Van Gogh's family in his art refers to works that Vincent van Gogh made for or about Van Gogh family members. In 1881, Vincent drew a portrait of his grandfather, also named Vincent van Gogh, and his sister Wil. While living in Nuenen, Vincent memorialized his father in Still Life with Bible following his death in 1885. There he also made many paintings and drawings in 1884 and 1885 of his parents' vicarage, its garden and the church. At the height of his career in Arles he made Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Memory of the Garden at Etten of his mother and sister and Novel Reader, which is thought to be of his sister, Wil.
While van Gogh was at the Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Remy, he made several paintings as gifts for his mother and sister, and the painting Almond Blossoms for his brother Theo and his wife Johanna to celebrate the birth of their son, whom they named Vincent.
Vincent van Gogh (grandfather)
Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, the artist's grandfather, 1881, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Vincent van Gogh's grandfather (born 1789) was also named Vincent van Gogh. According to the artist's first biographer, his sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh, the grandfather was a pastor, and the son of Johanna van der Vin of Malines and Johannes van Gogh. Johanna van Gogh writes that Johannes "was at first a gold-wire drawer like his father, but he later became a Bible teacher and a clerk in the Cloister Church at The Hague." She describes him as an intellectual, duty-bound man who was awarded prizes and testimonials for his distinguished work.[1] A family legacy, from his great-uncle—a sculptor and a lifelong bachelor—allowed Vincent van Gogh (the elder) to study divinity at the University of Leiden. After successfully completing his studies and having become established at the parsonage of Benschop, he married E. H. Vrydag in 1810.[1] They remained married until Elisabeth's death on 7 March 1857; the Reverend Vincent van Gogh lived until 1874.[2]
In July 1881, Vincent (the younger) made Portrait of Artist's Grandfather (F876). The work was drawn in pencil and brown ink, with opaque white watercolor and a brown wash. The drawing is owned by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.[3]
Father and mother
Theodorus van Gogh
Still Life with Bible, 1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F117)
Theodorus van Gogh was born 8 February 1822, one of eleven children and the only one of six brothers to become a pastor like his father. Theodorus graduated from Utrecht in 1849 after successfully completing his theology program, which allowed him to secure a position as pastor in Groot-Zundert, a village in the North Brabant region of the Netherlands. He was confirmed by his father, Vincent van Gogh, in Zundert on 1 April 1849.[4] Reverend Theodorus van Gogh was pastor of the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church, which adhered to Calvinist doctrine.[5] In May 1851, Theodorus married Anna Cornelia Carbentus, whose father was in the book business. According to Johanna van Gogh, Theodorus was a handsome man, "he was called the handsome parson by some, he had an amiable character and fine spiritual qualities."[6] Vincent van Gogh made a painting of his father's Dutch Authorized Bible in Still Life with Bible (F117) months after Theodorus' sudden death in March 1885. The Bible symbolizes his father's faith, which Vincent saw as mired in convention. He painted the page open to the passage of Isaiah 53. He placed Émile Zola's novel La Joie de vivre (English: The Joy of Living) in front of the Bible which to him likely symbolized worldliness. The burned out candle shows an extinguishment—perhaps both of the father's life and of Vincent's faith.[7]
Anna Cornelia Carbentus was born 10 September 1819 at The Hague to Willem Carbentus, who was a royal bookbinder. Her younger sister Cornelia married Theodorus' brother, Vincent van Gogh, the art dealer, and her older sister married a clergyman named Stricker.[8] Anna became a devout and helpful clergyman's wife, helping her husband in the parish.[8] She enjoyed art and was artistically inclined, "filling notebooks with drawings of plants and flowers"[9] and studied painting with Hendrik van de Sande Bakhuyzen. She outlived her three grown sons and her husband, yet still retained "her energy and spirit and bore her sorrow with rare courage."[8]
Portrait of the Artist's Mother (Van Gogh) (F477) was based upon a black-and-white photograph of his mother. Vincent's mother appears to be a respectable middle class woman, attentive and proud, against a green background.[10]
Van Gogh painted Memory of the Garden at Etten (F496) to hang in his bedroom. He envisioned the older woman was his mother and the younger in a plaid shawl his sister Wil. To Wil he said he had "an impression of you like those in Dickens' novels." Wil stands behind her mother in the painting. Behind them is a woman bent over working the garden. Mother and daughter fill the foreground of the left picture frame, seemingly walking out of the scene.[11] In a letter to his sister he described the painting:
"The younger of the two ladies who are out for a walk is wearing a Scottish shawl with green and orange checks, and a red parasol. The old lady has a violet shawl, nearly black. But a bunch of dahlias, some of them citron yellow, the others pink and white mixed, are like an explosion of color on the somber figure. Behind them a few cedar shrubs and emerald-green cypresses. Behind the cypresses one sees a field of pale green and red cabbages, surrounded by a border of little white flowers. The sandy path is of a raw orange color; the foliage of the two beds of scarlet geraniums is very green. Finally, the interjacent plane, there is a maid-servant, dressed in blue, who is arranging a profusion of plants with white, pink, yellow and vermilion-red flowers."
