The tenacity of art lovers who endure long queues hoping to catch a glimpse of paintings through dense crowds must be applauded. The exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris devoted to the last months’ Vincent Van Gogh spent in Auvers-sur-Oise (Val-d’Oise) is far from being an exception to this rule: The museum’s rooms have been packed from the very first day it opened to the public on October 3. And it is understandably so, as this exceptional exhibition offers the kind of ensemble that we will never see again.
Of the 74 paintings and over 50 drawings created by Van Gogh in the two months that led to his suicide on July 29, 1890, the museum brought together some 40 paintings and 20 drawings. The organizers, Nienke Bakker, curator of the Musée Van Gogh in Amsterdam, where the exhibition was previously shown between May and September, and Emmanuel Coquery for the Musée d’Orsay, have managed to borrow – the first time so many of them have been presented in the same place 11 of the 13 “double-squares,” a panoramic format specific to this period of the painter’s life.
This exhibition was only made possible thanks to the partnership between the two museums. “Between the two of us, we already had around 15 emblematic works, which is the substantial core of an exhibition,” explained Coquery. They used this argument to convince other lenders, despite the fragility of the works that resulted from the artist’s minimal concern for technique: Painting in oils more than one canvas a day, even “alla prima” (a single layer, rather thick in his case), is not without its posthumous drawbacks, the kind that make restorers restless. In spite of this, the loans came from all over the world: Many from the United States, some from Switzerland, others from Scandinavian museums, not to mention those sent by private collectors. There are a few notable absences, in particular the Landscape with a Carriage and a Train, but as it is kept in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum, we unfortunately won’t be seeing it any time soon.
Van Gogh was 37 when he arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 20, 1890. He had just spent a year in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). Despite a suicide attempt he tried to poison himself by eating paint – he was declared cured by the doctor in charge of the institution. The artist sought to return to the North to see Paris again, but he knew his health was fragile. His brother Théo, an art dealer and his main supporter, also realized this. Rather than settle in the capital, Vincent preferred to stay on the fringes and, on Camille Pissarro’s advice, chose this small town of just over 2,000 inhabitants, located an hour’s train ride from the Gare du Nord. The railway made the town accessible to artists seeking to escape Paris, many of whom had preceded Van Gogh. In addition to Pissarro, Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny and Paul Cézanne also set up their easels here. Daubigny even built a country house. Van Gogh was captivated by the region, finding it “gravely beautiful” and feeling “much well-being in the air.”
Source: Le Monde