The Painter of Sunflowers (Le Peintre de Tournesols): Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, by Paul Gauguin, painted in Arles, December 1888

Main article: Vincent van Gogh

For a timeline, see Vincent van Gogh chronology

The fame of Vincent van Gogh began to spread during the last years of his life in France and Belgium, and in the year after his death in the Netherlands. It reached its first peak in Germany before World War I, and at the end of World War I in Switzerland. Due to the economic crisis in Germany and France after 1918, pioneer collections including works of Van Gogh were dissolved. Thus, Britain and American collectors (private as well as public) got their chance to acquire first rate works at a rather late time. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (3176x2554, 1045 KB) Description: Title: de: Porträt des Vincent van Gogh, Sonnenblumen malend en: Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers Technique: de: Öl auf Leinwand Dimensions: de: 73 × 91 cm Country of origin: de: Frankreich Current location (city): de: Amsterdam Current location... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (3176x2554, 1045 KB) Description: Title: de: Porträt des Vincent van Gogh, Sonnenblumen malend en: Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers Technique: de: Öl auf Leinwand Dimensions: de: 73 × 91 cm Country of origin: de: Frankreich Current location (city): de: Amsterdam Current location... Self-portrait (1887) Vincent Willem van Gogh (IPA:) (March 30, 1853, Zundert–July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise) was a Dutch painter, classified as a Post-Impressionist. ... This is a chronology of the artist Vincent van Gogh. ...

Lifetime exhibits

During his life time, Van Gogh contributed works of his own only on a few and minor occasions which mainly passed unnoted by critics and public, for example a display of Japanese woodcuts in the Restaurant "Le Tambourin", for which Van Gogh probably interpreted three famous prints by Eisen and Hiroshige. Towards the end of this year, he organized another exhibition at the "Restaurant du Chalet" on Montmartre to which his friends Emile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and perhaps Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec contributed. Van Gogh considered the first one a disaster, while he was prepared to take the second one as a success: Bernard and Anquetin sold paintings, and he himself had exchanged works with Paul Gauguin. ^[1] View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, woodcut by Hiroshige, published posthumously 1859. ... Émile Bernard (1868-April 16, 1941) was a French painter who worked with such artists as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne. ... Louis Anquetin (January 26, 1861 - August 19, 1932) was a French painter. ... Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. ... Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 – May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist artist. ...

In 1888, Van Gogh joined the "Société des Artistes Indépendants", so three of his paintings were on show in their annual Salon in Paris, and two in the year following (due to restrictions caused by the Exposition Universelle de 1889). In 1890 and 1891, their annual exhibitions comprised ten paintings by Vincent; part of them had been shown before by the society "Les XX" in Brussels, in 1891 completed by a dozen of drawings (some of them only on view "by demand"). According to several letters from his brother Theo, his contributions to these few exhibitions established his renown amongst French vanguard painters like Monet and Signac. Société des Artistes Indépendants formed in Paris on July 19, 1884 when artists wanted to show art to the public which the official (Académie de peinture et de sculpture) salon jury rejected. ... Les XX was a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers and sculptors, formed in 1883 by the Brussels lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus. ...

Early promoters

The first article on Van Gogh's work was written by Theo's friend, the painter Joseph Jacob Isaacson; it appeared in the 17 August 1889 issue of the Amsterdam weekly De Portefeuille.

Albert Aurier was an important early promotor of Van Gogh's work. His article 'Les Isolés' appeared in the Mercure de France, January 1890. Another voice was that of Octave Mirbeau who's article 'Vincent van Gogh' in L'Echo de Paris on 1 March 1891. Later that year Van Gogh's friend Émile Bernard contributed short pieces on Van Gogh for La Plume and Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui. This page may meet Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... Octave Mirbeau (February 16, 1848 - February 16, 1917) was a French journalist, art critic, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde. ... Émile Bernard (April 28, 1868-April 16, 1941), born in Lille, France, was an Impressionist painter. ...

Julius Meier-Graefe wrote influentially of Van Gogh, his publications incuding: Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst (Stuttgart, 1904 and later Munich 1927), Über Vincent van Gogh', Sozialistische Monatshefte (February 1906), Vincent van Gogh (Munich 1912) and Van Gogh der Zeichner (Berlin, 1928, published by Otto Wacker). Julius Meier-Graefe (June 10, 1867 - June 5, 1935) was a German art critic and novellist. ... Otto Wacker (?-?) was a German art dealer who became famous for commissioning and selling forgeries of paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. ...

In the English-speaking world, the Bloomsbury art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell were his first champions. Fry, in a 1924 essay, "Vincent Van Gogh," reported that after Van Gogh's death, he "disappeared" and "scarcely any picture dealer in Bond Street gave him another thought" until the 1910 show titled "Post Impressionist Exhibition" in which "his works dazzled, astonished and infuriated all cultured England." Fry's essay canonized Van Gogh as "a saint" of art, "the victim of the terrible intensity of his convictions—his conviction that somewhere one might lay hold of spiritual values compared with which all other values were of no account." His works gave "an expression in paint for the desperate violence of his spiritual hunger...."^[2]. That set the agenda for many subsequent Van Gogh studies, which are predominantly biographical to this day. Van Gogh fits modern culture's attempt to find secular substitutes for a religion it no longer believed in, as M.H. Abrams describes in "Natural Supernaturalism" (1970). The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set or just Bloomsbury, as its adherents would generally refer to it, was an English group of artists and scholars that existed from around 1905 until around World War II. // History The elite group deficated as an informal social assembly of recent Cambridge University alumni... Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 - 9 September 1934) was an English artist and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury group. ... Arthur Clive Howard Bell (September 16, 1881 – September 18, 1964) was an English critic, associated with the Bloomsbury group. ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... An arcade in Old Bond Street Bond Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. ... 1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Sunday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ...