"Here you are. I know this is hardly what one might call a likeness, but for me it renders the poetic character and the style of the garden as I feel it. All the same, let us suppose that the two ladies out for a walk are you and our mother; let us even suppose that there is not the least, absolutely not the least vulgar and fatuous resemblance – yet the deliberate choice of color, the somber violet with the blotch of violent citron yellow of the dahlias, suggests Mother's personality to me."
"The figure in the Scotch plaid with orange and green checks stands out against the somber green of the cypress, which contrast is further accentuated by the red parasol – this figure gives me an impression of you like those in Dickens's novels, a vaguely representative figure."[12]
As he rose to the height of his career, Vincent enjoyed passing on prized paintings to his family. "Great bouquets of flowers, violet-colored irises, great bouquets of roses," went to his mother.[13] Another example, "the most resolved and stylized of the three" paintings of women picking olives was made for his sister and mother.[14][15]
Theodorus and Anna van Gogh's family, including Vincent, Anna, Theo, Elizabeth, Wilhelmien and Cornelius
Anna and Theodorus were both devoted to the communities they served, ensuring their deeds spoke as resolutely as Theodorus' Sunday sermons.[16] Both mother and father believed that God always watched over them and encouraged their children to look for God's presence in nature, such as the shape of the clouds or in the many colors in the sunsets.[16]
Vincent said in 1889, "Whatever I think on other points, our father and mother were exemplary as married people."[17]
Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853, exactly one year after the stillborn delivery of Anna and Theodorus' first child who was named Vincent. As a child, he liked animals and flowers. In temperament, he was strong, energetic and strong-willed. Vincent enjoyed playing outdoors and made up games for his brothers and sisters, once rewarded with the most beautiful rose bush in the garden as his award. There were a few times that Vincent exhibited his artistic talent and upon receiving praise from his parents, he destroyed the items. He attended the local school but his interaction with the peasant boys was making him tough. As the family grew, a governess was brought in to tutor the children at the vicarage.[8]
In 1864, Vincent, aged eleven, was sent away for schooling to a nearby boarding school in Zevenbergen which led to his lifelong feelings of being an exile.[9] In 1866, his parents decided to send him to the new and prestigious Willem II College in Tilburg. In March 1868 Van Gogh suddenly returned home. During his two years at the Willem II College the painter C.C. Huijsmans had been his art class teacher. As Van Gogh entered adulthood the divide widened. After failing as an art dealer and in the ministry, he decided to become an artist. The more his family members suggested possible alternative vocations the greater the gulf between Vincent and his family. Further, Vincent's manner of dress, behavior and unusual love life was unsettling and embarrassing to the family.[18] By 1881 Vincent had developed his personal view of the world and religion which was very different from his parents', finding organized religion too constrictive. He wrote to his brother, Theo, "I find Father and Mother's sermons and ideas about God, people, morality and virtue a lot of stuff and nonsense."[19]
Theo van Gogh (art dealer) was born in Groot Zundert on 1 May 1857, four years after his brother Vincent.[20] He was more tender, kind and delicately built but shared his older brother's reddish fair complexion and light blue eyes.[8] Theo and Vincent began writing letters to one another in 1872 and continued for 18 years, with 668 letters from Vincent to Theo, many of them with sketches. Theo became Vincent's key source of emotional and financial support as he pursued his artistic development. Theo, who managed an art gallery in Paris and was knowledgeable of trends in modern art, offered Vincent advice. Theo married Johanna Bonger and had a son, whom they named Vincent. Theo died six months after Vincent’s death on 25 January 1891.[20]
The Van Gogh Museum attributes a painting generally considered a self-portrait to actually be a portrayal of his brother, Theo. In Portrait of Theo van Gogh, (F294), the museum says that the painting was made "to experiment with color, as we can see in the effect of the yellow hat against the blue background, and the range of colors in the jacket, bow-tie and background."[21] Albert J. Lubin, author of "Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh" claims that Vincent made no portraits of his brother.[22]
Next to this painting is one of Vincent's self-portraits (F296), also made in 1887.
