specific name given to the Post-Impressionist work of Seurat and Signac and their followers. Neo-Impressionism is characterised by the use of the Divisionist technique (often popularly but incorrectly called pointillism, a term Signac repudiated).
Divisionism attempted to put Impressionist painting of light and colour on a scientific basis by using optical mixture of colours. Instead of mixing colours on the palette, which reduces intensity, the primary-colour components of each colour were placed separately on the canvas in tiny dabs so they would mix in the spectator's eye. Optically mixed colours move towards white so this method gave greater luminosity.
Painted in 1878, this work captures the snow-covered rooftops of Montmartre from a high vantage point, likely a balcony. Caillebotte’s muted palette of greys and soft pinks evokes the hush of a Parisian winter morning. Though it didn’t attract much attention at the 1879 Impressionist Exhibition, it’s now considered a landmark in urban landscape painting.
Paul Signac, Paris 1863 - 1925
Frau mit Sonnenschirm (Woman with a Parasol)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Das Gemälde Frau mit Sonnenschirm stellt Berthe Roblès dar (1862-1942), eine entfernte Kusine von Camille Pissarro, die Paul Signac Anfang der 1880er Jahre kennen gelernt hatte, als er im Kabarett Le Chat Noir verkehrte. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt tritt sie in das Leben des Malers ein und wird einige Monate vor Entstehung dieses Gemäldes - am 7. November 1892 - seine Frau.
Vollendete und neoimpressionistisch geprägte Porträts sind bei Signac nur selten anzutreffen. Dieses Porträt ist Teil einer Reihe, die der Künstler seinem engstem Freundes- und Familienkreis gewidmet hat und zu der auch das berühmte im New Yorker MoMA aufbewahrte Bildnis des Schriftstellers und Kunstkritikers Félix Fénéon (1890) zählt.
Mit diesem Gemälde, auf dem eine von einem Sonnenschirm bedeckte Frau im Profil zu sehen ist, knüpft Signac an ein bereits von den Impressionisten verwendetes Motiv an, das vor allem in den beiden im Musée d'Orsay aufbewahrten Figurenstudien im Freien von Claude Monet zum Ausdruck kommt. Ihm geht es jedoch eher um eine ausschließlich neoimpressionistische Interpretation des Motivs. Das Gemälde lebt von simultanen Farbkontrasten, besonders von den grün-rot/orangefarbenen und gelb-violetten Gegensätzen. Die Raumaufteilung wurde ohne jegliche Tiefenillusion mit Bedacht zweidimensional festgelegt, während die Gestaltung sich mit den auf dem Gesicht erzeugten Schattenspielen begnügt. Werden einerseits die Stilisierungseffekte des Gemäldes durch die hieratische Erscheinung des Modells hervorgehoben, so betonen doch die Arabesken der Linien der Ärmel und des Sonnenschirms so wie die stilisierte Blume und die Posamenten den vom Künstler beabsichtigten dekorativen Aspekt.
Quelle: www.musee-orsay.fr/
The display reads:
Vincent van Gogh
Dutch, 1853 - 1890
Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy
(Asnieres), 1887
Oil on canvas
Gift of Charles Deering McCormick, Brooks McCormick, and Roger McCormick, 1965.1169
In technique, "Fishing in Spring," is a testament to Vincent van Gogh's friendship with Paul Signac. Van Gogh had seen works by Signac and Georges Seurat in the spring of 1886 at the final Impressionist exhibition. Signac was an eloquent spokesman for Seurat's pioneering Neo-Impressionism, explaining it as a natural development of Impressionism. Under Signac's influence, Van Gogh's palette brightened, his brushstrokes became more varied, and his subject matter expanded. The setting of this work is the Seine River at the Pont de Clichy, near Asnieres, where Van Gogh and Signac painted together on several occasions.
Taken November 27th, 2010.
A detail of Paul Signac's Morning Calm, Concarneau, Opus 219. It was one of my favorite paintings in the exhibit "Seeing Nature" at the Seattle Art Museum.
www.artic.edu/artexplorer-assets/resources/423.pdf
www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/seurat/seurat_overview.html
From www.artic.edu/artexplorer/search.php?artistname=40810&...:
An overview of Seurat's painting technique and process for his famous, large-scale painting of Parisians relaxing on an island in the Seine.
In A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884, Georges Seurat recast Impressionism, using as his guides both optical theory and idealist aesthetics. When first shown in 1886, at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition, this impressive painting of middle-class Parisians relaxing on an island in the Seine just west of the city attracted considerable attention, and no wonder. Although many artists had portrayed similar subjects in recent years, none had used so rigorous and schematic a style. The hieratic figures, shown mostly in profile or straight-on, recall ancient Egyptian reliefs, and the deliberate compositional rhythms amount to a pointed critique of Impressionist ephemerality. As if to dispel any lingering doubts on this point, Seurat also rejected free, sketchy handling, choosing instead to render the entire scene with meticulous, dotlike touches of paint, which, viewed from a certain distance, resemble nothing so much as tapestry stitching.
