Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather

Last updated

Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather
Zeegezicht bij Scheveningen - s0416M1990 - Van Gogh Museum.jpg
Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year1882
Catalogue
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions34.5 cm× 51.0 cm(13.6 in× 20.1 in)
Location Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather, also known as View of the Sea at Scheveningen (Dutch: Zeegezicht bij Scheveningen), is an early oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, painted at Scheveningen near The Hague in August 1882. It is held in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Contents

Description

Van Gogh made his first paintings in December 1881, under the supervision of Anton Mauve, the husband of Van Gogh's cousin, Ariëtte (Jet) Sophia Jeannette Carbentus. This work was made in Van Gogh's second attempt at painting in August 1882.

The painting shows the beach at Scheveningen, on the North Sea coast a few miles from The Hague, on a stormy day on 21 or 22 August 1882. The painting was made quickly, en plein air , on an easel at the beach, with the wind whipping up sand and nearly blowing Van Gogh off his feet. He managed to scrape most of the wind-blown sand off the thick wet painting, but some remains.

The painting is an Impressionist take on the grey-tinged seascapes of Hague School paintings such as Hendrik Mesdag's 1881 Panorama of Scheveningen. The composition is broken into three horizontal zones: a threatening grey sky with dark roiling clouds, the greenish-grey sea with lines of white-capped waves crashing onto the shore, and the beach and sand dunes in browns, oranges, yellows and greens. A number of people are on the beach, some fishwives in their white bonnets, watching as a group of men with horses and a cart are about to pull on a rope attached to a waiting fishing boat to bring it safely ashore. The people are suggested by a few economical brushstrokes, and the breakers by thick lines of paint applied directly from the tube.

The work measures 34.5 by 51 centimetres (13.6 in × 20.1 in). It was catalogued as "F4" in Jacob Baart de la Faille's 1928 The Works of Vincent van Gogh and as "JH187" in Jan Hulsker's 1978 The Complete Van Gogh.

The painting was stored at the Van Gogh family house in Breda. Along with many early other works, it was left behind in the attic when the family moved away in 1886, and it came into the possession of a carpenter, Adrianus Schrauwen. It was sold as part of a job lot of worthless "rubbish" to the merchant J.C. Couvreur in 1902, and it came to Kunstzalen Oldenzeel in Rotterdam. It was bought by tobacco importer Gerlach Ribbius Peletier in 1903 for the record price of 2,500 guilders, when other works by Van Gogh were selling for less than 1,000 guilders. It was inherited by his daughter Liesbeth Ribbius Peletier, and she donated it to the state of the Netherlands on her death in 1989.

Theft and recovery

Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather had been held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam since 1989 but was stolen, along with Van Gogh's later painting of Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen , on 7 December 2002. It remained missing for over 13 years, until it was recovered in January 2016 by the Italian Guardia di Finanza, together with the other stolen work, at Castellammare di Stabia near Naples. Its recovery, without its original frame, from under the kitchen floor of a villa associated with Camorra gang boss Raffaele Imperiale was not announced until September 2016. It was subsequently returned to the Van Gogh Museum and after some restoration went back on display in March 2017. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vincent van Gogh</span> Dutch painter (1853–1890)

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterised by bold colours and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Van Gogh Museum</span> National art museum in Netherlands

The Van Gogh Museum is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on 2 June 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Hendrik Breitner</span> Dutch painter and photographer

George Hendrik Breitner was a Dutch painter and photographer. An important figure in Amsterdam Impressionism, he is noted especially for his paintings of street scenes and harbours in a realistic style. He painted en plein air, and became interested in photography as a means of documenting street life and atmospheric effects – rainy weather in particular – as reference materials for his paintings.