Early exhibitions

There were retrospectives in Brussels and Paris in 1891. During the 1890s, Van Gogh exhibitions were staged in several Dutch and Belgian towns. In 1893, Julien Leclercq brought together a first exhibition featuring Van Gogh, Gauguin and other "modernists" touring Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Berlin. In 1895 and in 1896 Ambroise Vollard mounted Van Gogh retrospectives in his galleries Rue Lafitte; other minor dealers in Paris had works by Van Gogh continuously on display. In 1901, Leclercq arranged a Van Gogh Exhibition at the Galeries Bernheim Jeune in Paris . This article or section needs additional references or sources. ... This article is about the capital of Germany. ... Ambroise Vollard (born July 3, 1866, Saint-Denis, La Réunion; died July 21, 1939 in Versailles, France), is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. ...

In 1901, the Berlin Secessionists entered the scene, accompanied by the art dealers Bruno Cassirer and especially his cousin Paul, who set the pace for the years to come. Paul Cassirer first established a market for Van Gogh, and then, with the assistance of Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, controlled market prices for him. However, Johanna was keen to maintain her independence, and contributed important loans to Roger Fry's 1910 London exhibition, as well as to the Sonderbund exhibition of 1912 in Cologne. This was organized by an independent committee of artists, collectors and museum professionals, but in fact dependent on loans arranged by Cassirer, Bernheim Jeune and other art dealers. Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 - 9 September 1934) was an English artist and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury group. ... The Sonderbund - as it is normally called; its complete name being Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler (the Separate League of West German Art Lovers and Artists) - was a special union of artists and art lovers, established 1909 in Düsseldorf and disolved in 1916. ... Köln redirects here. ...

The first major exhibition from the artist's estate was shown in 1892 in the Amsterdam 'Panorama' Building, the next in 1905 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, followed in 1914 by a display concentrating on Van Gogh's drawings. The Stedelijk Museum (lit. ...

Early private and public collectors

Van Gogh's friends, his colleagues and promotors were at the same time his first collectors. Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Toulouse Lautrec, Émile Schuffenecker, Edgar Degas as well as Aurier, Mirbeau, Leclercq and Van Eeden - each of them held works by Vincent. Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 – May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist artist. ... Émile Bernard (April 28, 1868-April 16, 1941), born in Lille, France, was an Impressionist painter. ... Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (November 24, 1864 - September 9, 1901) was a French painter. ... Edgar Degas Edgar Degas (July 19, 1834 – September 27, 1917) was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpting, and drawing. ...

In 1903, the first works of Vincent entered museum collections in Vienna and Rotterdam, as well as Folkwang Museum, then privately run by Karl-Ernst Osthaus in Hagen (later transferred to Essen).

Forgeries

In the "Winter Season 1927/1928" a problem began that has overshadowed Van Gogh-research ever since — the emergence of forgeries. Otto Wacker staged an extensive exhibition of drawings by Van Gogh, catalogued and annotated by Julius Meier-Graefe. Then in January 1928, Paul Cassirer opened a large retrospective of paintings, from which two were removed just before the opening, as their authenticity had been questioned. The suspect paintings had been provided by Otto Wacker, and a scandal ensued. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Otto Wacker (?-?) was a German art dealer who became famous for commissioning and selling forgeries of paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. ... Julius Meier-Graefe (June 10, 1867 - June 5, 1935) was a German art critic and novellist. ...

Little attention was paid at this time to the considerable number of Van Gogh masterpieces already held by the Museum of Modern Art New York (established in 1929), along with the Tate Gallery in London and other British and American galleries. View across garden, in new MoMA building by Yoshio Taniguchi. ... The Tate Gallery in the United Kingdom is a network of four galleries: Tate Britain (opened 1897), Tate Liverpool (1988), Tate St Ives (1993), Tate Modern (2000), with a complementary website Tate Online (1998). ...

There has been a reaction against the depiction of Van Gogh as a saint. John Rewald was one of the first to attempt an anti-hagiography; books pointing to Van Gogh's neuroticism have continued since. Counter-claims, particularly based on Van Gogh's three volumes of letters, support Roger Fry's praise.^[3] John Rewald (born May 12, 1912) was the German-born American art historian, scholar of impressionism and Cézanne. ... Hagiography is the study of saints. ...

Resources

Notes

Vincent van Gogh

General: The Artist | Chronology | Medical condition | Posthumous fame Display at Les XX, 1890 | The Roulin Family | Paul Gachet | Paul Gauguin Post-Impressionism | Theo van Gogh | Van Gogh Museum Paintings: List of works | Self-Portraits | Sunflowers | The Potato Eaters Bedroom in Arles | The Red Vineyard | The Night Café | The Yellow House The Starry Night | Irises | The Church at Auvers | Wheat Field with Crows Cafe Terrace at Night | Portrait of Dr. Gachet | Thatched Cottages by a Hill