Seurat conceived these little "dots" and dashes to exploit scientific theories of optical mixture, according to which discrete applications of certain colors, if immediately juxtaposed, will blend in perception to form new ones. The result was meant to be brilliantly luminous; one critic described a "vibration of light, a richness of color, [and] a sweet and poetic harmony." Seurat arrived at A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 by way of a prolonged trial-and-error process, during which he produced many drawings and oil studies such as the one shown here. By the time he executed the Art Institute's panel, he had already settled on the disposition of the landscape elements but was still experimenting with the figures, whose placement remains somewhat awkward. With its faceted handling and brilliantly orchestrated greens, blues, and yellows, the study has a charming immediacy. In the final canvas, however, the artist's grave stylization and playful irony are more prominent, and the resulting tone is complex.
The distancing quality of Seurat's novel technique made it a fine vehicle for his dry wit, evident in the occasional visual pun—note the wafts of cigar smoke that morph into a white dog—as well as in remarkable gallery of contemporary social types, from the brooding rower reclining at the lower left to the gawky standing man playing a French horn in the middle distance. But the pervasive self-absorption of the figures seems at odds with the integrative harmonies of the composition as a whole. The painting is rich in such enigmatic tensions, which are perhaps the secret of its enduring fascination.
The Grande Jatte brought Seurat fame and made him the leader of an artistic school; many painters, notably Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac, chose to adopt Neo-Impressionism, as Seurat's manner came to be known (it is also referred to as Pointillism or Divisionism). Although short-lived as a movement (largely due to Seurat's untimely death, at age thirty-one), the style is historically important for its introduction into avant-garde painting of new elements—such as the simplification of form, a classical mode of spatial organization, and a sophisticated sense of decorative unity. Basing his works on abstract schemes rather than pure sensation, Seurat opened wholly unforeseen possibilities for the development of modern art.
The Neue Pinakothek is an incredibly nice museum - it concentrates on art from the 1800-1920s. I went there on a very wet and cold Sunday morning (it is only 1 Euro on Sunday) in October 2009. This is my kind of art - I can look at something and not have to try to figure out what it is. This is definitely a must see site if you hit Munich.
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
Paul SIGNAC
(Paris, 1863 - Paris, 1935)
Femmes au puits Esquisse I
1892
Huile sur bois
Don de Mme Ginette Signac, 1979
PARIS Musée d'Orsay
1898. Litografia de transferència de llapis de colors en quatre colors sobre paper japonès. 25,08 x 30,48 cm. High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 57.52. Obra no exposada.
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
[This photograph was identify the painter (115)]
.
Paul Signac French, 1863-1935
b> Place Clichy , 1889
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
1975.1.210
From the placard: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Vincent van Gogh -
Café Table with Absinthe [1887]
Amsterdam VGM
*********************************************************************************
The portrait in the café
Toulouse-Lautrec was adept at choosing a setting that reflected the personality of his model.18 In the case of Van Gogh, it seems he found the café to be a fitting backdrop for his friend. The choice is not surprising considering that in Paris Van Gogh had developed a routine of hastening to a café at the end of his workday during the so-called heure verte, or ‘green hour’, to imbibe one or more glasses of absinthe. 19 Van Gogh himself confessed that when he left Paris for Arles in the winter of 1888 he was ‘almost an alcoholic’.20 Paul Signac (1863–1935) recalled that when he visited his friend in the south, ‘the absinthes and brandies would follow each other in quick succession.’21 During the period when Toulouse-Lautrec depicted him, Van Gogh also portrayed himself twice in a café with a glass of liquor
Vincent van Gogh Self-Portrait with a Glass, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
(fig. 1)
.22 He even devoted an entire canvas exclusively to his beloved green elixir, seen from the drinker’s perspective: Café Table with Absinthe (1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
catalogues.vangoghmuseum.com/contemporaries-of-van-gogh-1...
De dames laten zich door een kunsthistoricus alles uitleggen over de moderne kunst in de Lage Landen.
Frankreich / Provence / Côte d’Azur - Saint-Tropez
Saint-Tropez (/ˌsæn troʊˈpeɪ, - trəˈ-/ SAN troh-PAY, - trə-, French: [sɛ̃ tʁɔpe]; Provençal: Sant Tropetz [san(t) tʀuˈpes]) is a commune in the Var department and the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southern France. It is 68 kilometres (42 miles) west of Nice and 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Marseille, on the French Riviera, of which it is one of the best-known towns. In 2018, Saint-Tropez had a population of 4,103. The adjacent narrow body of water is the Gulf of Saint-Tropez (French: Golfe de Saint-Tropez), stretching to Sainte-Maxime to the north under the Massif des Maures.
Saint-Tropez was a military stronghold and fishing village until the beginning of the 20th century. It was the first town on its coast to be liberated during World War II as part of Operation Dragoon. After the war, it became an internationally known seaside resort, renowned principally because of the influx of artists of the French New Wave in cinema and the Yé-yé movement in music. It later became a resort for the European and American jet set and tourists.