<i>The Potato Eaters</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

The Potato Eaters is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anton Mauve</span> Dutch painter (1838–1888)

Anthonij "Anton" Rudolf Mauve was a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School. He signed his paintings 'A. Mauve' or with a monogrammed 'A.M.'. A master colorist, he was a very significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hague School</span> Artistic movement emerged in The Hague

The Hague School is a group of artists who lived and worked in The Hague between 1860 and 1890. Their work was heavily influenced by the realist painters of the French Barbizon school. The painters of the Hague school generally made use of relatively somber colors, which is why the Hague School is sometimes called the Gray School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Israëls</span> Dutch painter (1865–1934)

Isaac Lazarus Israëls was a Dutch painter associated with the Amsterdam Impressionism movement.

Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and Van Gogh's own relationship with them.

The fame of Vincent van Gogh began to spread in France and Belgium during the last year of his life, and in the years after his death in the Netherlands and Germany. His friendship with his younger brother Theo was documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. The letters were published in three volumes in 1914 by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Theo's widow, who also generously supported most of the early Van Gogh exhibitions with loans from the artist's estate. Publication of the letters helped spread the compelling mystique of Vincent van Gogh, the intense and dedicated painter who died young, throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

<i>At Eternitys Gate</i> Oil painting by Vincent van Gogh

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate) is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he made in 1890 in Saint-Rémy de Provence based on an early lithograph. The painting was completed in early May at a time when he was convalescing from a severe relapse in his health some two months before his death, which is generally accepted as a suicide.

<i>A Wind-Beaten Tree</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

A Wind-Beaten Tree or A Windswept Tree is an oil painting created in August 1883 by Vincent van Gogh. It was painted early in his artistic career, whilst he was living in The Hague. It was stolen from a private collection in Zurich in 1997 and has not been recovered.

<i>Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen is an early painting by Vincent van Gogh, made in early 1884 and modified in late 1885. It is displayed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early works of Vincent van Gogh</span>

The earliest known works of Vincent van Gogh comprise a group of paintings and drawings that Vincent van Gogh made when he was 27 and 28, in 1881 and 1882. Over the course of the two-year period Van Gogh lived in several places. He left Brussels, where he had studied for about a year in 1881, to return to his parents’ home in Etten, where he made studies of some of the residents of the town. In January 1882 Van Gogh went to The Hague where he studied with his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve and set up a studio, funded by Mauve. During the ten years of Van Gogh's artistic career from 1881 to 1890 Vincent's brother Theo would be a continuing source of inspiration and financial support; his first financial support began in 1880 funding Vincent while he lived in Brussels.

<i>Peasant Character Studies</i> (Van Gogh series) Painting series by Vincent van Gogh

Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885.

<i>Sien</i> (Van Gogh series) Dutch tailor and prostitute

Vincent van Gogh drew and painted a series of works of his mistress Sien during their time together in the Netherlands. In particular, his drawing Sorrow is widely acknowledged as a masterwork of draftsmanship, the culmination of a long and sometimes uncertain apprenticeship in learning his craft.

<i>Saintes-Maries</i> (Van Gogh series) Painting series by Vincent van Gogh

The French town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the subject of a series of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made in June 1888. When Van Gogh lived in Arles, he took a week-long trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the Mediterranean Sea, where he made several paintings of the seascape and town.

<i>Tree Roots</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

Tree Roots is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in July 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. The painting is an example of the double-square canvases that he employed in his last landscapes.

<i>Landscape with a Carriage and a Train</i> 1890 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh

Landscape with a Carriage and a Train is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in June 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

<i>Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg</i> Location painted by Vincent van Gogh

Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg is a watercolor by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that he made in January 1882, shortly after taking up residence in The Hague.

<i>The Laakmolen near The Hague</i> 1882 painting by Vincent van Gogh

The 'Laakmolen' near the Hague is a watercolor by Vincent van Gogh that he made in the summer of 1882. Formerly it was thought to have dated from his Etten period 1881. Following identification of the mill, historians now place it the year following.

References

  1. "Stolen Van Gogh paintings worth £77 million found 'in international drug trafficker's home'". The Independent. 30 September 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2020.