It's hard to believe that the artistic career of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) lasted only ten years. A hard-working artist, he produced more than 800 paintings and over 1,000 drawings between 1880 and his death in 1890. He was also a prolific letter writer and his correspondence offers a fascinating insight into his complex personality and powerful intellect.
The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters
In a ground-breaking exhibition, opening in January 2010, the Royal Academy of Arts will bring together selected paintings and letters in the first major exhibition to be devoted to the artist in more than 40 years.
This will be a unique opportunity to view more than 35 original letters in close proximity to approximately 65 paintings and 30 drawings to which they relate. The correspondence is rarely publicly shown because of its extreme fragility.
The Real Van Gogh, a joint collaboration between the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, has been curated by Ann Dumas of the Royal Academy, with Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker of the Van Gogh Museum.
Most of the correspondence, plus twelve paintings, has been loaned by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. The show also features items loaned by other international collections, both private and public, including the National Gallery, London, the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Highlights of the Exhibition
Vincent van Gogh's Letters
Van Gogh wrote more than 800 letters, 651 of them to his brother, Theo. Without his financial support Vincent's artistic career would not have been possible. The letters are most eloquent expressing van Gogh's views on art, nature and literature.
On 25th June 1889 Vincent wrote to Theo (Letter No. 785 [596]) asking for more paints. He describes paintings on which he was working, including two studies of cypress trees in “that difficult shade of bottle green” and provides a sketch in the letter. He also mentions his improving health and his immersion in work, the books he was reading, conversations with Paul Gauguin, and his own thoughts on the work of other artists. A full translation can be found at Van Gogh Letters.
Van Gogh's Cypresses
The painting he referred to, Cypresses (1889), is on display. In the letter mentioned above van Gogh tells Theo that the trees remind him of sunflowers, saying “it astonishes me that they have not been done as I see them."
The Yellow House
Also on display is the The Yellow House (1888). Van Gogh leased four rooms in the house on the Place Lamartine in Arles, France. It was so named by the artist because of the buttery-coloured paint on its external walls, a colour he soon adopted as his signature colour.
Still Life With a Plate of Onions
The exhibition also includes Still Life With a Plate of Onions (1889). Van Gogh produced the painting shortly after a stay in hospital precipitated by an attack of mental illness during which he mutilated his ear. Immediately after this episode he produced a huge number of paintings, perhaps in an attempt to convince himself, and others, that he had fully recovered, both mentally and physically. This was, however, not the case. He died in 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The ticketed exhibition – The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and his Letters – will be on view at the Royal Academy of Arts from 23rd January to 18th April 2010.
Frances Spiegel - Frances Spiegel, B.A. Hons. (Open)., Dip.Eur.Hum., read Art History/European Modern History at the Open University.
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