Vincent

In January 1890 Vincent Van Gogh’s brother Theo’s wife gave birth to their first child. Vincent painted the Almond Blossom (pictured) as a gift to mark the occasion. That baby, who Theo and his wife named Vincent, grew up to found the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, where we now found ourselves.

Our visit was Maureen’s idea. With characteristic magnanimity, having planned the holiday around a Premier League football match, a cycle trip along the Canal du Midi, an Ashes Test and a round of golf at St Andrews, I asked her if there was anything she might like to do.

Van Gogh is well-trodden ground, including various blog posts I’ve done in the past, so I’m favouring some the lesser-known works and small details that appealed to me.

Take the row of selfies below for example, I wasn’t familiar with any of them. He painted so many self-portraits (because he couldn’t afford models) that we have a highly accurate record of what the man looked like. So much so that I believe I would recognise him if I passed him in the street (admittedly an unlikely scenario.)

Some random impressions:

I loved the tangible connections to Vincent among the exhibits, like his paint palette and partly used tubes, or the grains of sand mixed in with paint in his View of the Sea at Scheveningen. This lines up with the letter he wrote to Theo, describing that day: ‘The wind was so strong that I could barely stay on my feet and barely see through the clouds of sand.’

In many paintings he outlined subjects in black. Yet I distinctly remember my high school art teacher (Tom Esplin, who I only found out later was a celebrated NZ artist), telling us not to do that. Things in nature do not look like that. A cardinal sin, unless your name happens to be Vincent Van Gogh.

To me, the hero of the Van Gogh story was his brother, Theo (pictured). He supported his penniless brother throughout his life, supplying him with the paints and canvasses he needed to maintain his prolific output. Vincent was severely mentally ill, and painting was the one thing that kept his demons at bay, until they had they had the final say, on 29 July 1890, when Vincent was just 37.

Had he lived a little longer he would have witnessed the greenshoots of his immortality. Though he had not sold a single painting, his name was becoming known in art circles, thanks again in part, to Theo, who was an art dealer.

This sentiment was no better expressed than in a letter the writer and art critic Albert Aurier wrote to Theo three days after Vincent’s death.

‘Men like him do not die entirely. He leaves behind a body of work which is a part of himself and which, one day, as you and I can be sure, will make his name live again and again for eternity.’