History
In 599 BC, the Phocaeans from Ionia founded Massilia (present-day Marseille) and established other coastal mooring sites in the area. Through the writings of Roman historian and military commander Pliny the Elder, it was found that Saint-Tropez was known in ancient times as Athenopolis and that it belonged to the Massilians. In 31 BC, the Romans invaded the region. Their citizens built many opulent villas in the area, including one known as the "Villa des Platanes" (Villa of the Plane Trees). The closest settlement to Saint-Tropez in antiquity is attested as Heraclea-Caccabaria, today Cavalaire-sur-Mer, situated on the southern end of the peninsula, while the gulf of Saint-Tropez was called sinus Sambracitanus, which likely survives in the settlement name of Les Issambres.
The town owes its current name to the early Christian martyr Saint Torpes. Legend tells of his decapitation at Pisa during Nero's reign, with his body placed in a rotten boat along with a rooster and a dog. The body purportedly landed at the present-day location of the town of Saint-Tropez.
Toward the end of the ninth century, long after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, pirates and privateers began a hundred years of attacks and sackings. In the tenth century, the village of La Garde-Freinet was founded 15 km (9 mi) to the north of Saint-Tropez. From 890 to 972, Saint-Tropez and its surroundings became an Arab Muslim colony dominated by the nearby Saracenic settlement of Fraxinet; in 940, Saint-Tropez was controlled by Nasr ibn Ahmad. From 961 to 963, Adalbert, son of Berengar, the pretender to the throne of Lombardy who was pursued by Otto I, hid at Saint-Tropez. In 972, the Muslims of Saint-Tropez held Maïeul, the abbot of Cluny, for ransom.
In 976, William I, Count of Provence, Lord of Grimaud, began attacking the Muslims, and in 980 he built a tower where the Suffren tower now stands. In 1079 and 1218, Papal bulls mentioned the existence of a manor at Saint-Tropez.
From 1436, Count René I (the "good King René") tried to repopulate Provence. He created the Barony of Grimaud and appealed to the Genoan Raphael de Garezzio, a wealthy gentleman who had sent a fleet of caravels carrying 60 Genoese families to the area. In return, Count René promised to exempt the citizens from taxation. On 14 February 1470, Jean de Cossa, Baron of Grimaud and Grand Seneschal of Provence, agreed that the Genoan could build city walls and two large towers, which still stand: one tower is at the end of the Grand Môle and the other is at the entrance to the Ponche.
The city became a small republic with its own fleet and army and was administered by two consuls and 12 elected councillors. In 1558, the city's captain Honorat Coste was empowered to protect the city. The captain led a militia and mercenaries who successfully resisted attacks by the Turks and Spanish, succored Fréjus and Antibes and helped the Archbishop of Bordeaux regain control of the Lérins Islands.
In 1577, the daughter of the Marquis Lord of Castellane, Genevieve de Castilla, married Jean-Baptiste de Suffren, Marquis de Saint-Cannet, Baron de La Môle, and advisor to the parliament of Provence. The lordship of Saint-Tropez became the prerogative of the De Suffren family. One of the most notable members of this family was the later vice-admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez (1729–1788), veteran of the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War.
In September 1615, Saint-Tropez was visited by a delegation led by the Japanese samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga that was on its way to Rome but was forced by weather to stop in the town. This may have been the first contact between the French and the Japanese.
The local noblemen were responsible for raising an army that repulsed a fleet of Spanish galleons on 15 June 1637; Les Bravades des Espagnols, a local religious and military celebration, commemorates this victory of the Tropezian militia.[13] Count René's promise in 1436 to not tax the citizens of Saint-Tropez was honored until 1672, when Louis XIV abrogated it as he imposed French control.
The Gulf of Saint-Tropez was known as the Gulf of Grimaud until the end of the 19th century.
During the 1920s, Saint-Tropez attracted famous figures from the fashion world such as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. During World War II, the landing on 15 August 1944 began the Allied invasion of southern France, Operation Dragoon. In the 1950s, Saint-Tropez became internationally renowned as the setting for such films as And God Created Woman, which starred French actress Brigitte Bardot.
In May 1965, an Aérospatiale Super Frelon pre-production aircraft crashed in the gulf, killing its pilot.
On 4 March 1970, the French submarine Eurydice, with its home port as Saint-Tropez, disappeared in the Mediterranean with 57 crew aboard after a mysterious explosion.
The motto of Saint-Tropez is Ad usque fidelis, Latin for "faithful to the end". After the Dark Age of plundering the French Riviera, Raphaël de Garesio landed in Saint-Tropez on 14 February 1470, with 22 men, simple peasants or sailors who had left the overcrowded Italian Riviera. They rebuilt and repopulated the area, and in exchange were granted by a representative of the "good king", Jean de Cossa, Baron of Grimaud and Seneschal of Provence, various privileges, including some previously reserved exclusively for lords, such as exemptions from taxes status and the right to bear arms. About ten years later, a great wall with towers stood watch to protect the new houses from sea and land attack; some 60 families formed the new community. On 19 July 1479, the new Home Act was signed, "the rebirth charter of Saint-Tropez".
Climate
Saint-Tropez has a hot-summer mediterranean climate with mild winters and hot summers, although daytime temperatures are somewhat moderated by its coastal position.
Economy
The main economic resource of Saint-Tropez is tourism. The city is well known for the Hôtel Byblos and for Les Caves du Roy, a member of the Leading Hotels of the World; its 1967 inauguration featuring Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs was an international event.
