Girl in White

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Girl in White
Girl in White by Vincent Van Gogh - NGA.jpg
Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year1890
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions66.7 cm× 45.8 cm(26.3 in× 18.0 in)
Location National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Girl in White (also known as Young Girl Standing Against a Background of Wheat and Woman in a Cornfield) was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, during the last months of his life. Girl in White has been part of the Chester Dale Collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. since 1963. [1]

Contents

Auvers-sur-Oise

In May 1890, Van Gogh traveled from Saint-Rémy to Paris [2] where he had a three-day stay with his brother, Theo, Theo's wife Johanna and their new baby Vincent. Van Gogh found that unlike his past experiences in Paris, he was no longer used to the commotion of the city [3] and was too agitated to paint. His brother, Theo and artist Camille Pissarro developed a plan for Van Gogh to go to Auvers-sur-Oise with a letter of introduction for Dr. Paul Gachet, [2] a homeopathic physician and art patron who lived in Auvers. [1] [4] Van Gogh had a room at the inn Auberge Ravoux in Auvers [3] and was under the care and supervision of Dr. Gachet [1] with whom he grew to have a close relationship, "something like another brother." Gachet and his daughter were both subjects for Van Gogh's paintings. [3]

For a time, Van Gogh seemed to improve. He began to paint at such a steady pace, there was barely space in his room for all the finished paintings. [2] From May until his death on July 29, Van Gogh made about 70 paintings, more than one a day, and many drawings. [1] Van Gogh painted buildings around the town of Auvers, such as The Church at Auvers , portraits, and the nearby fields. [3]

"But for all his appearance of a renewed well-being," observes Wallace, [2] "his life was very near its end." Illness struck Theo's baby, Vincent. Theo had both health and employment issues; he considered leaving his employer and starting his own business. Gachet, said to have his own eccentricities and neurosis, caused Van Gogh sufficient concern to question, "Now when one blind man leads another blind man, don't they both end up in the ditch?" [2] [3]

After visiting Paris for a family conference, Van Gogh returned to Auvers more bleak. In a letter he wrote, "And the prospect grows darker, I see no future at all." [2]

The painting

Vincent van Gogh, Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat, June 1890 Van Gogh - Junge Bauerin mit Strohhut, vor einem Weizenfeld sitzend.jpeg
Vincent van Gogh, Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat, June 1890

Of the paintings Van Gogh completed in Auvers, there were two of the same woman. He describes her as "a peasant woman, big yellow hat with a knot of sky-blue ribbons." [1] The second painting may be Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat.

Van Gogh uses the "picture plane" for dramatic effect. "How painters use the 'picture plane' is a telling measure," Harrison explains, "of the usually intended effects of their work and their disposition toward the spectator." Having the woman fill most of the pictorial space, she appears closer to the audience. Van Gogh further shadowed her face and gave her a "distant, unfocused" gaze. By also having the woman in close proximity, her emotional distance is "poignant". [5]

Comparison to literal likeness

John Liston Byam Shaw, 1900 Boer War John Liston Byam Shaw Boer War.jpg
John Liston Byam Shaw, 1900 Boer War

In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century, the authors compare Van Gogh's Girl in White to the portrait of a woman in John Byam Shaw's 1900 Boer War. They make the comparison by identifying desired characteristics of modernistic art, such as works "emphasizing formal aspects, and as embodying what they took to be a 'primitive' or 'direct' vision such as Vincent van Gogh's Girl in White. To modernists, this is desirable over the "exhibited skill and sophistication of literal likeness," such as John Byam Shaw's 1900 Boer War. The more primitive and direct works, they say, provide a richer feeling, whereas the literal interpretation represents a lack of "emotional content". [6]

Provenance

See also

Related Research Articles

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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. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Only one of his paintings was known by name to have been sold during his lifetime. Van Gogh became famous after his suicide at age 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.

The year 1890 in art involved some significant events.

