The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
Museums: preservation of history
During my brief 4-day stay in the city, I only planned for the Van Gogh museum yet Amsterdam’s compact city is studded with a many museums introducing its rich heritage. From canal museums, the museum of modern arts (Stedelijk), the Anne France house, to the Rijksmuseum (grandest art gallery of all), all preserves fine heritage and history of the vibrant city. A visit to the Van Gogh museum opened my eyes to the great story telling of treasured collections, showcasing Van Gogh’s dramatic life stages with penetrating insights.
Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh museum features a rich collection of Van Gogh’s paintings, past correspondences, and co-exhibitions of fellow artists. Van Gogh produced 1200 drawings, 900 paintings in his lifetime, and sold 1. The Museum houses 500 and 200 respectively, along with 700 more letters that characterized his personality in letters with his brother Theo and contemporary artists. It blessed visitors with an informative multi-media guide, with short introductions to highlighted artworks featuring interesting anecdotes and interactive exercises to gain a deeper understanding of the artworks.
Early inspirations: Country life, natural landscapes, and Japanese influence
Van Gogh’s uncle was an art dealer, exposing the young artist to art at an early age. He found inspiration in nature landscapes and a strong attachment to country life, as he appreciated the paintings of peasants and country people working in harmony with nature. “Peasant workers work close to nature, living a cycle of sowing and harvesting; life and death.” In Van Gogh’s early productions, he depicted quiet and solitary scenes of peasants in all walks of life: canal dinners, farmers, and country girls in their natural dwellings.
Van Gogh depicted the realities of rural life with workers having swollen faces and bony hands. Yet, he presented them with dignity, dining on potatoes– a meal that they have honestly earned with their own hands. The dark usage of colors captured the dignity, earthly and humble livelihoods of peasant farmers.
Van Gogh captured more than 30 paintings of sowers in his career. He used colors to express color and emotion, with blue, green, yellow, and purple as his favorite in capturing landscapes.
In Van Gogh’s later years when he moved to the South of France, he felt invigorated by the country side’s shimmering lights, lush landscapes, and liberating air. He produced many paintings during the peak of his artistic career (From 1889–1890), and I really appreciate the introduction to Arles and St. Remy through his drawings. He regarded nature as a sacred sanctuary to draw solace, and also to regain strength. Huge fiery sunflowers, vast golden wheat fields, vibrant lavender farms are some of the portraits that presented the dynamism and liveliness of the South of France.
Van Gogh depicted the heat and shimmering lights of the south of France in his favorite use of color: yellow. It filled the portrait with dynamism and vibrancy. Taking a closer look to the picture, we find that some of the flowers are dried with fallen petals, manifesting the stages of transformation, just like real life.
After visiting the Orsay and Orangerie in Paris both multiple times, I really enjoyed the Impressionist artists presenting art with a personal expression: immersing their emotions and capturing a moment in time under the changing lights. The topics that I most enjoyed were always those capturing nature in their humble forms, including the bayside cliffs, mountain scenery, and lush countryside landscapes. Alain de Botton once quoted in “Art as therapy” that art served many purposes, and one of the was finding balance. Art enables us to recover what we yearn for, and the calling of nature is one of them for me. Van Gogh’s paintings of the vast countryside created a personal connection, as his appreciation to nature struck a bell.
In addition, he was introduced to Japanese paint in his brother Theo’s collection as an art dealer. Van Gogh admired how the Japanese translated images using colors and applied such impressions in his unique usage of paint in his works. He was also inspired by how the monks devoted their aesthetic lives entirely to nature, thus regarded his relocation to Southern France as his artistic pilgrimage.
Life stages: Dutch roots, and French influence
Van Gogh spent his early years in the Netherlands, London, and Belgium. He moved to Paris and later in the peak and last stages of his career to the South of France. In Paris, Van Gogh briefly stayed in his brother Theo’s apartment in Montmarte, and captured Paris after Haussman’s renovation of the city center. In years 1853 to 1870, Haussman renovated Paris with grand boulevards, beautiful apartments, and rearranged city districts. Van Gogh captured the sweeping views from Montmarte, the best location in town to capture the panorama of the town from above.
In the last three years of his career, Van Gogh moved to the South of France. He stayed in Arles, St. Remy, and Auvers (where he shot himself in the chest). The bright lights, shimmering heats, vibrant colors, and lush nature greatly inspired Van Gogh, and it is during this stage that he developed his iconic style. The energetic brushstrokes, thick paint, and powerful color contrasts became his signature, and I really appreciate the vivid colors and rhythmic streaks of color overflowing with emotion.
Van Gogh’s appeal to me came mostly from the approachability in his artworks. He depicted simple scenes, of nature landscapes, countryside peasants, and Paris’s cityscapes. The brushstrokes contained emotion, while they were not overly elaborate in form. These were elements that made his paintings close to life, freezing beautiful moments in time.
