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Wheat fields |
Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond. At various points, van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in The Wheat Field series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy. |
Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of van Gogh's death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns. Writing in July 1890, from Auvers, van Gogh said that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow". |
Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His Wheatfields at Auvers with White House shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony. |
About 10 July 1890, van Gogh wrote to Theo of "vast fields of wheat under troubled skies". Wheatfield with Crows shows the artist's state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as a "doom-filled painting with threatening skies and ill-omened crows". Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace. |
Reputation and legacy |
After van Gogh's first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. In 1887, André Antoine hung van Gogh's alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy. In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by "fire, intensity, sunshine". Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890. French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by van Gogh's work. |
After van Gogh's death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels. In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that van Gogh's suicide was an "infinitely sadder loss for art ... even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived." |
Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent's most vocal and well-connected champion. Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting van Gogh's reputation, and Johanna's brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work. Aurier, one of van Gogh's earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27. |
In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of van Gogh's paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from van Gogh's estate. In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany. Russell had been a close friend of van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman's work, and gave him a van Gogh drawing. Influenced by van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours. |
In Paris in 1901, a large van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism. Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914. Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about van Gogh, and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to van Gogh's art; she became an avid collector of his work. The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to van Gogh's work. Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928. |
Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I, helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914. His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind. These began a compelling mythology of van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young. In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of van Gogh's life titled Lust for Life, based on van Gogh's letters to Theo. This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book. |
In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as "haunting", and regarded van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: "[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are ... [T]hey paint them as they themselves feel them to be." |
Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet, Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million by using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. In 2015, L'Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million. |
Minor planet 4457 van Gogh is named in his honour. |
In October 2022, two Just Stop Oil activists protesting against the effects of the fossil fuel industry on climate change threw a can of tomato soup on van Gogh's Sunflowers in the National Gallery, London, and then glued their hands to the gallery wall. As the painting was covered by glass it was not damaged. |
Van Gogh Museum |
Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978), inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925. During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection. Theo's son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 Kisho Kurokawa took charge. Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening. |
The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973. It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year. In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million. Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries. |
Nazi-looted art |
During the Nazi period (1933–1945) a great number of artworks by van Gogh changed hands, many of them looted from Jewish collectors who were forced into exile or murdered. Some of these works have disappeared into private collections. Others have since resurfaced in museums, or at auction, or have been reclaimed, often in high-profile lawsuits, by their former owners. The German Lost Art Foundation still lists dozens of missing van Goghs and the American Alliance of Museums lists 73 van Goghs on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal. |
Notes |
References |
Sources |
External links |
The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, the complete works and letters of van Gogh |
Vincent van Gogh The letters, the complete letters of van Gogh (translated into English and annotated) |