Beaches
Tropezian beaches are located along the coast in the Baie de Pampelonne, which lies south of Saint-Tropez and east of Ramatuelle. Pampelonne offers a collection of beaches along its five-kilometre shore. Each beach is around 30 metres wide with its own beach hut and private or public tanning area.
Many of the beaches offer windsurfing, sailing and canoeing equipment for rent, while others offer motorized water sports, such as power boats, jet bikes, water skiing and scuba diving. Some of the beaches are naturist beaches. There are also many exclusive beach clubs that are popular among wealthy people from around the world.
Toplessness and nudity
Saint-Tropez's Tahiti Beach, which had been popularised in the film And God Created Woman featuring Brigitte Bardot, emerged as a clothing-optional destination, but the mayor of Saint-Tropez ordered police to ban toplessness and to watch over the beach via helicopter. The "clothing fights" between the gendarmerie and nudists become the main topic of a famous French comedy film series, Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (The Troops of St. Tropez) featuring Louis de Funès. In the end, the nudist side prevailed. Topless sunbathing is now the norm for both men and women from Pampelonne beaches to yachts in the centre of Saint-Tropez port. The Tahiti beach is now clothing-optional, but nudists often head to private nudist beaches, such as that in Cap d'Agde.
Port
The port was widely used during the 18th century; in 1789 it was visited by 80 ships. Saint-Tropez's shipyards built tartanes and three-masted ships that could carry 1,000 to 12,200 barrels. The town was the site of various associated trades, including fishing, cork, wine and wood. The town had a school of hydrography. In 1860, the flagship of the merchant navy, named The Queen of the Angels (La Reine des Anges, a three-masted ship of 740 barrels capacity), was built at Saint-Tropez.
Its role as a commercial port declined, and it is now primarily a tourist spot and a base for many well-known sail regattas. There is fast boat transportation with Les Bateaux Verts to Sainte-Maxime on the other side of the bay and to Port Grimaud, Marines de Cogolin, Les Issambres and St-Aygulf.
Events
Les Bravades de Saint-Tropez
Les Bravades de Saint-Tropez is an annual celebration held in the middle of May when people of the town celebrate their patron saint, Torpes of Pisa, and their military achievements. One of the oldest traditions of Provence, it has been held for more than 450 years since the citizens of Saint-Tropez were first given special permission to form a militia to protect the town from the Barbary pirates. During the three-day celebration, the various militias in costumes of the time fire their muskets into the air at traditional stops, march to the sound of bands and parade St. Torpes's bust. The townspeople also attend a mass wearing traditional Provençal costume.
Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez
Each year, at the end of September, a regatta is held in the bay of Saint-Tropez (Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez). Many yachts are entered, some as long as 50 metres. Many tourists come to the location for this event, or as a stop on their trip to Cannes, Marseille or Nice.
Traditional dishes
The Tarte tropézienne is a traditional cake invented by a Polish confectioner who had set up shop in Saint-Tropez in the mid-1950s, and made famous by actress Brigitte Bardot.
Culture, education and sport
The town has health facilities, a cinema, a library, an outdoor center and a recreation center for youth.
Schools include: École maternelle (kindergarten – preschool) – l'Escouleto, écoles primaires (primary schools – primary education): Louis Blanc and Les Lauriers, collège d'enseignement secondaire (secondary school, high school – secondary education) – Moulin Blanc.
There are more than 1,000 students distributed among kindergartens, primary schools and one high school. In 2011, there were 275 students in high school and 51 people employed there, of whom 23 were teachers.
Art
Saint-Tropez plays a major role in the history of modern art. Paul Signac discovered this light-filled place that inspired painters such as Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and Albert Marquet to come to Saint-Tropez. The painting styles of pointillism and fauvism emerged in Saint-Tropez. Saint-Tropez was also attractive for the next generation of painters: Bernard Buffet, David Hockney, Massimo Campigli and Donald Sultan lived and worked there. Today, Stefan Szczesny continues this tradition.
The contemporary artist Philippe Shangti imagined the design of Le Quai and L'Opera, restaurants located on the port of Saint-Tropez where he also exhibits his art collections. Centered on a specific theme, he always denounces different problems affecting society with provocative artworks.
Famous persons connected with Saint-Tropez
The most famous persons connected with Saint-Tropez include the semi-legendary martyr who gave his name to the town, Saint Torpes of Pisa; Hasekura Tsunenaga, probably the first Japanese in Europe, who landed in Saint-Tropez in 1615; a hero of the American Revolutionary War, Admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez; the icon of modern Saint-Tropez, Brigitte Bardot, who started the clothes-optional revolution and still lives in the Saint-Tropez area; Louis de Funès, who played the character of the gendarme (police officer) in the French comedy film series Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez and also helped establish the international image of Saint-Tropez as both a quiet town and a modern jet-set holiday target.
