Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, musée d’Orsay

 

This week I visited the “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, the last months” exhibition at Musée d’Orsay 2 days in a row.

The exhibit is on until February 4, 2024. Reserve now. 

During the last two months of his life, in Auvers-sur-oise, Vincent Van Gogh(1853-1890) painted 73 canvases and made 33 drawing. It’s a rare chance to see original drawings side-by-side the completed oil painting.

The Orsay exhibition is showing 50 canvases and 25 drawings, many I’ve not seen before even in reproduction.

Van Gogh traveled to Auvers-sur-Oise from St. Remy in May,1890 to be near his brother Theo, his new name-sake nephew, Vincent, and to seek help from holistic Doctor Gachet, specialist in Melancholia. 

I went back a second time because I missed two key rooms. Easy to miss this doorway on the left in the second exhibit room as you’re swept along with the crowd.

The room is full of selected details and easy to understand theories of why Van Gogh painted as he did. 

We tend to think of Van Gogh as wildly inspired and free-spirited. Or simply deranged. In fact he was mainly self-taught and methodical in his studies of color theory and the use of complimentary colors. 

I did a simple color blocking test to see how he used complimentary colors; red/green and blue/orange combinations.

The big flat areas of bold color in Japanese prints strongly influenced the direction of Van Gogh’s paintings. Decorative borders were also adopted. The red-green oil copy on the right was painted by Van Gogh.

Rhythmical marks in the prints appealed to Van Gogh. (This was a previous exhibit in Amsterdam).  With the opening of trade from Japan in 1858, dish ware arrived in Paris, wrapped in old woodblock prints. 

Like other artists of his time; Degas and Pissarro, Van Gogh collected these cheap prints and the influence of Japonisme was ignited. Monet’s dining room was wall-to-wall Japanese prints.  But I digress… 

The other room offers recitations from Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo. A poignant chance to stop and contemplate the last difficult months of Van Gogh’s life. 

Interesting to learn in the discovery room how Van Gogh specifically instructed his brother Theo, who was also his dealer (though he only sold one painting during his lifetime) to frame his paintings in the plainest of pine frames. The Auvers church was reframed for the exhibit.

Most of Van Gogh’s paintings are framed in a grandiose way more reflective of their market value today. 

You can applaud 👏 the d’Orsay for keeping English descriptions legible and at eye 👁️ level. You don’t need the audio.

Van Gogh balances big green areas with a few squares of red-orange, a color probably faded over time. A good example of simultaneous contrast. He was sophisticated in his compositions and use of color balance. 

A lyrical drawing of a worker in a wheatfield with big foreground. Like the Japanese print above he copied, figures add scale and humanity to a dramatic landscape. 

I love his figurative drawings of workers.

Finally, a focus on the last wheat field paintings, painted a few days before he shot himself. He died on July 29, 1890 at the age of 37.

Thank Theo’s widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, for spending years compiling 900+ letters between Vincent and Theo. And finally publishing a collection of 3 volumes 📚 in January,1914. Her dedication secured Vincent’s legacy.

I couldn’tv resist trying my hand at some watercolor versions using Van Gogh’s bold colors.

❤️ I set up a Buy Me A Ko-Fi ☕️ account if you’d like to support Parisbreakfast & my Paris wanderings, rather than buying letters & watercolors. 

                    ❤️Thank you in advance dear PBers ❤️

                                  🥐 ☕️ Bon dimanche ☕️ 🥐