Vincent van Gogh, teaching resource on van Gogh |
Works by Vincent van Gogh at Project Gutenberg |
Works by or about Vincent van Gogh at the Internet Archive |
Works by Vincent van Gogh at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) |
Vincent van Gogh at IMDb |
Vincenzo Campi (Italian pronunciation: [vinˈtʃɛntso ˈkampi]; c.1530/1535–1591) was a 16th-century Italian painter working in Cremona during the Late Renaissance. Campi is best known as one of the first northern Italian artists to work in the Flemish style of realist genre painting. |
Early career |
Campi was born into a family of prominent artists. He was the son of Italian Renaissance painter Galeazzo Campi, and younger brother of painters Giulio and Antonio. Vincenzo and Antonio are thought to have trained in the workshop of their older brother Giulio, a prominent painter and architect working in Cremona. Few records exist of Vincenzo's early years, with the first record of the artist's work being a portrait (now lost) of Archduke Ernest and his brother Rudolf of Austria painted during their stay in Cremona during 1563. |
Style |
Cremonese Mannerism and Lombard naturalism |
While his brothers Giulio and Antonio worked closely within the Cremonese Mannerist style, Vincenzo was celebrated for his naturalism and 'descriptive mode of painting' as described by Filippo Baldinucci in his Notizie as, '(a) good naturalist, keeping always to the imitation of the real.' Vincenzo's development in style is thought to have been motivated by both the death of his brother Giulio in 1573, and the influence of an important commission received in that same year. Vincenzo was commissioned to fresco the spandrels of the Cremona Cathedral left unfinished by the painter Il Pordenone some fifty years previously. It is suggested that it was through the loss of the stylistic guidance of his brother, and the influence of Pordenone's raw and expressive frescos, that Vincenzo began to merge the styles of Cremonese Mannerism and Lombard naturalism in his painting. |
Religious painting |
Although it is not what he is best known for, Vincenzo and his brothers were most active as painters of religious subjects. Pordenone's influence can be clearly seen in Vincenzo's 1575 altarpiece, Christ Nailed to the Cross (Museo della Certosa di Pavia) that shows the artist's developing Lombard naturalism. The crucifixion is unconventionally depicted with Christ standing awkwardly over the cross while his arm is pulled to the ground by the hand of the executioner poised between his legs. The peculiar pose was appropriated from an early drawing by Il Pordenone depicting the Passion of Christ. The same setting is taken up two years later (1577) in an altarpiece with the same theme now preserved in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. |
Northern Italian genre painting |
Campi is best known for his significant contribution to the birth of northern Italian genre painting. The style appeared quite suddenly between 1580 and 1585 in Cremona and Bologna, and its development was heavily influenced by similar genre paintings by Flemish artists Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer. Access to these works was made possible by the import of Flemish genre paintings, in particular those of Beuckelaer, from Antwerp to Cremona by wealthy merchants including the Affaitati banking family who had holdings in both cities. It is highly likely that Campi had access to these imported paintings through his time painting for the House of Farnese in Piacenza where the family held significant collections of these imported Flemish genre scenes. Campi was a key figure in the birth of genre painting in northern Italy as he was the first to paint a series of paintings depicting butchers, fish vendors and poultry sellers as a commission for the wealthy Fugger family of Augsburg. |
This development saw a move away from Mannerism towards an "Anti-Mannerist" naturalism described by Art Historian Walter Friedlaender, as, 'A healthy down-to-earth spirit (coming) into existence, paralleling a vigorous treatment of form achieved through purposeful work and renewed contact with living reality.' |
Campi's depictions of the villano, or peasant illustrated and reinforced a contemporary northern Italian discourse that argued certain foods were only appropriate for high-born citizens and others for low-born. Campi's Fishmongers depicts its subjects eating beans, dark bread, and scallions, which were the exact foods listed as only suitable for the working classes in Bartolomeo Pisanelli's influential Trattato della natura de’ cibi et del bere published in 1585. Cheese was also seen to be suitable nourishment for the lower classes, '(who) do not have the means to provide themselves with other more healthy foods'. Campi illustrates the low standing of cheese in his work, The Ricotta Eaters, which rather unflatteringly depicts "gluttonous peasants" laughing and spooning fresh cheese into their gaping mouths. |
Despite Campi's choice to depict the lower working classes, his treatment of these subjects was neither sympathetic nor romanticised. With the heavy use of food metaphors and established character tropes, Campi often depicts his subjects as crude, dim-witted, and sexually available. Art Historian Barry Wind sees these works as a contemporary extension of the classical idea of pitture ridicole, or comic painting, where the painting served as a '"sustained bawdy joke" for an educated man with a low sense of humour.' |
Influence |