In popular culture
The English rock band Pink Floyd wrote a song "San Tropez" after the town. Saint-Tropez was also mentioned in David Gates's 1978 hit "Took the Last Train", Kraftwerk's "Tour de France", Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation", Taylor Swift's "The Man", and Beyoncé's "Energy". Rappers including Diddy, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, J. Cole, and Post Malone refer to the city in some of their songs as a favorite vacation destination, usually reached by yacht. DJ Antoine wrote a song "Welcome to St. Tropez". The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles is set in a drag night club in St. Tropez. Furthermore, Bulgarian singer azis wrote a song named "Сен Тропе"(Sen Trope). Also, Romanian singer Florin Salam wrote the song (Saint Tropez). Saint Tropez was also mentioned in Army of Lovers' song "My Army of Lovers." Their song "La Plage De Saint Tropez" was also dedicated to this town.
List of media connected with Saint-Tropez
Non-exhaustive filmography
Saint-Tropez, devoir de vacances (short film, 1952)
Et Dieu... créa la femme (1956)
Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
Une fille pour l'été (1960)
Saint-Tropez Blues (1960)
Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964) and its sequels Le Gendarme à New York (1965), Le Gendarme se marie (1968), Le Gendarme en balade (1970), Le Gendarme et les Extra-terrestres (1979) and finally Le Gendarme et les Gendarmettes (1982)[49][50]
La Collectionneuse (1967)
La Chamade (1968)
Les Biches (1968)
La Piscine (1969)
Le Viager (1972)
La Cage aux Folles (1978)
Le Coup du parapluie (1980)
Le Beau Monde (1981)
Les Sous-doués en vacances (1981)
Trilogy by Max Pécas: Les Branchés à Saint-Tropez (1983), Deux enfoirés à Saint-Tropez (1986) and On se calme et on boit frais à Saint-Tropez (1987)
A Summer in St. Tropez (1984)
Le Facteur de Saint-Tropez (1985)
Les Randonneurs à Saint-Tropez (2008)
Television series
Sous le soleil, broadcast in over 100 countries by the name "Saint-Tropez"
Emily in Paris, an American-French romantic-comedy-drama had one episode in Saint-Tropez "Do You Know the Way to St. Tropez?"
Literature
Saint-Tropez, avec des lithographies originales by Bernard Buffet (1979)
Saint-Tropez d'hier et d'aujourd'hui, avec des photographies by Luc Fournol (1981) by Annabel Buffet
Les Lionnes by Saint-Tropez by Jacqueline Monsigny, 1989
La folle histoire et véridique histoire de Saint-Tropez by Yves Bigot, 1998
Sunset in St. Tropez by Danielle Steel, 2004
Rester normal à Saint-Tropez, strip cartoon by Frédéric Beigbeder, 2004
La Légende de Saint-Tropez by Henry-Jean Servat, preface by Brigitte Bardot, éditions Assouline, 2003
Paintings
Port of Saint-Tropez, Paul Signac (1899)
Port of Saint-Tropez, Henri Lebasque (before 1936)
A panoramic view of Saint-Tropez by Paul Leduc (1876–1943)
(Wikipedia)
Saint-Tropez [sɛ̃tʁɔpe] (provenzalisch Sant-Troupès) ist eine französische Gemeinde und ein kleiner Hafenort mit 3.586 Einwohnern (Stand 1. Januar 2022) an der Mittelmeerküste (Côte d’Azur) im Département Var in der Region Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Die Gemeinde gehört zum Kanton Sainte-Maxime im Arrondissement Draguignan.
Beschreibung
Saint-Tropez befindet sich am östlichen Fuß des Maurenmassivs, am Nordufer einer Halbinsel.
Das damalige Fischerdorf zog gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts zahlreiche Künstler wie Paul Signac, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Henri Manguin und andere an, deren Werke heute im Musée de l’Annonciade in der Nähe des Hafens ausgestellt sind. Der Schriftsteller Guy de Maupassant schrieb ein Tagebuch, das er 1888 unter dem Titel Sur l’eau veröffentlichte.
In der Zwischenkriegszeit waren Schriftsteller wie Kurt Tucholsky, Sybille Bedford, Colette und viele andere von der Schönheit des Ortes begeistert.
Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg erlebte Saint-Tropez einen weiteren Aufschwung. Es wurde zu einem Treffpunkt von Künstlern, Schriftstellern (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Boris Vian und Françoise Sagan) und der Oberschicht.
Saint-Tropez ist berühmt für seinen großen Yachthafen und die Baie de Pampelonne, den größten Sandstrand der Côte d’Azur, der allerdings überwiegend auf dem Territorium der Nachbargemeinde Ramatuelle liegt. Viele prominente Europäer verbringen ihren Urlaub in Saint-Tropez, unter anderem in den – wiederum zu Ramatuelle gehörenden – Strandclubs Tahiti Plage, Club 55, Nikki Beach, Aqua Club, Bagatelle Beach und vielen weiteren. In Saint-Tropez gibt es zahlreiche gehobene Restaurants und Läden.
Die Ortschaft wird von einer 1602 bis 1607 gebauten Zitadelle (La Citadelle) mit Ausblick auf die Stadt überragt. Sie beherbergt ein Museum für Seefahrts- und Ortsgeschichte.
In Deutschland wurde Saint-Tropez in den 1950er- und 1960er-Jahren vor allem bekannt durch Gunter Sachs (1932–2011) und Brigitte Bardot (* 1934) sowie durch die Gendarmen-Filme (1964–1982) mit Louis de Funès. In der ehemaligen Polizeiwache, die Handlungsort der Gendarmerie-Filme war, gibt es seit 2016 ein Museum, das Musée de la Gendarmerie et du Cinéma de Saint-Tropez.