Named by VGM, Portrait of Theo van Gogh, 1887 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F294)[21]
Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, March/April 1887 Oil on pasteboard, 19 × 14cm Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F296)
Vincent made Almond Blossoms for Theo and his wife to celebrate the birth of their son, symbolizing new life in the flowers of the almond tree.[23] Vincent wrote to his mother of the birth of Theo and Jo's baby,
"How glad I was when the news came... I should have greatly preferred him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."[24]
The bright color is reflective of the paintings made in Arles and the transformational work Vincent had on the still life genre.[25]
Wil, short for Wilhelmein, was the youngest of Vincent's sisters, born in 1862. She lived with her parents, and after her father died, stayed on with her mother. At times she was a governess, private nurse, social worker and religion teacher. She longed to be a writer and was enthusiastic to hear of news about Paris, its art and cultural happenings. Van Gogh and Wil wrote to each other about literature and modern art in much the same way he did with his brother, Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin.[26]
Novel Reader is evocative of Vincent's sister.[11] He describes it in a letter to Wil, "'Une Liseuse de Romans', the luxuriant hair very black, a green bodice, the sleeves the color of wine lees, the skirt black, the background all yellow, bookshelves with books. She is holding a yellow book in her hands."[12] The painting was made immediately after Vincent completed a "fantasy" painting of his mother and Wil, Memory of the Garden at Etten.[11]
Photograph of Wilhemein "Wil" van Gogh
The Novel Reader, 1888, Private collection (F497)
Vincent made a drawing of his sister, "Portrait of Willemina Jacoba ('Willemien') van Gogh" (F849) in July 1881 with pencil and charcoal. It is owned by the Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.[27] The work is also said to be a "possible" portrait of Wil.[28]
In 1888 he gave two paintings to Wil for her birthday. One was Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book, which he described to her in a letter as "a little study of a book for you." The second, Still Life with French Novels and a Rose, "on a somewhat larger scale, a flower, with a lot of books with pink, green and bright red bindings – they were my set of seven Parisian novels."[29]
During the summer of 1889, honoring his sister Wil's request, Vincent made several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses.[30]
Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book, 1888, Private collection (F393)
Still Life with Piles of French Novels and a Glass with a Rose (Romans Parisiens), 1887, Private Collection, Switzerland (F359)
Vincent did not have a close relationship with Elizabeth (Lies) or Cornelius (Cor) his youngest brother.[citation needed]
Anna lived with Vincent in London for a period in 1874-5. Their initially warm relationship became strained; in April 1875, Anna wrote about Vincent's behaviour to Theo: "I believe that he has illusions about people and judges people before he knows them, and then when he finds out what they're really like and they don't live up to the opinion he formed of them prematurely, he's so disappointed that he throws them away like a bouquet of wilted flowers, without looking to see whether or not there are some among those wilted flowers which, when handled with care, are not quite rubbish yet."[31] She married Joan Marius van Houten in August 1878. Vincent attended the wedding, but relations with his sister remained cool; Anna complained about his aloofness and characterized him as a "wooden lion"[32] After their father's death in 1885 the two became estranged.
