Dutch Treat At The Guggenheim

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 5

Dutch Treat At The Guggenheim

[Specially written [or “The Press” by JOHN COLEY] GOME of Vincent van Gogh’s most wellknown and powerful works are now on show at a major exhibition of the Dutch master’s paintings in New York’s Guggenheim Museum.

The paintings and drawings in the exhibition were selected from the collection of Mr V. W. van Gogh, of Laren, Holland, by the museum’s director, Mr Thomas M. Messer.

Mr van Gogh’s present collection contains paintings, watercolours and drawings from all periods of his uncle’s creative life. Upon the artist’s death, these and other works were in the possession in Vincent’s brother Theo and his wife. Mr V. W. van Gogh inherited the collection and enlarged it through additional purchases. Recently, the collection was transferred to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. As such, it is to be deposited in a projected government museum in Amsterdam that will be dedicated to the artistic legacy of Holland’s great 19th century painter. First To Last The works in the Guggenheim’s exhibition include van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and “Cypresses,” his “Harvest” and “Potato Eaters.” They are arranged in chronological order and to follow the progression of works from the first careful drawings made in 1880 to the final landscapes is to watch the blossoming of a master creative spirit. Here one could see the authoritative drawings which caused Toulouse-Lautrec to hail the Dutchman as already a master when van Gogh went to him with some of his sketches seeking lessons. Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Groot-Zundert, the Netherlands. The son of a Minister, he studied to become a clergyman. In 1878, he went to the Borinage, a coalmining district in South Belgium, where he served this desperately poor community as a lay evengelist. Van Gogh decided to become an artist in 1880, and for the next few years worked under the influence of Millet and other painters of peasants. The culminating work of this

period was the “Potato Eaters.”

In Paris, in 1886, van Gogh was deeply affected by Impressionism, which brightened his palette and opened his eyes to the visual spectacle of the outdoors.

At Arles, in the south of France, in 1888, he attained his first completely original style and produced vibrant and moving works in rapid succession. In February the next year van Gogh, in an agitated mental condition, entered the Asylum of St. Paul in St. Remy, Provence. He continued to paint landscapes, portraits and still lifes in a more linear and impulsive style than at Arles. Van Gogh left the hospital in the spring of 1890 and visited his brother Theo in Paris and then settled in Auvers. There he continued painting until he took his own life on July 29. Accompanying the throngs of gallerygoers down the museum’s spiral ramp and almost fighting to catch an uninterrupted view of the works, one finds it difficult to believe van Gogh never achieved recognition in his lifetime outside a small circle of painters. He was unable to sell a single work while he was alive, even with the assistance of his devoted brother Theo’s salesmanship.