Geschichte
Saint-Tropez, benannt nach dem Heiligen Torpes, einem frühchristlichen Märtyrer, welcher im 1. Jahrhundert enthauptet wurde, war bis ins 20. Jahrhundert nur ein einfaches Fischerdörfchen. Die strategisch günstige Lage interessierte seit dem 8. Jahrhundert Herrscher und Machthaber. 1944 landeten alliierte Truppen im Laufe der Operation Dragoon bei Saint-Tropez. 1965 entstand am äußeren Ende der Bucht ein künstliches Mini-Venedig (Port Grimaud). Das Hinterland war früher viel stärker bewohnt als heute. Die Bauern zogen weg, weil sie mit der Landwirtschaft und den Touristen sehr schlecht verdienten.
Verkehr
Im Straßenverkehr sind im Juli und August tagsüber von etwa 10 bis 20 Uhr etwa zweistündige Verzögerungen die Regel. Saint-Tropez ist durch Personenfähren von Sainte-Maxime aus erreichbar. Die Busse der Varlib verbinden Saint-Tropez u. a. mit Saint-Raphaël und Toulon. Einen Bahnanschluss hat Saint-Tropez seit der Stilllegung der Schmalspurbahn Train des Pignes nicht mehr. 15 Kilometer südwestlich des Ortes liegt der Flughafen Saint-Tropez. Internationalen Anschluss hat Saint-Tropez primär durch den Flughafen Nizza Côte d’Azur, der etwa eineinhalb Stunden Autofahrt (ca. 105 Kilometer Fahrstrecke) entfernt liegt. Der Flughafen Marseille Provence ist in etwa einer Stunde und 45 Minuten (ca. 145 Kilometer Fahrstrecke) zu erreichen und der Flughafen Toulon-Hyères in nur einer Stunde.
Sehenswürdigkeiten
La Citadelle
Die Festung oberhalb der Stadt ist ein sechseckiger, wuchtiger Bau aus dem 16. Jahrhundert. Hier befindet sich auch das Marinemuseum Musée de la Citadelle, in dem u. a. die Geschichte über den Ort und die Umgebung dokumentiert ist. Von der Plattform der Festungsanlage hat man einen imposanten Blick über Saint-Tropez und den Golf von Saint-Tropez.
Musée de l’Annonciade
In der ehemaligen Kapelle aus dem 16. Jahrhundert ist die Kunstsammlung des Industriellen Georges Grammont untergebracht.
Musée de la gendarmerie et du cinéma (seit 2016)
Place des Lices
Auf dem mit Platanen bestandenen Platz werden jeden Dienstag und Samstag provenzalische Spezialitäten angeboten. Zwischen den Markttagen bietet er die Möglichkeit, in Ruhe unter den Bäumen zu sitzen und den Boule-Spielern bei ihrem Zeitvertreib zuzusehen.
Hafen mit Môle Jean-Réveille
Direkt am historischen Ortskern liegen der Yachthafen und der alte Hafen. In den Sommermonaten ist hier ein mondäner Treffpunkt für die Wohlhabenden aus aller Welt.
Quartier de la Ponche
Maison des Papillons
Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption de Saint-Tropez
Mitten in der Altstadt, umgeben von romantischen Gassen, steht die aus dem 16. Jahrhundert stammende Kirche. Nach der zwischenzeitlichen Zerstörung wurde sie zwischen 1769 und 1784 neu aufgebaut. Lediglich der im Jahr 1694 erbaute Turm ist von dem ursprünglichen Bau übrig geblieben. Er leuchtet in Gelb und Ocker über der Stadt und ist ein unverkennbares Wahrzeichen des Ortes.
Cimetière Marin
pittoresker Friedhof mit Meerblick
Strände Canebiers und Pampelonne
Waldbrände
In den Sommermonaten kommt es in der ausgedörrten, mit Pinien bewachsenen Umgebung von Saint-Tropez entlang des Maurenmassivs seit Jahrhunderten immer wieder zu verheerenden Waldbränden. Bereits im Jahr 1271 wurde davon berichtet. Einwohner und Touristen werden gelegentlich vor den Flammen am Rand der Stadt evakuiert.
Kunst und Saint-Tropez
In der Geschichte der modernen Kunst spielt Saint-Tropez eine herausragende Rolle.
Paul Signac entdeckte diesen lichterfüllten Ort und holte Maler wie Matisse, Bonnard oder Marquet nach Saint-Tropez. Hier entwickelte sich die Malerei vom Pointillismus zum Fauvismus. Diese Entwicklung ist im Musée de l’Annonciade von Saint-Tropez eingehend dokumentiert. Alf Bayrle verbrachte zwischen 1928 und 1934 Monate in Saint-Tropez als Gast bei Madame Aude.
Pablo Picasso malte hier die Odalisque.
Auch für die nächste Generation blieb Saint-Tropez ein Anziehungspunkt. Bernard Buffet, Massimo Campigli, David Hockney lebten und arbeiteten in Saint-Tropez. Heute setzt der in Saint-Tropez lebende Maler Stefan Szczesny diese Tradition fort.
