cicerone imposter wrote:Speaking of Van Gogh, there was a special showing of his paintings at the art museum in Los Angeles several years ago, and my wife and I flew down to see them. I'm amazed at how the people who lived during Van Gogh's life missed his genius.
Having read "Lust for Life," I'm now reading "Depths of Glory" another biographical novel by Irving Stone written 50 years after "Lust." "Depths of Glory" is about Camille Pizarro and the artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist period in Paris. It wasn't just Van Gogh who was neglected, it was virtually all of them; Manet, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Gauguin, and Cezanne, especially Cezanne. None of them could get in galleries, and the annual national exhibition almost consistently rejected them.
Some of them came from wealthy families, and though Pizarro's family gave him some money, it wasn't to support his artistic ambition; both his parents deplored his artistic bent. Art to them, and most people of the time, was a way to make money, and if your paintings didn't sell, you were a failure.