The Van Gogh Gallery Blog

During the August and September, when sunflowers are a hearty flower common in many areas, it is hard not to be reminded of Van Gogh.  Sunflowers have become an iconic symbol of the artist and his work.   Sunflowers were a popular subject in Van Gogh’s paintings when he moved to Arles, France; many of them he created to decorate Paul Gauguin’s room in the Yellow House in Arles. 

When writing to his brother Theo about Arles and the flowers in a letter from August 8, 1888, Van Gogh wrote

“Under the blue sky the orange, yellow, red splashes of the flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there is a something or other happier, more lovely than in the North.”

It is not surprising that Van Gogh captured that happiness in some of his most famous Sunflower paintings which he created during his stay in Arles.  His most commonly known Sunflower paintings are the Sunflowers and the Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, but he created several other lesser known Sunflower paintings.  His earlier paintings containing sunflowers were done in Paris from 1886-1887.  These paintings do not have the same vibrant yellows as the Arles series has, but show his early development of this subject.   View a few of them here:

Letter Source:
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/519.htm

The summer is the perfect time to get out of the heat and take in some culture at a local museum.   Fortunately, for Van Gogh lovers his works can be seen in museums all over the world.  The largest collections can be found in The Netherlands including famous works like The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers and Almond Blossom.  The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo have the largest collections.  Travel to Paris and see more of Van Gogh’s masterpieces like Starry Night Over the Rhone at the Musée d’Orsay or La Mousmé, Sitting at the Louvre.   In London both the National Gallery and the Tate Modern have works by Van Gogh.

In New York, you can see Van Gogh’s Starry Night in person at the Museum of Modern Art or see several of his other paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   If you are in Chicago the Art Institute of Chicago has several impressive Van Gogh pieces including The Bedroom.  

And no matter where you are you can always view Van Gogh’s masterpieces by going to the Van Gogh Gallery catalog and filter by city, state, country or museum name to find the Van Goghs closest to you or just browse them online.

At the end of his life, Van Gogh was living in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise, in France and staying in a small upstairs room at the Ravoux Inn.  The Inn was owned and operated by the Ravoux family who had a daughter named Adeline.  Adeline was a young girl when Vincent was living at the Ravoux Inn, but at the age of 76 she wrote a memoir of Van Gogh’s stay and the impression it made on her at a young age.  Her fascinating account gives a very detailed depiction of Vincent at the end of his life.  The following quotes are from this memoir. 

“He was a man of good build, one shoulder slightly leaning on the side of his wounded ear, a very penetrating glance, gentle and calm, but not a very communicative character. When one spoke to him, he always replied with an agreeable smile.”

When commenting on the portrait that Van Gogh did of her Adeline said,

“I did not see a resemblance. Nevertheless, last year, someone who came to see me to talk about Van Gogh: the first time that they met me they recognized me from this portrait that Vincent had done and added: “This is not the youthful girl that you were that Vincent saw, but the woman that you would become.” Neither of my parents really appreciated this painting, nor did anyone else that saw it then. At this time very few people understood the paintings of Van Gogh.”

Read her full account here including Adeline’s record of Vincent’s final days.

In October of 1888, while living in The Yellow House in Arles, Van Gogh completed one of his most famous works The Bedroom.   Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles has a striking combination of colors that Van Gogh was proud of.  In a letter to his brother Theo from 1888, Van Gogh wrote:

“The walls are pale violet. The floor is of red tiles.  The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheets and pillows very light greenish-citron.  The coverlet scarlet. The window green.  The toilet table orange, the basin blue.  The doors lilac.”

Today the original version of The Bedroom is at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam although it is currently undergoing restoration.  While it is being restored; however, you can follow the entire restoration process on the Van Gogh Museum’s Bedroom Secrets blog. 

There are also two other versions of The Bedroom which Van Gogh painted.  One now hangs in The Art Institute of Chicago.  This one Van Gogh created in September of 1889 as a back-up copy of the first Bedroom painting.   The third version is located in Paris at the Musee d’Orsay and was created as a smaller version Van Gogh painted for his mother and sister.

Letter Source
Letter to Theo Van Gogh, October 1888

We are thrilled to announce the launch our new Van Gogh Gallery Store!   Now not only is the Van Gogh Gallery the place to find information about Van Gogh’s life and works, but now we are pleased to be bringing our visitors an extensive selection of Van Gogh prints in our Van Gogh collection.  We have received countless emails over the years asking where to find particular Van Gogh prints, so we wanted to be able to bring a wide selection of prints directly to our visitors from our site.  The new Van Gogh Gallery store is organized for easy browsing with categories for Van Gogh Florals, Van Gogh Landscapes, Van Gogh Portraits, Starry Night Prints and Post Impressionism.  In addition to the Van Gogh collection available on the store, there are works by many other famous artists to fit any décor or style.   From the works of Klimt, Picasso and Dali to Vintage art, Modern and Pop art prints, we are happy to offer our visitors many fine art works that are ideal for framing or transferring to canvas to compliment your personal taste.