In den französischen Gelben Seiten sind in Saint-Tropez 14 Kunstgalerien verzeichnet.
Musik
Das Klischee von Saint-Tropez als Luxusurlaubsort der High Society hat zu einer Erwähnung des Ortes in zahlreichen Liedtexten geführt wie z. B. Welcome to St. Tropez von DJ Antoine. Auch in Partyschlagern und Raptexten wird Saint-Tropez genannt.
Veranstaltungen
Saint-Tropez ist Austragungsort des seit 2021 stattfindenden Tennisturniers Saint-Tropez Open.
Persönlichkeiten
Marcel Aubour (* 1940), Fußballspieler
Arthur Bauchet (* 2000), paralympischer Alpinskifahrer
Salim Ben Seghir (* 2003), Fußballspieler
Mit Saint-Tropez verbunden
Brigitte Bardot (* 1934), Schauspielerin, Sängerin, Model und Tierschützerin, lebt hier seit 1958
(Wikipedia)
Saint-Tropez befindet sich an der Côte d’Azur, am östlichen Fuß des Massif des Maures. Das damalige Fischerdorf zog schon gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts zahlreiche Künstler wie Paul Signac, Henri Matisse und Pierre Bonnard an, deren Werke heute in dem neben dem Hafen gelegenen Musée de l'Annonciade zu bewundern sind.
Der Aufschwung Saint-Tropez begann in den 1950er Jahren, als sich der Ort zu einem Treffpunkt von Künstlern und der High Society entwickelte. Unter Stammgästen wird der Ort auch nur kurz Saint Trop' genannt, von Einheimischen scherzhaft auch Sans trop d' pèse (nicht allzu sehr ins Gewicht fallend).
Saint-Tropez ist berühmt für seinen großen Yachthafen und die Baie de Pampelonne, den größten Sandstrand der Côte d´Azur, der allerdings überwiegend auf dem Territorium der Nachbargemeinde Ramatuelle liegt.
Viele prominente Europäer verbringen ihren Urlaub in Saint-Tropez, unter anderem in den – wiederum zu Ramatuelle gehörenden – berühmten Strandclubs Tahiti Plage, Club 55, Nikki Beach und Aqua Club. Den vielen reichen Urlauber stehen in Saint-Tropez zahlreiche teure Restaurants und Boutiquen zur Verfügung.
Die Ortschaft wird von einer 1592 entstandenen Zitadelle („La Citadelle“) überragt, von der man einen schönen Ausblick hat. Sie beherbergt ein Museum für Seefahrts- und Ortsgeschichte. Saint-Tropez hat nur 5275 Einwohner (Stand 1. Januar 2008), über das Jahr verteilt sind jedoch etwa fünf Millionen Besucher dort.
In Deutschland ist Saint-Tropez vor allem durch Gunter Sachs und Brigitte Bardot sowie durch die Gendarmerie-Filme mit Louis de Funès bekannt geworden.
Quelle: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
Las veces que estuve en Paris vi este gatito por todas partes, siempre quise comprarme un llaverito o encendedor para llevarme de recuerdo y al final nunca lo hice... típico de los turistas que uno dice, despues lo compro... y ese despues nunca llega...
Le Chat Noir en español, el gato negro, fue un cabaret del siglo XIX en el barrio bohemio de Montmartre, en París. Fue inaugurado el 18 de noviembre de 1881 en el boulevard Rouchechouart por el artista Rodolphe Salis, y clausurado en 1897 (para decepción de Picasso y de otros que lo buscaron cuando fueron a la Exposición Universal de París (1900)).
El cabaret fue muy conocido por la actuación de cantautores como Aristide Bruant, por presentar espectáculos de teatro de sombras, creados principalmente por Rodolphe Salis y Henri Rivière, y porque entre sus clientes habituales había muchos artistas famosos o notables.
Algunos clientes famosos de este cabaret:
Alphonse Allais (1854-1905), escritor y humorista.
George Auriol (1863-1938), cantautor, poeta y pintor.
Aristide Bruant (1851-1925), cantautor.
Caran d'Ache (1858-1909), caricaturista francés de origen ruso.
Coquelin Cadet (1848-1909), actor de teatro.
Émile Cohl (1857-1938), creador de dibujos animados.
Charles Cros (1842-1888), poeta e inventor.
Claude Debussy (1862-1918), compositor.
Maurice Donnay (1859-1945), dramaturgo.
André Gill (1840-1885), caricaturista y cantautor humorístico.
Émile Goudeau (1849-1906), periodista, novelista y poeta.
Yvette Guilbert (1867-1944), cantante.
Jules Laforgue (1860-1887), poeta francés de origen uruguayo.
Louis Le Cardonnel (1862-1936), poeta.
Jean Richepin (1849-1926), poeta social, novelista y autor teatral francés de origen argelino.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), novelista.
Henri Rivière (1827-1883), escritor y periodista.
Maurice Rollinat (1846-1903), poeta.
Albert Samain (1858-1900), poeta.
Erik Satie (1866-1925), compositor y pianista.
Paul Signac (1863-1935), pintor.
