Vase with cornflowers and poppies
Vase with cornflowers and poppies ( French vase avec marguerites et coquelicots ) is a painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh from 1890. The picture, painted in oil on canvas, has the dimensions 65 cm × 50 cm. Van Gogh painted the picture in Auvers-sur-Oise a few weeks before his suicide. The painting is in a private collection.
Image description
The painting shows a colorful bouquet with field flowers in a vase. You can see cornflowers , poppies and daisies . The numerous flowers of the poppy dominate the center of the picture with their strong red tone. Behind it, especially towards the upper left corner, there are some blue cornflowers. Individual ears of cereal stick out between the cornflowers. On the left side, below the poppy, you can see some blooming daisies. There are also a few yellow flowers on the left edge and between the poppy. This could be dandelion . While the flowers are upright in the vase, some green stems or leaves hang down over the rim of the vase.
The bouquet is in a bulbous brown ceramic vase. On the lower part of the vase there are vertical lines in yellow and green, in the upper part also in white. A light-reflecting glaze is possibly indicated here, whereby the upper lines could indicate a window reflecting on the surface. The vase stands on a tabletop with a rounded edge cut off from the lower edge of the picture. The white surface of the table top is possibly a tablecloth, but a wooden surface painted white is also conceivable. The background consists of a green area. The color varies between different shades of green, in which yellow, brown and gray accents are also visible. The vase with the bouquet is lit directly from the front so that there are almost no shadows in the picture. The painting is neither signed nor dated.
Van Gogh's still life with flowers from Auvers
After spending several months in the mental hospital of Saint-Rémy in southern France, Vincent van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris on May 20, 1890. He lived here in a room in the Auberge Ravoux until his death on July 29, 1890. During the short period of his stay, he created around 80 paintings, including such well-known works as the portrait of Dr. Gachet or the landscape of a wheat field with ravens . Paul Gachet was the reason for the move to Auvers. Van Gogh hoped to get medical help from him, who was friends with several artists. He soon saw a friend in the doctor. Van Gogh painted numerous landscapes in the great outdoors in Auvers. Since he did not have his own studio, he created a few portraits and a number of still lifes in the house of Dr. Gachet, where he was a regular guest. In a letter of June 3, 1890 to his brother Theo , Vincent van Gogh wrote about the house of Dr. Gachet, it's crammed with boring things like an antique dealer. But it is possible to paint flowers or other still lifes there. The inventory of the Gachet house also included some pictures that the doctor had received from other artists. These included, for example, two flower still lifes by Paul Cézanne , which van Gogh may have used as a model for his pictures. Cézanne's pictures Dahlias and Small Delftware Vase with Flowers (both made around 1873, today in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris) show, like van Gogh's vase with cornflowers and poppies , a bulbous vase with a lush bouquet of flowers standing on a table. In addition, in Cézanne's picture Small Delft Vase with Flowers, there is a table with a rounded edge cut off from the lower edge of the picture, as can also be seen in Van Gogh.
Paul Cézanne:
Dahlias , around 1873
Paul Cézanne:
Small Delftware Vase with Flowers , 1873
During his stay in Auvers, van Gogh painted a number of still lifes with flowers. In the letter of June 3, 1890 to his brother Theo, Vincent van Gogh indicated that if there was no money, he hoped Dr. Paying gachet with pictures. In another letter dated June 17, 1890, he told his brother about the work on a flower still life. It is a picture of field flowers and thistles in a vase (private collection). Like the vase with cornflowers and poppies, this bouquet is also placed on a bright, round table in front of a green background and the brown ceramic vase seems to be identical in both pictures. The vase with cornflowers and poppies may also have been made around June 17, 1890. The vessel and the table were also used in the painting Vase with Flowers and Thistles ( Pola Museum of Art , Hakone). The table here is yellow and the background also has yellow sections in addition to green. The table also appears in the pictures Glass with Field Flowers and Glass with Carnations (both private collections). Instead of the ceramic vase, van Gogh used different glasses to hold the flowers in these pictures and varied the background in blue or yellow. In addition, he did not drape field flowers in a glass with carnations , but garden flowers in a bouquet. Presumably from the garden of Dr. Gachet also got the flowers for the picture Still Life with a Japanese Vase, Roses and Anemones ( Musée d'Orsay , Paris). In contrast to the aforementioned pictures, van Gogh has chosen a rectangular table as the base for the vase with the bouquet.
