The world of Van Gogh

(Source: jelanihasan, via diezutaten)

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Le Blute-Fin Mill

(Zwolle (Netherlands), Museum de Fundatie; 1886)

Oil on canvas

55.2 x 38 cm.

The newly authenticated Van Gogh has gone on display 35 years after an art collector bought it in Paris, convinced it was painted by the famed Dutch master but never able to prove it. Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said “Le Blute-Fin Mill” was done in 1886. He said its large human figures are unusual for a Van Gogh landscape but it has his typically bright colors.

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L’Arlesienne (Madame Ginoux)

(Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna; 1890)

Oil on canvas
60.0 x 50.0 cm.

While in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted another four portraits of Madame Ginoux, based on Gauguin’s charcoal drawing of November 1888.

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L’Arlesienne: Madame Ginoux with Books

(New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; 1888)

Oil on canvas
91.4 x 73.7 cm.

L’Arlésienne, L’Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), or Portrait of Madame Ginoux are titles given to six paintings by Vincent van Gogh, painted in Arles, November 1888 (or later), and in Auvers, February 1890. L’Arlésienne is pronounced ‘lar lay zyen’; it means literally “the woman from Arles”.

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The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing

(Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum; 1888)

Oil on canvas
54.0 x 65.0 cm.

Van Gogh thought of Arles as a French counterpart to the world he saw in the Japanese prints: clear air, blossoming trees, and the local people purposefully working in harmony with nature. He longed to see “nature under a brighter sky” to better understand what inspired the artists in Japan. He approached the subject of the Langlois Bridge mindful of the Japanese example, employing clear color and emphasizing the linear patterns of the bridge structure against the sky.

12

Lane with Poplars

(Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen; 1885)

Oil on canvas
78.0 x 98.0 cm.

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Lane in Voyer d’Argenson Park at Asnieres

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery; 1887)

59.0 x 81.0 cm.

10

Landscape Under a Stormy Sky

(Gstaad (Switzerland), Collection Louis and Evelyn Franck; 1888)
Oil on canvas
59.5 x 70.0 cm.

20

Landscape at Sunset

(Switzerland, Private collection; 1885)

Oil on canvas
27.5 x 41.5 cm.

17

Irises

(Los Angeles, Getty Center: 1889)

Oil on canvas
71.0 x 93.0 cm.

Vincent van Gogh painted Irises shortly after he voluntarily admitted himself into the St.-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy, France. Irises was painted in the garden to the south of the men’s quarters - the only area Van Gogh was permitted to work during the first month of his confinement. The scene is a symphony of vibrant colours with the magnificent violet iris petals dominating the rich red soil and the bright orange marigolds in the background.

In May, 1889 Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo:

“Have you received the case of pictures? I am anxious to know whether or not they have suffered. I am working on two others—some violet irises and a lilac bush, two subjects taken from the garden.”

Later, in the same letter Vincent writes to his sister-in-law Johanna about the conditions of the asylum:
“Though here there are some patients very seriously ill, the fear and horror of madness that I used to have has already lessened a great deal. And though here you continually hear terrible cries and howls like beasts in a menagerie, in spite of that people get to know each other very well and help each other when their attacks come on. When I am working in the garden, they all come to look, and I assure you they have the discretion and manners to leave me alone—more than the good people of the town of Arles, for instance.”

Van Gogh shipped the completed Irises to Theo in Paris and his brother was extremely taken with the painting. Theo submitted the work to the Salon des Indépendents in September, 1889.

Theo wrote to Vincent:
“Now I still have to tell you that the exhibition of the Indépendents is open, and that your two pictures are there, the “Irises” and “The Starlit Night.” The latter is hung badly, for one cannot put oneself at a sufficient distance, as the room is very narrow, but the other one makes an extremely good showing. They have put it on the narrow wall of the room, and it strikes the eye from afar. It is a beautiful study full of air and life.”

While on display at the Salon Irises caught the attention of the critic Félix Fénéon who wrote “The Irises violently slash into long strips, their violet petals on sword-like leaves.” Years after the exhibition the writer Octave Mirbeau would acquire Irises (see provenance below) and his conversation about the painting with Claude Monet was recalled by the French journalist Léon Daudet:
I can once again see, though it was many years ago, Monet speaking with Mirbeau about another famous painter, Vincent van Gogh, on the subject of a path of irises, a canvas that in Mirbeau’s nervous, blond-haired hands gloriously shimmered in the light. “How,” Monet was saying, “did a man who loved flowers and light to such an extent, and who rendered them so well, how, then did he still manage to be so unhappy?”
There has been some speculation about the symbolic import of Irises. Some feel that the lone, white iris was Van Gogh’s depiction of himself in the asylum—isolated and detached from the rest of the staff and inmates. Such interpretation is, of course, completely subjective and neither Vincent nor Theo’s correspondence put forth any such suggestions.