our high ten hottest tales on the artist

When in 2018 I initially began writing my Friday weblog, Adventures with Van Gogh, I deliberate to do it for just some months. But it surely has continued, and subsequent week’s article would be the 2 hundredth put up on The Artwork Newspaper website. There may be by no means a scarcity of tales to write down on, week after week—one thing one can’t say about many artists.

So what’s it that makes Van Gogh such a phenomenon? Most fans are all in favour of each his artwork and his life, and naturally they’re intently intertwined. Because of his evocative letters, over 800 of which survive, we are able to delve deep and discover his extraordinary story and the way he developed as an artist.

His artwork is equally fascinating, along with his best works being immediately interesting—however with way more to understand if one appears extra intently.

Take the Sunflowers (August 1888, Nationwide Gallery, London), one of the instantly placing photos in artwork. However look extra fastidiously, and the flowers are at totally different phases of their lifespan: the bud within the decrease left, about to burst into life; seven blooms in full flower, their yellow petals aglow; and the opposite seven dying, having gone to seed. This nonetheless life can be a mirrored image on the passage of time.

Folks usually say to me: absolutely with such a well-known and well-researched artist there will be no extra to find? However that’s removed from the reality. Search, with a contemporary eye, and there’s all the time extra.

After 200 posts, which have proved to be hottest? Listed here are the highest ten:

1. Suicide or Homicide

How did Van Gogh die? This query hit the headlines after the 2011 publication of a biography by two US authors, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. They claimed that Van Gogh didn’t shoot himself, however that the shot was fired by an area teenager, René Secrétan.

I by no means accepted this principle, and stay satisfied that it was suicide, posting my ideas underneath the headline “Ten the reason why the homicide story is a fantasy”. The invention of what was in all probability the very gun used within the taking pictures, which was auctioned in 2019, provides additional weight to the suicide verdict.

2. Not a portray, only a body

The topic of the second hottest put up will virtually definitely come as a shock. It was not a few Van Gogh portray—however merely a body, and one made many years after the artist’s demise. The portray itself, The Artist on the Highway to Tarascon (August 1888), which was owned by the Magdeburg museum in central Germany, was sadly misplaced in the course of the Second World and was in all probability destroyed in a hearth deep in a salt mine, the place it had been evacuated to be able to defend it from Allied bombs.

The frilly wavy 1910s body for The Artist on the Highway to Tarascon was faraway from the portray earlier than it was despatched for safekeeping within the mine. The body was then saved individually and unnecessarily destroyed in 1960, in the course of the communist period in East Germany. From a pre-war black-and-white {photograph}, Lynn Roberts, a London body specialist, reconstructed for the weblog what it initially would have regarded like.

3. A misplaced Van Gogh, turning up in Japan

All of us love discoveries, significantly in the event that they flip up in sudden locations. A Van Gogh watercolour panorama, Meadow, within the Background the New Church and St Jacob’s Church (July 1882), had final been recorded in 1903, however it just lately re-emerged in Japan. The weblog was the primary to publish the panorama on the outskirts of The Hague in color.

4. The most costly

A characteristic on the ten Van Gogh work that fetched file sums at public sale additionally proved successful with readers. It’s astonishing that the work of an artist who did not promote throughout his lifetime ought to now attain such monumental costs.

5. Three unknown drawings used as a bookmark

A trio of Van Gogh sketches (autumn 1881, now within the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) turned up inside a novel on the French peasantry, the place that they had been used as a bookmark. They have been reproduced for the primary time within the weblog. Discoveries of completely unknown Van Gogh drawings are actually uncommon—maybe a couple of times in a decade.

6. The scene of Vincent’s closing portray

A really early {photograph} of the scene depicted in Tree Roots (July 1890, Van Gogh Museum) was discovered. It reveals the clump of bushes within the village of Auvers-sur-Oise which Van Gogh painted just a few hours earlier than he shot himself.

7. Van Gogh’s best panorama

One put up attracted readers just because it’s arguably the artist’s most wonderful panorama. The Harvest (June 1888) was painted within the countryside simply exterior Arles. Impressed by the summer time scene, Van Gogh accomplished it in only a single day. On coming back from the fields, he complained that “my mind is so drained”—and he relaxed with a stiff drink and smoking his pipe.

8. An unlucky grasshopper

Our readers love artwork tales about animals, however bugs appear to be equally noteworthy after they get caught in Van Gogh’s impasto paint. The stays of a grasshopper have been discovered embedded in Olive Bushes (June-September 1889, now on the Nelson Atkins Museum of Artwork, Kansas Metropolis), offering additional proof that this composition was painted open air in a grove quite than again within the artist’s studio.

9. Lovers lower out of a bigger canvas

One other gross sales story was about A Pair of Lovers (March 1888, now non-public assortment), a fraction of a bigger canvas of an Arles panorama. Van Gogh was disillusioned by the panorama, which he destroyed very quickly after portray it. However earlier than doing so, he lower out a part of two strolling figures, pondering that it may be a helpful examine. This small fragment offered for £10m at Sotheby’s in 2022.

10. The Ear

Till the “homicide” principle got here alongside, the query that I used to be requested most frequently was about Van Gogh’s ear. This may occasionally appear a ghoulish matter, however it does relate to the vital difficulty of the artist’s psychological state. Regardless of almost a century of research by specialists, no consensus has but been reached on the character of Van Gogh’s medical situation.

Inspiration

One in all pleasures of writing a weblog is to listen to from readers. It’s significantly rewarding when artists and writers are impressed by Van Gogh’s creativity.

A transferring instance was an 85-year-old girl from California who wrote from her residential care dwelling, telling me that she had lengthy admired Van Gogh. In November 2020, throughout extended isolation due to Covid-19, she had been confined to her room and determined to make a collage primarily based on a replica of Three Sunflowers (August 1888, now in a non-public assortment). 

Having loved engaged on her creation, she then determined to make one other Van Gogh-inspired collage each month for the next yr. Simply earlier than Christmas 2021 she shared what she known as her “labour of affection” with fellow residents, presenting the collages in a small exhibition of their communal lounge—and celebrating with a seasonal drink.

Lastly, I want to thank Aimee Dawson, The Artwork Newspaper’s performing digital editor, who edits and lays out the weekly Adventures with Van Gogh with such care and talent.

Different Van Gogh information:

On 3 March, Christie’s is promoting a portrait sketch of Van Gogh by Georges Manzama-Pissarro (1871-1961), a son of the Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro. Camille and one other son, Lucien, met Van Gogh in 1887 and Georges could have executed so too, though that is unsure. The comparatively modest estimate of £5,000-£7,000 for a bunch of eight drawings, together with the one among Van Gogh (in addition to different portraits depicting Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Signac), displays the truth that they have been in all probability primarily not executed from life. The sketch of Van Gogh was most definitely accomplished within the twentieth century, additionally loosely primarily based on the self-portrait (September 1889) now on the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington, DC.