Vincent van Gogh:
Field Flowers and Thistles in a Vase , 1890
Vincent van Gogh:
Vase with Flowers and Thistles , 1890
Vincent van Gogh:
Glass with Field Flowers , 1890
Vincent van Gogh:
Glass with Carnations , 1890
Vincent van Gogh:
Still Life with a Japanese Vase, Roses and Anemones , 1890
Provenance
Van Gogh probably gave the painting Vase of Cornflowers and Cornflowers to his doctor Paul Gachet, although it is not clear whether it was a gift or a consideration for medical treatment. The first proven owner of the picture was the Parisian collector Gaston Alexandre Camentron (1862–1919). It is unclear whether he took the picture of Dr. Gachet or through van Gogh's brother Theo, who worked as an art dealer in Paris. Camentron sold a vase with cornflowers and poppies to the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer in November 1911 . The collector Antonie Albert from Wiesbaden acquired it from him in 1914 . The widow of the chemical manufacturer Heinrich Albert sold the picture to Georg Caspari in Munich in 1918 . Via the London branch of the Knoedler Gallery , the picture entered the collection of James Carstairs from Philadelphia in 1926. He sold the picture in 1928 to the New York branch of Galerie Knoedler, which immediately sold it to the collector Anson Conger Goodyear, who lived on Long Island in the US state of New York . He was the first president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1929 to 1939 . Goodyear gave the painting to his son George F. Goodyear in 1941, who lived in Buffalo as a lawyer and businessman . He made the painting available on permanent loan to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery there in 1962 . In the following years he gradually transferred ownership of the painting to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for tax reasons. In 1982 the museum owned 60 percent of the painting. In 1990 the Goodyear family and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery agreed to sell the painting and put it up for auction at Christie's auction house in New York. At an estimated price of 12 to 16 million US dollars, however, initially no buyer was found. In 1991 the picture finally changed hands in a private sale. The new owner remained anonymous. On November 4, 2014, the picture came up for auction again. In the New York branch of the auction house Sotheby’s it changed hands for 61.7 million US dollars. The Chinese film producer Wang Zhongjun appeared as the new owner .
literature
- Ingo F. Walther, Rainer Metzger: Vincent van Gogh, all paintings . Taschen, Cologne 1989–1992, ISBN 3-8228-0396-0 .
- Ronald Pickvance : Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Abrams, New York 1984, ISBN 0-87099-475-1 .
- Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker: Vincent van Gogh - The letters, the complete illustrated and annotated edition . Thames & Hudson, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-500-23865-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Title Vase with Cornflowers and Corn Poppies after Ingo F. Walther, Rainer Metzger: Vincent van Gogh, all paintings , p. 661.
- ↑ The corresponding passage in the letter reads in the original: “Mais sa maison tu verras c'est plein, plein comme un marchand d'antiquités, de chôses pas toujours intéressantes, c'est même terrible. - Mais dans tout cela il ya ceci de bon que pour arranger des fleurs ou des natures mortes il y aurait toujours de quoi. Mais sa maison tu verras c'est plein, plein comme un marchand d'antiquités, de chôses pas toujours intéressantes, c'est même terrible. "See [1]
- ↑ The corresponding passage in the letter reads in the original: “J'ai fait ces études pour lui, pour lui montrer que si ce n'est pas un cas où on lui payerait en argent nous le dédomagerons pourtant toujours de ce qu'il ferait pour nous. "see [2]
- ↑ The corresponding passage in the letter reads in the original: “un bouquet de plantes sauvages, des chardons, des epis, des feuilles différentes de verdure. l'une presque rouge, l'autre très verte, l'autre jaunissante "see [3]
- ^ Rita Reif: Garbo's Collection and a van Gogh Are to Be Sold , article in the New York Times, July 19, 1990
- ↑ Peter CT Elswort: The Art Boom: Is It Over, or Is This Just a Correction? Article in the New York Times on December 16, 1990
- ↑ Carol Vogel: Thanks to Giacometti, Sotheby's Hits Its Highest Total Ever at Fall Opening , article up for auction in the New York Times on November 4, 2014
- ↑ Wei Gu: China Movie Mogul Wang Zhongjun Buys Vincent Van Gogh Painting for $ 61.8 million , article up for auction in the Wall Street Journal on November 5, 2014