The Van Gogh Gallery Blog

A “new” Van Gogh painting was announced in The Netherlands today.  Despite the huge body of work that Van Gogh produced and the number of claims to Van Gogh discoveries that have been made, it is extremely rare that a new Van Gogh is actually authenticated.  This and the fact that the late Dirk Hannema, art collector and curator, had been trying to prove the painting’s authenticity since 1975, makes the painting, Le Blute-Fin Mill, an extraordinary discovery.  As the first Van Gogh to be authenticated since 1995, Le Blute-Fin Mill has the art world buzzing. 

The painting, which went on display today at the Museum de Fundatie in the town of Zwolle, The Netherlands, features a large windmill, a popular subject for Van Gogh’s Parisian paintings from 1886.  In fact, Van Gogh’s Le Moulin de Blute-Fin shows the same mill from a different angle. 

The exhibition “The Discovery – Vincent van Gogh’s De Mole ‘Le blute-fin’ in the collection of Museum de Fundatie containing the work will be on display until July 4, 2010.   To view the newly authenticated painting click the Museum de Fundatie link below.

Related Sites:

Museum de Fundatie

While Van Gogh is widely known as a master of painting and drawing, he is gaining more recognition for his talent as a writer.  With the recent exhibits at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and at The Royal Academy of Arts in London featuring Van Gogh’s letters and paintings side by side, more people are becoming aware of Van Gogh the writer.  But his writing doesn’t need to be alongside his paintings for it to be impressive or to make sense.  Van Gogh wrote hundreds of letters during his lifetime many of them to his brother Theo.  His letters range in topic from things you might expect like art techniques and theory to discourses on religion, family, ambition, fear and love to name a few.  It is not until you read several of Van Gogh’s letters from different times over the course of his life that you begin to appreciate the beauty of his writing and his command of language (Van Gogh was fluent in French as well as Dutch)  but also his philosophies and outlook on life.  With Valentine’s Day just past, it seemed fitting to share some of his thoughts on love.  This excerpt is from a letter he wrote to his brother Theo in March of 1883:

“It may well seem to you that the sun is shining more brightly and that everything has taken on a new charm. That, at any rate, is the inevitable consequence of true love, I believe, and it is a wonderful thing. And I also believe that those who hold that no one thinks clearly when in love are wrong, for it is at just that time that one thinks very clearly indeed and is more energetic than one was before. And love is something eternal, it may change in aspect but not in essence. And there is the same difference between someone who is in love and what he was like before as there is between a lamp that is lit and one that is not. The lamp was there all the time and it was a good lamp, but now it is giving light as well and that is its true function. And one has more peace of mind about many things and so is more likely to do better work.”

View more from Van Gogh’s Letters.

Related Articles:

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters Exhibition

Letter Source:

Web Exhibits – Letter from Vincent to Theo, March 1883

This year there are a variety of exciting Van Gogh exhibitions all over the globe.   Even if you don’t live near the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, you may still have an opportunity to see Van Gogh’s works up close and in person at a museum near you.  The following are just a sampling of some of the Van Gogh events going on this year:

Van Gogh Day – Sunday February, 21 at the Marbles Kids Museum, Raleigh, North Carolina

Van Gogh: The Flaming Soul – on going until March 28 at the National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan. 

Masterpieces from Paris:  Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne & Beyond – on going until April 4 at The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters – on going until April 18 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.  Enter our Van Gogh contest to win exhibition tickets.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales- ongoing until April 25 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musee d’Orsay – September 25, 2010 – January 18 2011 at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California.

For more information about new and upcoming Van Gogh exhibitions, please see the Events on the Van Gogh Gallery Facebook Page.

Related Articles:

The Real Van Gogh: The Artists and His Letters

Planning on being in London this spring?  If so, you should enter The Real Van Gogh: The artist and his letters contest. We are currently running a contest in cooperation with The Royal Academy of Arts in London to win a pair of exhibition tickets for The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters.