The youngest Van Gogh sibling, Cor, left the Netherlands for South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). In Pretoria, he was employed to make technical drawings for the Netherlands-South African Railway Company (Nederlandsh-Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappij). In Pretoria he married Anna Eva Catherina Fuchs, a German-born Roman Catholic, in February 1898. His wife abandoned the marriage eight months later, taking their possessions. Following that debacle, Cor joined a special "Foreigners Battalion" to fight the British. Cor and his fellow volunteers fared badly in combat. He was admitted to a Red Cross hospital with a fever. The ill-supplied hospital lacked Dutch physicians and nurses, who had just been evacuated. Cor was left in possession of his pistol when hospitalized. On 12 April 1900 he shot himself in his hospital bed, perhaps accidentally. His mother was under the impression that he had died in combat.[33]
Anton Mauve was married to Vincent's cousin Ariëtte (Jet) Sophia Jeannette Carbentus[34] and was a major influence on the artist. He is mentioned directly in 152 of Vincent's surviving letters. Vincent spent three weeks at Mauve's studio at the end of 1881 and during that time he made his first experiments in painting under Mauve's tutelage, first in oils and then early the next year in watercolour (previously he had concentrated on drawing). Mauve continued to encourage him and lent him money to rent and furnish a studio[35] but later grew cold towards him and did not return a number of letters.[36]
In a letter to his brother Theo dated 7 May 1882,[37] Vincent describes "a very regrettable conversation" in which Mauve told him their association was "over and done with" adding by way of explanation that Van Gogh had a vicious character. Vincent continued his letter by expressing his sorrow and then defiantly launches into a defense of his relationship with Clasina (Sien) Maria Hoornik, a pregnant prostitute he had befriended.
In 1882 Vincent's father became pastor in Nuenen situated in the North Brabant province of the Netherlands. Having been in Drenthe for several months, Vincent came to live with his parents in December 1883 and stayed there until May 1885. The laundry room at the back of the house was turned into a studio for him. Theo's father wrote to him: "We do not think it’s really suitable, but we have had a proper stove installed... I wanted to put in a large window as well, but he prefers not to have one."[38]
A simple two-story stone building, the parsonage sat on the main street of Nuenen. The second story provided Vincent beautiful views, including a church tower in the distance. The laundry room became his studio. Vincent recorded the changing seasons in his paintings of the garden, which was enclosed by a high stone wall and included a duck pond with a boat dock, paths and hedges, flower and vegetable garden plots and an orchard.[39]
The Vicarage at Nuenen, 1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F182)
The Vicarage at Nuenen in the Moonlight, November 1885, Private collection (F183)
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (F25) was made early 1884 for his parents, his father the pastor of the church since 1882. Vincent's mother, Anna van Gogh, was healing from a broken thighbone.[40] Vincent wrote to his brother, "Taking her difficult situation into consideration, I am glad to say Mother's spirits are very even and bright. And she is amused by trifles. The other day I painted for her a little church with the hedge and the trees." The letter included a sketch with one person in front of the church,[41] a peasant with a spade. X-rays of the painting indicate that Vincent later added church members and autumn leaves to the previously bare trees, which made the work more colorful. The changes were not likely made before the fall of 1885. Vincent may have added the woman in mourning and congregation members for his mother as a memorial for his father's death. The painting was stolen from the Van Gogh Museum on 7 December 2002.[40] The painting was recovered in Naples, Italy in September 2016.[42]
The Rectory Garden in Nuenen in the Snow (F194) depicts a worker shoveling a path in the snow of the Vincent's garden. The winter scene of bare-branched trees and gloomy sky hints of the preceding fall by a few remaining red leaves. Vincent wrote to Theo: "The life and death of peasants remain forever the same, withering regularly, like the grass and flowers growing in that churchyard." The Norton Simon Museum reports that X-ray of the painting shows that underneath this painting is a painting of a woman at her spinning wheel.[43]
The Rectory Garden in Nuenen in the Snow, January 1885, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (F194)
The Rectory Garden in Nuenen in the Snow, January 1885, Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles (F67)
The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen with Pond and Figures, watercolor, November 1885, Private collection (F1234)
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, aged 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.
The Potato Eaters is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands.
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.
This is a chronology of the artist Vincent van Gogh. It is based as far as possible on Van Gogh's correspondence. However, it has only been possible to construct the chronology by drawing on additional sources. Most of his letters are not dated and it was only in 1973 that a sufficient dating was established by Jan Hulsker, subsequently revised by Ronald Pickvance and marginally corrected by others. Many other relevant dates in the chronology derive from the biographies of his brother Theo, his uncle and godfather Cent, his friends Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, and others.
Flowering Orchards is a series of paintings which Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles, in southern France in the spring of 1888. Van Gogh arrived in Arles in February 1888 in a snowstorm; within two weeks the weather changed and the fruit trees were in blossom. Appreciating the symbolism of rebirth, Van Gogh worked with optimism and zeal on about fourteen paintings of flowering trees in the early spring. He also made paintings of flowering trees in Saint-Rémy the following year, in 1889.
Willemina Jacoba van Gogh was a nurse, teacher of scripture, and early Dutch feminist. She is the youngest and best-known sister of artist Vincent van Gogh, with whom he was close, and the art dealer Theo van Gogh.