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Van Gogh completed Irises in May of 1889 when he was at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. Here he eased back into painting capturing flowers and foliage in the surrounding garden and the star filled nights from his window. In a letter to his brother Theo from May of 1889, Van Gogh wrote:

“The idea of my duty to get back to work occurs to me a lot and I believe that all my faculties for work will soon come back to me. It’s just that the work often absorbs me so much that I think that for the rest of my life I will always be a bit absent-minded and awkward when shifting for myself.”

Irises was shown with Starry Night over the Rhone at the the Société des Artistes Indépendants Exhibition in Paris in September of 1889. Following the exhibition, Theo wrote to Van Gogh in October of 1889 proclaiming that he thought Irises was one of Vincent’s “good things.”

“The exhibition of the Independents is over and I’ve got your irises back; it is one of your good things. It seems to me that you are stronger when you paint true things like that, or like the stagecoach at Tarascon, or the head of a child, or the underbrush with the ivy in vertical format. The form is so well defined, and the whole is full of colour.”

Today, Irises can be seen at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and is still considered one of Van Gogh’s finest works.

Letters Source:
Letter from Vincent to Theo, May 1889
Letter from Theo to Vincent, October 1889

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers is one of his most famous series of works.  He completed two separate series of still life paintings of Sunflowers the first in Paris in 1887 and the second adorned Gauguin’s room in Arles when he came to stay with Van Gogh at the yellow house.    In a letter to his brother Theo from August of 1888 Van Gogh writes about how quickly he had to work to complete his Sunflower paintings to decorate the Studio of the South,

“Now that I hope to live with Gauguin in a studio of our own, I want to make decorations for the studio. Nothing but big flowers. Next door to your shop, in the restaurant, you know there is a lovely decoration of flowers; I always remember the big sunflowers in the window there.

If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow. I am working at it every morning from sunrise on, for the flowers fade so soon, and the thing is to do the whole in one rush.”

Often synonymous with happiness and light, for Van Gogh Sunflowers also brought meaning of new hope for building his artist community in the Studio of the South.   The National Gallery website has an interesting section on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers which details Sunflowers as symbols of happiness and covers this period in Van Gogh’s life:
 
Van Gogh’s Sunflowers served as an inspiration for many other artists.  View other artists’ Sunflowers.

While Monet is known for his series paintings including his Water Lilies and Haystacks series, Van Gogh was not really known for a painting series although he created 30 paintings containing wheat fields.   Many of Van Gogh’s wheat field paintings were created during 1889 in Saint-Remy de Provence where Van Gogh was staying in the Saint Paul Hospital.  From his room in the asylum there, Van Gogh captured the view of wheat fields in the sun, in the rain and under swirling clouds.  Van Gogh constantly reinvented the French summer landscape capturing light on the stalks of wheat in different ways.  Below are some of Van Gogh’s Wheat Fields.

One of Van Gogh’s most beautiful paintings and one that today is renowned among the most popular selling prints is Van Gogh’s “Almond Blossom.”   Painted in Saint-Rémy, France in February of 1890, this painting was created by Van Gogh in the last year of his life.  Originally painted as a gift for his brother Theo’s newborn son, Almond Blossom, shown here, is an oil on canvas painting inspired by Japanese prints with a blue background and almond branches covered in blossoms in the foreground. 

After by the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote the following in a letter to his mother from February 20, 1890,

“I imagine that, like me, your thoughts are much with Jo and Theo: how glad I was when the news came that it had ended well: it was a good thing that Wil stayed on. I should have greatly preferred him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.”

Theo named the newborn Vincent after his brother, and Vincent seemed quite proud to share this painting with him as it was a symbol of new life and the coming of spring.  In a letter to his brother Theo from March 15 of 1890 Van Gogh wrote,

“My work was going well, the last canvas of branches in blossom – you will see that it was perhaps the best, the most patiently worked thing I had done, painted with calm and with a greater firmness of touch.”

Today Almond Blossom, or Blossoming Almond Tree as it is often called, can be seen at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh’s paintings can be seen in museums and galleries all over the world, and while there really is no comparison for seeing his brushstrokes up close and in person, it is amazing how many excellent virtual Van Gogh displays exist online. Virtual tours have improved over the years now offering the viewer an ever greater perspective of the object and its surroundings. In this virtual tour of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, you can see many of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and the works hanging alongside of them all from the comfort of your computer. If you prefer to travel online to Paris a virtual tour of the Musee d’Orsay will take you the Van Gogh collection there.

If you would rather avoid the sometimes dizzying effects of the virtual tour, check out some of the interactive exhibitions online such as the “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night” exhibition which took place a couple of years ago at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but continues to display online. There are also a selection of videos on Van Gogh’s works and research on the Van Gogh channel on Art Babble. So if you want to experience the works of Van Gogh, but can’t make it to the museum, a Van Gogh tour may just be a click away.