Rain, 1889
Vincent Willem van Gogh, Dutch
Oil on canvas
28 7/8 x 36 3/8 inches (73.3 x 92.4 cm)
The Henry P. McIlhenny Collection in memory of Frances P. McIlhenny, 1986
1986-26-36
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Van Gogh Up Close
February 1, 2012 – May 6, 2012
exceptional intensity, not only in his use of color and exuberant application of
paint, but also in his personal life. Drawn powerfully to nature, his works–
particularly those created in the years just before he took his own life–engage
the viewer with the strength of his emotions. This exhibition focuses on these
tumultuous years, a period of feverish artistic experimentation that began
when van Gogh left Antwerp for Paris in 1886 and continued until his death
in Auvers in 1890. Radically altering and often outright abandoning
traditional painting techniques, van Gogh created still lifes and landscapes
unlike anything that had ever been seen before. He experimented with depth
of field and focus. He used shifting perspectives and brought familiar objects
“up close” into the foreground. And he produced some of the most original
works of his career; works that dramatically altered the course of modern
painting. Through some 40masterpieces borrowed from collections around
the world, Van Gogh Up Close is the first exhibition to explore the reasons
and means by which this impassioned artist made such unusual changes to his
painting style in the final years of his life. When he arrived in Paris, van Gogh
initially worked in the Montmartre apartment he shared with his brother Theo.
He created a series of still lifes and paintings of flowers and fruit, focusing
especially on aspects of scale, angle, and color. In many of these works, objects
may be seen from above, or are placed in a tightly cropped space providing no
clues to their context or setting. Pieces of fruit appear to tip forward and threaten
to roll out of the picture. Meanwhile, the close up views of grasses, wheat sheaves,
and tree trunks, which dominate the foreground of a number of the landscapes
of this period, hint at more than just a detailed study of subject–they suggest
a deep concern with representing the sensory and emotional experience of being
outdoors. When van Gogh discoveredthe work of other artists in Paris, such as the
Impressionist paintings of Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir, and the pointillist works
of Seurat and others, he was inspired to use lighter colors and to play with different
kinds of brushwork in his own work. At about this time, he also began to acquire
Japanese woodblock prints. He admired these for their decorative use of color
and flattened compositions, and he embraced the ideas of Japanese artists who
worked in close communion with nature, studying “the smallest blade of grass” to
better comprehend nature as a whole. Indeed, when he moved to Arles in 1888,
van Gogh wrote that being in the south of France was the closest thing to going
to Japan. The landscapes that he painted around Arles show Japanese influence
in their deep views of the countryside and high horizon lines, while the landscapes
he went on to create in Saint-Rémy and Auvers in 1889 and 1890 are tightly packed,
more structured works. Dominated by a screen of trees or falling raindrops, these
paintings suggest the immediacy and closeness of van Gogh’s surroundings. A year
before he died, he wrote in a letter to his sister, “I…am always obliged to go and gaze
at a blade of grass, a pine-tree branch, an ear of wheat, to calm myself.” In his final
works, van Gogh closed in on his subjects in even more dramatic ways, reducing the
depth of field and maximizing the expressive impact of his brushwork and color. An
intimately focused view of a clump of iris, a tangle of almond branches, and the vibrant
patterning of an Emperor moth are just a few of the images in an audacious series of
still lifes which mark the culmination of the exhibition.
Support and Organizers
Van Gogh Up Close is made possible by GlaxoSmithKline and Sun Life Financial.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and
the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation,
The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions,
The Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions, the National Endowment
for the Arts, The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Arcadia
Foundation, Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, David and Margaret Langfitt, Mr. and
Mrs. Robert E. Linck, Mr. and Mrs. John M. Thalheimer, Mrs. Eugene W. Jackson, Mr.
and Mrs. Leonard Abramson, and other generous individuals. Promotional support is
provided by NBC 10 WCAU and Amtrak. The catalogue was funded, in part, by the
Netherland-America Foundation. The exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia
Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Curators
Joseph J. Rishel, The Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting
before 1900, and Senior Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin
Museum Jennifer A. Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Associate Curator
of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900 and the Rodin Museum
Location
Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor
Itinerary
Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 1–May 6, 2012
(Dorrance Galleries)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, May 25–September 3, 2012