August Strindberg (1849-1912), escritor y dramaturgo sueco.
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), poeta.
Adolphe Léon Willette (1857-1926), pintor, ilustrador et caricaturista.
Tous les auteurs / collaborateurs :Pierre Courthion; Kurt Seligmann
Notes :Illustrations: 15 etchings by Kurt Seligmann, printed by J.J. Taneur.
In the original white paper covers.
Description :19 leaves, 15 plates 53 cm
Contenu :1. Le boucanier --
2. La parachutiste --
3. L'ermite --
4. L'homme du gaz --
5. Le pêcheur --
6. Le chiffonier --
7. L'opéré --
8. L'époux --
9. Le charmeur d'oiseaux --
10. Le chapardeur --
11. Les voyageurs --
12. Le fonctionnaire --
13. Le pâtre --
14. Le roi du charbon --
15. La sorcière.
Quinze eauxfortes originales de Kurt Séligmann;
www.worldcat.org/title/vagabondages-heraldiques-quinze-te...
Impressionism / Pierre Courthion --
Selected graphic works --
Chronology of events and exhibitions --
James Abbott NcNeill Whistler --
Edouard Manet --
Winslow Homer --
Eugene Boudin --
Claude Monet --
Camille Pissarro --
Paul Cezanne --
Armand Guillaumin --
Edgar Degas --
Pierre-Auguste Renoir --
Alfred Sisley --
Berthe Morisot --
Mary Cassatt --
Frederic Bazille --
Max Liebermann --
Paul Gauguin --
Vincent Van Gogh --
Georges Seurat --
Paul Signac --
Maurice Prendergast --
Pierre Bonnard.
Responsabilité :Pierre Courthion ; translated by John Shepley.
www.worldcat.org/title/impressionism/oclc/002984578
mpressionism by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
31 editions published between 1970 and 1989 in 3 languages and held by 1,949 libraries worldwide
Surveys the development of impressionist art, with reproductions of more than 145 paintings
Georges Rouault by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
23 editions published between 1961 and 1964 in 4 languages and held by 1,210 libraries worldwide
The life and works of the French Fauvist and Expressionist painter
Georges Seurat by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
28 editions published between 1968 and 1991 in 5 languages and held by 1,198 libraries worldwide
Édouard Manet by Édouard Manet( Livre )
23 editions published between 1961 and 1984 in 3 languages and held by 1,069 libraries worldwide
Contains forty color plates, supplemented by black-and-white reproductions with text and commentary on Manet's life and his works
Georges Seurat by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
9 editions published in 1988 in English and held by 916 libraries worldwide
Numerous black-and-white illustrations show his extraordinary handling of the mediums of charcoal and conte crayon. The text and commentaries are by French author and critic Pierre Courthion, a foremost authority on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. A biographical essay is followed by an album of reproductions
Romanticism by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
12 editions published between 1961 and 1968 in English and Italian and held by 864 libraries worldwide
"It is mainly in the light of the work of Eugene Delacroix that we propose to interpret the international development of Romantic painting"--Page 6
Edouard Manet by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
9 editions published between 1984 and 2004 in English and held by 790 libraries worldwide
Contains forty color plates, supplemented by black-and-white reproductions with text and commentary on Manet's life and his works
Montmartre by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
30 editions published between 1956 and 1976 in 5 languages and held by 789 libraries worldwide
Paris in the past: [from Fouquet to Daumier by Pierre Courthion( Livre )
12 editions published in 1957 in English and held by 769 libraries worldwide
Georges Rouault by Georges Rouault( Livre )
8 editions published in 1977 in English and held by 763 libraries worldwide
On the coldest day ever, a visit to see the best art ever, Metropolitan Museum, New York, February 2016.
Los plano que recogen las zonas del Boulevard de Clichy, desde la Place de Clichy hasta la Place Blanche, muestra en el punto 1, el lugar de las obras de Van Gogh. Localizamos su situación en el ángulo que forman las Rues de Fontaine y Blanche.
1. Lugar de las obras de Van Gogh. 2. Moulin Rogue. 3. Estudio de Cormon.
4. Estudio de Signac y Seurat. 5. Estudio de Gêrome.
El plano inferior es de 1892.
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La_Cathedrale_de_Rouen-HarmonieBrune
(Rouen Cathedral, Brown Harmony)
1893
Oil on canvas (H. 0.91; L. 0.63 m)
by Claude Monet.
Paris, Musée d'Orsay
www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/rouen/
www.mcah.columbia.edu/monet/swf/
During the 1890's, faithful to the Impressionist idea that shape is perceived through changing patterns of light, Monet began to paint pictures of the same scene observed at different times of the day. Of the various series produced in this way (Haystacks, Poplars), the one devoted to Rouen Cathedral is the most important, both because it is the largest (thirty paintings in all) and because it is the only series in which all the pictures represent an identical motif. Here, the Gothic architecture is no longer a subject, but a motif and a pretext for the spectacular depiction of instantaneous impressions, an idea by which Monet was obsessed. The thick, crude brush-strokes suggest the texture of the stone as it literally traps the light which falls upon it.
The importance of Monet's artistic approach was recognized immediately by artists and personalities of his time, such as Signac, Pissarro and Clemenceau.