<i>Portrait of Dr. Gachet</i> Series of two paintings by Vincent van Gogh

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Gachet</span> French physician who treated the painter Vincent van Gogh during his last weeks

Paul-Ferdinand Gachet was a French physician most famous for treating the painter Vincent van Gogh during his last weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise. Gachet was a great supporter of artists and the Impressionist movement. He was an amateur painter, signing his works "Paul van Ryssel", referring to his birthplace: Rijsel is the Dutch name of Lille.

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.

<i>Daubignys Garden</i> 1890 paintings by van Gogh

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La Mousmé also known as La Mousmé, Sitting in a Cane Chair, Half-Figure was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1888 while living in Arles, which van Gogh dubbed "the Japan of the south". Retreating from the city, he hoped that his time in Arles would evoke in his work the simple, yet dramatic expression of Japanese art.

<i>Wheat Fields</i> Series of paintings by Vincent van Gogh

Wheat Fields is a series of dozens of paintings by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh, borne out of his religious studies and sermons, connection to nature, appreciation of manual laborers and desire to provide a means of offering comfort to others. The wheat field works demonstrate his progression as an artist from the drab Wheat Sheaves made in 1885 in the Netherlands to the colorful and dramatic 1888–1890 paintings from Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise in rural France.

<i>Paintings of Children</i> (Van Gogh series) Series of paintings by Vincent van Gogh

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<i>Doctor Gachets Garden in Auvers</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

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<i>Old Vineyard with Peasant Woman</i>

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<i>Houses at Auvers</i> Painting by Vincent van Gogh

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<i>The Cows</i> (painting) 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh

The Cows is a painting by Vincent van Gogh, produced in July 1890 during his stay in Doctor Gachet's home in Auvers-sur-Oise. It is based on an 1873 Paul van Ryssel etching Gachet owned of Jacob Jordaens's Study of Five Cows, exhibited in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marguerite Gachet</span> Model for Vincent van Gogh

Marguerite Gachet was a French woman who was painted by Vincent van Gogh in two paintings.

<i>Rain</i> (Van Gogh) 1889 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh

Rain is an oil-on-canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh, created in 1889, while he was a voluntary patient at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He repeatedly painted the view through the window of his room, depicting the colours and shades of the fields and hills around Saint-Rémy as they appeared at various times of day and in varying weather conditions. Rain measures 73.3 cm × 92.4 cm and is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the United States.

<i>Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds</i>

Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds is an 1890 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. The painting measures 50.4 cm × 101.3 cm. It depicts a relatively flat and featureless landscape with fields of green wheat, under a foreboding dark blue sky with a few heavy white clouds. The horizon divides the work almost into two, with shades of green and yellow below and shades of blue and white above. Since 1973 it has been on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

<i>Poppy Field</i> 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh

Poppy Field is an 1890 painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, painted around a month before his death during his stay in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. It has been described as "a composition that verges on the abstract" and shows marked difference from a 1888 painting of the same subject that now is in the Van Gogh Museum, in Amsterdam. Spending many years in Germany, the painting now hangs in the Kunstmuseum, in The Hague.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Girl in White, 1890". The Collection. National Gallery of Art. 2011. Archived from the original on 2016-08-30. Retrieved March 21, 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Wallace, R (1969). The World of Van Gogh (1853-1890) . Alexandria, VA, USA: Time-Life Books. pp.  162–163.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Leeuw, R (1997) [1996]. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London and other locations: Penguin Group. pp. 488, 490, 491.
  4. ↑ Strieter, T (1999). Nineteenth-Century European Art: A Topical Dictionary . Westport: Greenwood Press. p.  17. ISBN   0-313-29898-X.
  5. ↑ Harrison, Charles (2005). Painting the Difference: Sex and Spectator in Modern Art. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 14. ISBN   0-226-31797-8.
  6. ↑ Harrison, C; Frascina, F; Perry, G (1994) [1993]. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. Yale University Press with Open University. pp. 200–201. ISBN   0-300-05516-1.
  7. ↑ "Girl in White - Provenance". The Collection. National Gallery of Art. 2011. Archived from the original on May 29, 2010. Retrieved March 21, 2011.
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