Vincent van Gogh
See also:  [Primitivis]
                  [Paul Gauguin]
            [Henri Toulouse LaTrek]
            [Jacques Villon]

  -[To: The Paris Project]-

On this page:
               {Of local interest}                 

Vincent Van Gogh

Stuff

 
1886-1887: Paris

 1886-1888 : -[www3: VanGoghMuseum.NL]-

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   On February 27, 1886, Van Gogh arrives in Paris. 
   He lives with Theo in Montmartre, an artists' 
   quarter. The move is formative in the development 
   of his painting style. Theo, who manages the 
   Montmartre branch of Goupil's (now called Boussod, 
   Valadon & Cie), acquaints Van Gogh with the works 
   of Claude Monet and other Impressionists. 

   Previously he had known only Dutch painting and the 
   French Realists; now he sees for himself how the 
   Impressionists handle light and color, and treat 
   their original themes from the town and country. 
   
   For four months Van Gogh studies at the prestigious 
   teaching atelier of Fernand Cormon, and he begins to 
   meet the city's modern artists, including:

     -[Paul Gauguin]-
     -[Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec]- 
     -[Emile Bernard]-
     -[Camille Pissarro]- 
     -[John Russell]-

Further:   -[www: Expo-VanGogh.com]-
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   In early 1886, Vincent moves in with Theo in Montmartre. 
   It is a crucial period of development for his painting 
   style. Theo, who manages the Montmartre branch of Goupil's 
   (now called Boussod, Valadon & Cie), acquaints Vincent 
   with the works of Claude Monet and other Impressionists. 

   Now he sees for himself how the Impressionists handle 
   light and color, and treat the town and country themes. 
   He begins to meet the city's modern artists, including 
   Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro. 
   Vincent's Paris work is an effort to assimilate the 
   influences around him; his palette becomes brighter, 
   his brushwork more broken. Like the Impressionists, 
   Vincent takes his subjects from the city's cafés and 
   boulevards, and the open countryside along the Seine 
   River. Through Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, he 
   discovers the stippling technique of Pointillism 
   
      "What is required in art nowadays is something 
       very much alive, very strong in color, very 
       much intensified." 

   Unable to afford models to perfect his skills, Vincent 
   turns to his own image: "I deliberately bought a good 
   mirror so that if I lacked a model I could work from 
   my own likeness." He paints at least 20 self-portraits 
   in Paris. His experiments in style and color can be 
   read in the series. The earliest are executed in the 
   grays and browns of his Brabant period; these dark 
   colors soon give way to yellows, reds, greens, and 
   blues, and his brushwork takes on the disconnected 
   stroke of the Impressionists. 
   ...
   Vincent regularly paints outdoors in Asnières, a 
   village near Paris where the Impressionists often 
   set up their easels. Later, he writes to his sister 
   Wil: "And when I painted the landscape in Asnières 
   this summer, I saw more colors there than ever before." 

  -[US National Gallery of Art]-

   The two years Van Gogh spent in Paris, exposed to 
   the recent trends of the French avant-garde, were 
   crucial to his artistic development. "A Pair of Shoes", 
   perhaps painted soon after his move, still shows the 
   dark colors of his Dutch works. The frontal, close-up 
   view of the worn-out shoes -- often interpreted as a 
   symbolic self-portrait -- also recalls the studies of 
   peasant heads from the previous year. 

   But Van Gogh's discovery of impressionism and post-impressionism, 
   and the friendships he formed with artists such as 
   Gauguin and Signac, led to a dramatic change in his 
   palette and brushwork. Interested in color theories, 
   Van Gogh began experimenting with the use of bright, 
   pure colors to heighten the expressiveness of his work. 
   By 1887 he had also adopted the broken brushstrokes of 
   the impressionists in several views of Paris and the 
   hill of Montmartre, where he lived. 

   With its vegetable gardens and windmills, Montmartre 
   offered a conjunction of urban and rural elements that 
   appealed to Van Gogh. In Vegetable Gardens and the 
   Moulin de Blute-Fin on Montmartre, he juxtaposed 
   complementary hues -- yellow and purple, blue and orange, 
   green and red -- throughout the painting, applying the 
   principle that a color looks more intense when placed 
   next to its complementary. In addition, he made the 
   colors vibrate by combining the loose, spontaneous 
   brushstrokes of the impressionists with the more regular 
   hatchings and dots of Seurat's pointillism.

  
   -[www: How Stuff Works]-

   In Paris, van Gogh enlivened his palette by painting 
   bouquets of flowers in random combinations to study 
   the range of natural hues. In writing to Theo, van 
   Gogh equated color with vitality. "What color is 
   in a picture," he observed, "enthusiasm is in life." 

   Van Gogh's time in Paris allowed him to rejuvenate 
   his life and advance his art. His exploration of 
   color transformed the way he painted and confirmed 
   his conviction that his passion for art was the 
   essential force in his life. The following pages 
   take you to the paintings van Gogh completed in Paris. 


Self Portraits

 -[www: Expo-VanGogh.com]-
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   It was during his Parisian period that Van Gogh painted 
   most of his self-portraits -- mainly because he was 
   unable to afford models. Their psychological intensity 
   was deliberately sought after in an attempt to go 
   beyond photographic resemblance. It was achieved through 
   bold color contrasts and frank brushmarks that do not 
   conceal their constructive role. Van Gogh also fashioned 
   his own identity. In Self-Portrait as an Artist he does 
   not wear a painter's smock, but what he described himself 
   as "a blue peasant's blouse of coarse linen." The palette, 
   with its display of unmixed bright colors, indicates the 
   artist's association with the modern movement.



 
Pere Tanguay

   [Loc Cit: www: Expo-VanGogh.com]-

   [In 1887, a]mong his new friends Vincent counts the 
   painters he refers to as the "artists of the Petit 
   Boulevard" -- Toulouse-Lautrec, Signac, Bernard, and 
   Louis Anquetin-artists who are younger and not as 
   famous as the Impressionists. He organizes a group 
   show of his and his friends' paintings at a Paris 
   restaurant. [Le Chat Noir???] The artists often gather 
   at Père Tanguy's paint shop, where Vincent regularly 
   sees Gauguin. Tanguy, who generously advances supplies 
   to many young artists, occasionally displays Vincent's 
   paintings in his store window. 

Japonism


  -[Loc Cit: www: Expo-VanGogh.com]-

   Vincent buys Japanese prints and studies them 
   intensively. He arranges an exhibition of Japanese 
   woodcuts at a Paris café and his own work takes 
   on the stylized contours and expressive coloration 
   of his Japanese examples. 

   Note esp:  "...work of such Japanese printmakers as 
                  Hiroshige and Hokusai..."
      via:   -[Encarta src?]-
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  -[US National Gallery of Art]-

   Another source of inspiration that Van Gogh explored 
   in Paris, where japonism was then fashionable, was 
   Japanese woodblock prints. He admired their bold 
   designs, intense hues, and flat areas of unmodulated 
   color. In 1887, he made paintings directly copied 
   from Japanese prints, accentuating their color 
   contrasts. The Japanese influence would remain strong 
   throughout Van Gogh's work, finding its way in his use 
   of daring perspectives and in the flat decorative 
   patterns he often added to the background of his later 
   portraits.

  
1888-1889: Arles

 1886-1888 : -[www3: VanGoghMuseum.NL]-

downloaded on 2007.11.11 at 1:07pm PCT



Of Local Interest

   -[Walking Van Gogh's Paris]- (book/tour/history/liff)

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