This landmark exhibition of the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) opened at The Royal Academy of Arts on January 23 and will run until April 18. The focus of the exhibition is the artist’s remarkable correspondence, with over 35 original letters on display in the main galleries of Burlington House, together with around 65 paintings and 30 drawings. The exhibition will offer a unique opportunity to gain an insight into the complex mind of Vincent van Gogh.

For the chance to win a pair of exhibition tickets simply email your name to competitions@royalacademy.org.uk with Van Gogh Gallery in the subject box. Prize drawn on 26 February. Judges’ decision is final.

For more information about the exhibit please see The Royal Academy of Arts.

Related Articles:

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters Exhibition

Happy New Year and thank you for helping support our site to make 2009 an excellent year!  We have had a lot of great feedback from Van Gogh Gallery visitors in the form of blog comments and email messages.  We appreciate all of your input on the site and our blog.  We are also thrilled to have had such an impressive response on our Van Gogh Gallery Facebook page.  We are on track to reach 1,000 fans by the end of 2009, and we value the comments and insights our fans share with us and the Van Gogh community on Facebook everyday!  If you haven’t had a chance to join this community, become a fan today and be a part of the on-going conversation covering everything Van Gogh.  Happy New Year and here’s to an exciting 2010!

Related Articles:

Van Gogh Gallery on Facebook

Thank You Van Gogh Gallery Visitors

 We would like to thank all of our visitors for supporting the Van Gogh Gallery and wish you the best this holiday season.  It seems only fitting that our wishes come from Van Gogh himself, so here are some of his holiday musings and a drawing from a letter he wrote to his brother Theo in December of 1882:

“My intention in these two, and in the first little old man, is one and the same, namely to express the peculiar sentiment of Christmas and New Years Eve. Both in Holland and England this is always more or less religious, in fact, it is that way everywhere, at least in Brittany, and in the Alsace, too. Now one need not agree exactly with the form of that religious sentiment, but if it is sincere, it is a feeling one must respect. And personally, I can fully share it and even need it,”

Letter Source:

Webexhibits

Related Articles:

Gogh Here for the Holidays

Although Van Gogh preferred the French countryside to the congested streets of Paris, he did live in Paris for a short time with his brother Theo at number 54 Rue Lepic in Montmartre. The art community was active at the time in 1874-75 and the Impressionists, or the grands boulevards artists as they were referred to, often gathered together there for exhibitions. Van Gogh was inspired by works in museums of Paris as well as the works of his contemporaries. Surrounded by Impressionists as well as the up and coming Pointillists, Van Gogh observed the works of other artists and drew from their techniques in the continual development of his style.

It is surprising the number of artists who have lived in Paris at one time or another in their lives. The neighborhood of Montmartre especially has attracted a multitude of famous artists including Renoir and Picasso as well as unknown artists. During the same time that Van Gogh lived in Montmartre, Edgar Degas lived a few doors down on Rue Lepic and Toulouse-Lautrec lived around the corner.

Today the art community is still alive in Montmartre. Visitors can sit and have their portraits painted in a matter of minutes, or do as Van Gogh did and observe the works of other artists. There are even walks and tours which take you by some of the places where these great artists like Van Gogh once lived and created their masterpieces.

Related Articles:

Van Gogh Goes Home

The Other Van Gogh

About Renoir’s Home in Montmartre

Rarely, since the time that they were created, has a large collection of Van Gogh’s original letters and his corresponding works been seen together.  But in January of 2010, the main galleries of Burlington House, the Royal Academy of Arts will be host to an exhibition of over 35 original Van Gogh letters and about 65 paintings and 30 drawings relating to the letters on display.  As the first major Van Gogh exhibition in London in over forty years, The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters, will be a monumental event for Van Gogh admirers.

Van Gogh is widely known for his prolific and extraordinary work as an artist, but his expression in the written word is also impressive.  When analyzing different works of art, art historians and appreciators try to uncover meaning in the work itself, but it is rare that the intent, motivation and perception can be drawn directly from the words of the artist himself especially posthumously.  Such an accurate record of one man’s work, life and time in history is hard to find, and we are privileged to have this account preserved for the public to view today.

