Nuenen parish garden in spring
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| Nuenen parish garden in spring |
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| Vincent van Gogh , 1884 |
| Oil on paper on wood |
| 25 × 57 cm |
| Groninger Museum |
The Parish Garden of Nuenen in Spring ( Dutch Lentetuin, de pastorietuin te Nuenen in het voorjaar ) is an oil painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh . It ispainted on paper ina landscape format of 25 × 57 centimeters and mounted on wood. Van Gogh painted this painting and almost two hundred others during his stay in Nuenen from 1883 to 1885. His father was a pastor there, and Vincent van Gogh painted many scenes from the place and its surroundings, including the rectory and its garden. The spring parish garden of Nuenen was created in May 1884 after van Gogh had already made several drawings of the motif in winter.
description
The painting shows in an exceptionally wide landscape format the view over the garden of the rectory of Nuenen to the old cemetery tower. This dilapidated building is in the center of the background. Trees are depicted on both sides of the painting, flanking the line of sight like an avenue. In the foreground, between bushes that have not yet sprouted, stands a dark-clad female figure on a path that runs slightly at an angle to the center of the picture.
The unusual landscape format suggests that van Gogh used a wooden aid that he himself used to describe as a “perspective frame”. The frame made it easier for him to compose a picture.
background
From 1881 to 1883 van Gogh lived with the prostitute Sien in The Hague, financially supported by his younger brother Theo van Gogh . Sien not only brought one child into the relationship, but was pregnant and gave birth to a second child in 1882. During the Hague period, van Gogh created around 200 designs, mostly landscapes and portraits of Sien. The relationship ended in September 1883 and van Gogh moved in late December to live with his parents in Nuenen , where his father had recently been a pastor. A studio for Vincent was set up in the laundry room of the rectory . Van Gogh stayed in Nuenen for about two years and was very productive, with his work predominantly in dark earth tones and not yet showing the bright colors of his late work. In addition to numerous drawings and watercolors , almost two hundred paintings were created in Nuenen, of which The Potato Eaters is the best known.
Most of Van Gogh's drawings and paintings from the Nuenen period are landscapes and genre scenes of rural life in the area. Van Gogh painted the motif of the parish garden in Nuenen at least seven times. In the winter of 1884/1885, shortly after his arrival in Nuenen, he first made several drawings of the garden. Van Gogh painted the parish garden of Nuenen in spring in May 1884. In January 1885 the parish garden in Nuenen in the snow was created , again a landscape of the parish garden with the old cemetery tower in the center of the picture, but now as a snow landscape. Probably the most important work in this series was The Parish Garden in Nuenen with a Pond and Figures , a large-format oil painting that was destroyed during the Second World War. Van Gogh considered the series to be his most important work to date and tried to sell these pictures through his brother Theo, who was employed in a renowned art dealer in Paris. However, Theo could not market his brother's pictures according to his own ideas. The attempt to sell the pictures through his former teacher Anthon van Rappard also failed. Seriously disappointed, van Gogh turned to genre painting and in the spring of 1885 painted The Potato Eaters .
- The Nuenen parish garden in the work of van Gogh
Parish garden , pencil, ink and white lead on paper, 51.5 × 38.0 cm, 1884, Szépművészeti Múzeum , Budapest
Winter Garden , pencil and ink on paper, 40.3 × 54.6 cm, March 1884, Van Gogh Museum , Amsterdam
The old cemetery tower in Nuenen , oil on canvas on wood, 25 × 57 cm, 1884, Foundation EG Bührle Collection , Zurich
The parish garden in Nuenen in the snow , oil on canvas on wood, 51 × 77 cm, January 1885, Norton Simon Museum , Pasadena
The parish garden in Nuenen in the snow , oil on canvas on wood, 53 × 78 cm, 1885, Armand Hammer Museum of Art , Los Angeles
The parish garden in Nuenen , watercolor on paper, 38 × 49 cm, October / November 1885, Noordbrabants Museum, 's-Hertogenbosch
The parish garden in Nuenen with a pond and figures , oil on panel, 92 × 104 cm, November 1885, burned in the Second World War
Theft in March 2020
The parish garden of Nuenen in the spring of 2020 was loaned from the Groninger Museum to the Singer Laren , to be displayed there from January to May with other works by Dutch artists around 1900 as part of the exhibition Spiegel der Seele. Toorop to Mondrian to be presented. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the museum in Laren was closed on March 14th until June 1st, 2020. On March 30, 2020, Van Gogh's 167th birthday, an unknown perpetrator penetrated the Singer Laren at 3:15 a.m. through the glass entrance door, which he smashed with a hammer. After he smashed another glass door in the building, he stole the parish garden of Nuenen as the only work of art in the spring . The police, automatically alerted by the break-in, arrived at the scene after a few minutes, but the perpetrator had already fled with his prey.
On June 18, 2020, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf published a video on its website showing photos of the painting that were taken after the theft. In the photos you can see the front and back of the painting. In addition to the front page, the front page of The New York Times newspaper from May 30, 2020 and a paperback by Wilson Boldewijn published in 2018 are also photographed, with the Dutch title Meesterdief - De bizarre Belevenissen van Van Gogh-Rover Okkie Durham ( Meisterdieb - Die bizarren Erlebnisse from Van Gogh robber Okkie Durham (Octave Okkie Durham). Among other things, the book is about a break-in and theft of two Van Gogh paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in December 2002, committed by Okkie Durham with Henk Bieslijn. These two paintings, Stormy Seas near Scheveningen and The Reformed Church in Nuenen , were found and confiscated in Italy in September 2016 in a villa belonging to the Neapolitan Camorra godfather Raffaele Imperiale and returned to the Van Gogh Museum in January 2017.
According to the newspaper, the photos published on June 18 were initially leaked to art theft detective Arthur Brand. According to him, the painting should be slightly damaged, but otherwise still look good. Experts believe it is the original as there are unique markings on the back of the painting. The police examined the photos.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lentetuin, de pastorietuin te Nuenen in het voorjaar (1884) - Vincent van Gogh , artsalonholland.nl, accessed on March 31, 2020.
- ↑ Vincent van Gogh, The Drawbridge. Summary / special features , museums Cologne, accessed on March 31, 2020.
- ↑ a b Sjraar van Heugten: The Dutch Years, 1884-85 . In: Colta Ives et al .: Vincent van Gogh. The Drawings . Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London 2005, ISBN 0-300-10720-X , pp. 56-121.
- ↑ Diefstal schilderij Vincent van Gogh , Singer Laren website , March 30, 2020, accessed on March 30, 2020.
- ↑ Work by Vincent van Gogh stolen uit museum Singer Laren , NOS website , March 30, 2020, accessed on March 30, 2020.
- ↑ Caught on video: how Van Gogh painting was stolen in sledgehammer raid . In: The Guardian , April 23, 2020, accessed May 2, 2020.
- ↑ Video (also with break-in scenes ) The detail shows that Van Gogh is real. , De Telegraaf , June 18, 2020
- ↑ Photo exposed - New trace in the case of the stolen Van Gogh painting , Monopoly , June 19, 2020