Other artists working alongside Campi in Cremona between 1580 and 1585 include Bartolomeo Passarotti and his apprentice, Annibale Carracci who both made significant contributions to the development of northern Italian genre painting. Art historians often describe these 1580s works as a precursor to Caravaggio’s more progressive realism emerging in the following decade. |
Selected works |
Sources |
Baldinucci, Filippo. 1815. Notizie Del Professore Del Disegno De Cinnabar. 2nd ed. Florence: Francesco Saverio Baldinucci and Ferdinancln Ranalli. |
Friedlaender, Walter F and Donald Posner. 1965. Mannerism And Anti-Mannerism In Italian Painting. New York: Schocken Books. |
McTighe, Sheila. 2004. "Foods And The Body In Italian Genre Paintings, About 1580: Campi, Passarotti, Carracci". The Art Bulletin 86 (2): 301–323. |
Moynihan, Kim-Ly Thi. 2012. "Comedy, Science, And The Reform Of Description In Lombard Painting Of The Late Renaissance: Arcimboldo, Vincenzo Campi, And Bartolomeo Passerotti". Ph.D., Columbia University. |
Pisanelli, Baldassare. 1586. Trattato Della Natura De' Cibi Et Del Bere. Venetia: Gio. Alberti. |
The Age Of Caravaggio. 1985. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
Wind, Barry. 1974. “Pitture Ridicole: Some Late Cinquecento Comic Genre Painting.” Storia Dell’arte 20: 24–35. |
Notes |
External links |
Painters of reality: the legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Campi (see index) |
Chilvers, Ian, "Campi" in the Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordreference.com.virtual.anu.edu.au/view/10.1093/acref/9780191782763.001.0001/acref-9780191782763-e-2810. |
Vincenzo Catena (c. 1480–1531) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance Venetian school. He is also known as Vincenzo de Biagio. |
Life |
Nothing is known of the date and place of Catena's birth. The earliest known record of him is in an inscription on the back of Giorgione's Laura, in which he is described as the painter's Cholego. Catena's early style is however, much closer to that of Giovanni Bellini than the innovative work of Giorgione, and it was not until a few years after Giorgione's death in 1510 that his influence began to show itself in Catena's output. There are about a dozen signed paintings by Catena in existence, although only one of these, the Martyrdom of St Christina (1520) in the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini in Venice, can be dated with any certainty, from an inscription on its marble surround. |
Catena's wills indicate that he was a man of some wealth, and that he had friends in Venetian humanist circles. |
References |
Sources |
Web Gallery of Art |
Adoration of the Shepherds |
External links |
Vincenzo Catena on Artcyclopedia |
Italian Paintings, Venetian School, a collection catalog containing information about Catena and his works (see index; plate 16-17). |
Vincenzo Foppa (c. 1427–1430 – c. 1515–1516) was an Italian painter from the Renaissance period. While few of his works survive, he was an esteemed and influential painter during his time and is considered the preeminent leader of the Early Lombard School. He spent his career working for the Sforza family, Dukes of Milan, in Pavia, as well as various other patrons throughout Lombardy and Liguria. He lived and worked in his native Brescia during his later years. |
Early life |
Very little is known about the early life and training of Foppa. He was born in Brescia. At the time, there were few esteemed painters in the region, and the art scene in Brescia was lacking. It is therefore likely that Foppa had to seek artistic training elsewhere. Some of his earliest exposures to art were likely frescoes painted by Gentile da Fabriano in the Broletto Chapel in Brescia and the woven Annunciation by Jacopo Bellini. The latter artist was one of the strongest influences on him, and it is possible that Foppa was directly apprenticed to Bellini. He also may have been apprenticed to Bonifacio Bembo. Some historians suggest that Foppa may have had early training in Padua with Francesco Squarcione, though his earliest works are more stylistically reminiscent of Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano. It is most likely that Foppa went to Verona for his training. |
Career |
Early works |
The earliest known work attributed to Foppa is The Madonna and Child with Angels. Compositionally, this painting is reminiscent of the Veronese style due to its Gothic appearance, contributing to speculation that Foppa was trained in Verona, possibly by Stefano or Michelino da Besozzo. However, the piece also has unique aspects indicative of the artist's personal touch, such as the greyish skin tone, which would become a defining aspect of the Lombard school. However, the figures in The Madonna and Child with Angels are not nearly as lifelike as those featured in the painter's later works. The next work known to be by Foppa's hand is his Crucifixion, painted at Bergamo in 1456. This work marked a significant step forward for Vincenzo, as his representation of humans matured considerably between the completion of the Madonna and the Crucifixion. The painting is exceedingly similar to a Jacopo Bellini work of the same name, lending credibility to the notion that Foppa may have spent time training with Bellini in Venice. The work also uses elements associated with the Veronese school, such as the hilly landscape and fictional city featured in the background. While the composition is nearly identical to the earlier Bellini work, Foppa's delicate colouring and advanced naturalist depiction of the three crucified men indicate his considerable talent, even at such an early stage of his career. |
Pavia and Genoa |
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