This exhibition will not only show some of the finished paintings and drawings referred to in Van Gogh’s correspondence to his greatest confidants, visitors will also see the letter sketches of works in progress to get a more complete  picture of the man behind the brush and the pen and his development both as an artist and a person. 

According to the Royal Academy of Arts, “Highlights of the exhibition will include Self-portrait as an Artist (1888) and The Yellow House (1888) from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Still-life: Drawing Board with Onions (1889) from the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; Vincent’s Chair with His Pipe (1888) from the National Gallery, London; and Entrance to the Public Park in Arles (1888) from the Phillips Collection, Washington DC.”

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters Exhibition is curated by Ann Dumas of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.  The exhibit is sponsored by the Bank of New York Mellon.

For tickets and information about The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters please visit the Royal Academy of Arts.

In cooperation with the Royal Academy of Arts, the Van Gogh Gallery will be having a contest to win tickets to this exhibition.  Please continue to check the Van Gogh Gallery website for more details over the next few weeks.

Vincent Van Gogh. Self Portrait as a Painter. 1887 - 1888. Oil on canvas. 65.2 x 50.2 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

With the autumn in full swing, this time of year brings to mind harvest time and preparing for next year.  Van Gogh must have thought the same thing as he was capturing The Reaper and The Sower on canvas.  Inspired by Jean-François Millet, Van Gogh created several “Reaper” and “Sower” paintings between the years 1888 and 1889.

The Sower, shown above left, was painted by Van Gogh in November of 1888.  In this painting, Van Gogh was experimenting with the use of vibrant complimentary colors – something he would continue to do and something he would become known for in some of his most famous paintings like Starry Night.  In a letter to his brother Theo from November of 1888, Van Gogh described the colors he was using in the Sower as “Immense citron-yellow disk for the sun. Sky green-yellow with pink clouds. The field violet, the sower and the tree Prussian blue.”  Although the sun is a large and beaming yellow in this painting, there is still a sense of darkness that is present in the midst of fall.     

In Wheat Fields with Reaper at Sunrise, shown above right, again the subject is simple and again the use of color intense.  With the brilliant yellows and golds of the wheat fields in this painting there is more of a feeling of life and light contrary to the subject matter.  Van Gogh described this contrast in another letter to Theo from September of 1889 when he wrote, “For I see in this reaper – a vague figure toiling away for all he’s worth in the midst of the heat to finish his task – I see in him the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping. So it is, if you like, the opposite of the sower which I tried to do before. But there’s no sadness in this death, this one takes place in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything with light of pure gold.” Contributing to the effect of the opposites is also the fact that The Sower takes place at sunset while the Reaper at sunrise.     

Van Gogh completed several different Sower and Reaper paintings; to see them or to find out where they are located today, view our catalog.

Letters Source:

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, c. 25 November 1888
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Saint-Rémy, 5 or 6 September 1889

Related Articles:

Van Gogh: Brush with Genius Brings Artist to Life
Artchive – Sower with Setting Sun
Van Gogh Museum – The Sower

Now is the perfect time to start planning your Van Gogh tour for next spring or summer.  There are many tour companies which offer bike tours of Van Gogh country in France and The Netherlands.  You can also rent bikes and plan your own tour in the steps of Van Gogh.  If cycling is not for you, many of the historic Van Gogh sites are easily accessible on foot or by car.  Catch dinner in Van Gogh’s last home at the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise, see the Irises outside of the Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, or sip coffee at the Café Terrace on the Place du Forum (pictured on the left), now named Café Van Gogh, in Arles.  Explore the beautiful countryside, and take in the historic sites that have been captured in some of Van Gogh’s most famous works.  Have you already toured the Van Gogh sites in Europe?  Comment and share your experiences or become a fan of Van Gogh Gallery on Facebook and share your Van Gogh tour photos with us.

Related Articles:

Van Gogh Goes Home

On the Road with Vincent

Bike Tours in France: Loire, Provence, Burgundy