Cottages is a subject of paintings created by Vincent van Gogh from 1883 and 1885. This is related to the Peasant Character Studies that Van Gogh worked on during the same time period.
Almond Blossoms is a group of several paintings made in 1888 and 1890 by Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Saint-Rémy, southern France of blossoming almond trees. Flowering trees were special to van Gogh. They represented awakening and hope. He enjoyed them aesthetically and found joy in painting flowering trees. The works reflect the influence of Impressionism, Divisionism, and Japanese woodcuts. Almond Blossom was made to celebrate the birth of his nephew and namesake, son of his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo.
Dr. Gachet's Garden in Auvers and Marguerite Gachet in the Garden were both painted in 1890 by Vincent van Gogh in the gardens of his homeopathic physician, Dr. Paul Gachet. Both paintings reside at the Musée d'Orsay.
Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémy is a collection of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made when he was a self-admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, since renamed the Clinique Van Gogh, from May 1889 until May 1890. During much of his stay there he was confined to the grounds of the asylum, and he made paintings of the garden, the enclosed wheat field that he could see outside his room and a few portraits of individuals at the asylum. During his stay at Saint-Paul asylum, Van Gogh experienced periods of illness when he could not paint. When he was able to resume, painting provided solace and meaning for him. Nature seemed especially meaningful to him, trees, the landscape, even caterpillars as representative of the opportunity for transformation and budding flowers symbolizing the cycle of life. One of the more recognizable works of this period is The Irises. Works of the interior of the hospital convey the isolation and sadness that he felt. From the window of his cell he saw an enclosed wheat field, the subject of many paintings made from his room. He was able to make but a few portraits while at Saint-Paul.
Hospital at Arles is the subject of two paintings that Vincent van Gogh made of the hospital in which he stayed in December 1888 and again in January 1889. The hospital is located in Arles in southern France. One of the paintings is of the central garden between four buildings titled Garden of the Hospital in Arles ; the other painting is of a ward within the hospital titled Ward of the Hospital in Arles. Van Gogh also painted Portrait of Dr. Félix Rey, a portrait of his physician while in the hospital.
Portrait of Artist's Mother is an 1888 painting by Vincent van Gogh of his mother, Anna Carbentus van Gogh, drawn from a black-and-white photograph. Van Gogh's introduction to art was through his mother, herself an amateur artist. After years of strained relations with family members, Van Gogh excitedly shared some of his works he thought his mother would appreciate most, of flowers and natural settings. In this painting, Van Gogh captures his mother's dignified and proud nature. It was painted at almost the same time, and with a very similar palette of colours and pose as his Self Portrait
Old Church Tower at Nuenen are names given to several oil paintings and drawings created in 1884 and 1885 by Vincent van Gogh. Most reflect the way the 12th-century church looked in its better days when its spire was intact and its foundation formidable. The spire was demolished in 1792 and the church tower was in the process of being torn down and sold for scrap as Van Gogh made the paintings.
Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885.
Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Netherlands) is the subject of many drawings, sketches and paintings made during Vincent van Gogh's early artistic career. Most still lifes made in the Netherlands are dated from 1884 to 1885, when he lived in Nuenen. His works were often in somber colors. Van Gogh experimented with the use of light falling across objects.
The events that befell the early paintings and drawings by Vincent van Gogh in the period prior to the posthumous recognition of Vincent van Gogh as an innovative artist show how the appreciation of his legacy changed his reputation in a relatively short time.
Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It was executed in Arles around November 1888 and is in the collection of the Hermitage Museum. It was intended as decoration for his bedroom at the Yellow House.
Houses at Auvers is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It was created towards the end of May or beginning of June 1890, shortly after he had moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town northwest of Paris, France.
Reaper, Wheat Field with Reaper, or Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun is the title given to each of a series of three oil-on-canvas paintings by Vincent van Gogh of a man reaping a wheat field under a bright early-morning sun. To the artist, the reaper represented death and "humanity would be the wheat being reaped". However, Van Gogh did not consider the work to be sad but "almost smiling" and taking "place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold".
References
1 2 Johanna Gesina van Gogh – Bonger, Vincent's sister in law (2011). "Memoir of Vincent van Gogh". Van Gogh Paintings. Van Gogh Gallery. Retrieved 17 May 2011.
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