Not familiar with this Van Gogh

Preparatory work for ‘redoing’ of The Potato Eaters – savaged in his lifetime – to feature in exhibition

A collection of Vincent van Gogh’s preparatory drawings sketched ahead of a planned “redoing” of The Potato Eaters, a masterpiece brutally slated by buyers, friends and family at the time of its painting, are being exhibited for what is believed to be first time.

The Dutch artist considered his depiction of a peasant family from the village of Nuenen in Brabant eating a meal of potatoes as one of only four of his works that could be regarded as important, alongside The Bedroom, Sunflowers and Augustine Roulin (La berceuse).

But for all Van Gogh’s strenuous and unusually academic efforts, chronicled by more than 50 related letters, sketches, drawings and paintings on display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from Friday, The Potato Eaters met almost uniform disapproval when it was completed in 1885, even among his closest friends, including fellow painter Anthon van Rappard, who cruelly picked apart the portrayal in a letter to the artist.

Five years later, after persistent mental health problems – culminating in the slicing off of his ear in December 1888 – had led him to his voluntary admission to an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Van Gogh asked his mother and brother Theo to send him drawings of farmers from Nuenen as inspiration for a new version.

“I’m thinking of redoing the painting of the peasants eating supper, lamplight effect,” he wrote. “That canvas must be completely dark now, perhaps I could redo it entirely from memory.”

Van Gogh did not carry out his plans before he killed himself on 29 July 1890, but little-seen preparatory drawings he sketched earlier that year will be on show as part of a new exhibition, The Potato Eaters: Mistake or Masterpiece?

Bregje Gerritse, the curator of the exhibition, said: “In 1890, he is in Saint-Rémy, he is longing for the north as he has not been home for five years. He comes back to The Potato Eaters figures and starts drawings of interiors and figures at the dinner table and some of these are drawings that have not been on display for such a long time that our records even suggest they were never shown.”

Van Gogh struggled with group compositions, of which Van Rappard was a seasoned master, making his friend’s criticism all the more cutting. Van Rappard’s letter mocked Van Gogh for painting one male figure without “half of his nose”, a “knee or a belly or lungs”, and with an arm “a metre too short”.

“You can do better than this – fortunately; but why, then, observe and treat everything so superficially?” he wrote. “Why not study the movements? Such work was surely not intended seriously? And with such a manner of working you dare to invoke the names of Millet and Breton? Come on! Art is too important, it seems to me, to be treated so cavalierly.”

Van Gogh was appalled by the letter, with its withering comparisons to contemporaneous artists he admired, Jules Breton and Jean-François Millet. He sent it back with a short covering note, in effect ending their friendship.

Van Gogh later wrote to Theo: “What I’m trying to get with it is to be able to draw not a hand but the gesture, not a mathematically correct head but the overall expression. The sniffing of the wind when a digger looks up, say, or speaking. Life, in short.”

Gerritse said Van Gogh hoped to break into the Parisian art market with the painting and while that had “failed terribly”, the painter persisted in believing he had caught something of the peasant life he idealised.

She said: “I think many people view him as impulsive and intuitive but this work is very different. Ambitious with a clear concept in mind of depicting the real, honest, poor peasant life.

“I really like that Van Gogh stands behind his own work. He says there is a certain life in it, writing that while, of course, there are technical mistakes but that technical perfection isn’t what he is after; it is the impression that it conveys about peasant life that is much more important and that he is sure people will forgive him for that.”

The Potato Eaters never featured in an exhibition and ended up unsold hanging above the fireplace in Theo’s apartment in Paris.

“In 1887 he writes to his sister that he still considered this work to be one of the best he ever made,” said Gerritse. “By then he has been living in Paris for a year, he has completely changed his style, using bold colours, brighter palettes, but he still very much believed in this very dark, very different work, because of the meaning it had for him.”

A watercolor by Vincent van Gogh, seized by the Nazis during World War II and not publicly exhibited since 1905, is to be sold at auction next month in New York, where experts at Christie’s estimate it could sell for between $20 and $30 million.

The proceeds of the sale of the work, “Meules de Blé” (“Wheatstacks”), created by van Gogh in 1888, will be divided between the current owner — the family of Edwin Cox, a Texan oil businessman — and the heirs of two Jewish families whose predecessors owned the work during World War II.

In a statement, Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th and 21st century art, called the image of a French farmyard a “tour de force of exceptional quality.” The auction house said it could set a new world auction record for a work on paper by van Gogh. (The highest previous price was about $14.7 million for “La Moisson en Provence” in 1997.)

The watercolor was once owned by Max Meirowsky, a Berlin-based manufacturer, who purchased it in 1913.

But when the Nazis seized power in Germany, Meirowsky, who was Jewish, fled the country in 1938, ultimately entrusting “Meules de Blé” to Paul Graupe, a German Jewish art dealer who was working in Paris.

The pastoral piece was then purchased from the dealer in Paris by Alexandrine de Rothschild, part of a Jewish family of bankers. When the Second World War began, de Rothschild fled to Switzerland. The watercolor was confiscated by the Nazis after the German invasion of France.

It was taken to the Jeu de Paume museum, then a Nazi sorting house for looted art, in 1941. Later, it was sent to the Schloss Kogl castle in Austria, which was at the time annexed into Germany.

The artwork’s path after the war remains unclear, but by 1978, it was in the gallery of Wildenstein & Co. in New York, which sold it the following year to Cox.

The Christie’s statement did not address the basis of the competing claims on the piece by the heirs of Meirowsky and de Rothschild. But the Art Newspaper, which first reported that the van Gogh would be part of Christie’s sale of works from the Cox collection on Nov. 11, said the Meirowsky heirs have said the work was a “forced sale” in 1938.

In its sale materials, Christie’s notes that the work is being sold pursuant to an agreement between the current owner and the Meirowsky and de Rothschild heirs.

It is being described as the “museum of the future”, with institutions across the world including London’s V&A set to follow the path pioneered by Rotterdam’s Boijmans Van Beuningen.

From Saturday, in what is a world first, the King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, will open the Depot, a bowl-shaped warehouse next to the Boijmans museum’s original 1930s building in which all 151,000 items in its revered collection, from the Van Goghs to its Magrittes and Dalís, will be on permanent display to the public.
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The previously unseen picture was uncovered on the back of Head of a Peasant woman in what is thought to be a UK first.


X-ray image of Vincent Van Gogh (National Galleries of Scotland)

A painting that is “most certainly” a previously unknown self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh has been discovered by the National Galleries of Scotland.

The extraordinary find is believed to be a first for a UK institution and was discovered by an x-ray taken of Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman (1885) ahead of the forthcoming exhibition A Taste for Impressionism at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

Hidden from view for over a century, the portrait was found on the back of the canvas with Head of a Peasant Woman, covered by layers of glue and cardboard that are believed to have been applied ahead of an exhibition in the early 20th Century.

Van Gogh was known for reusing canvas to save money by turning it round and working on the opposite side.

The portrait shows a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. His left ear, which he famously cut off in 1888, is clearly visible.

It is thought to be from his early work and his first exploration of self-portraits, which he later became known for.

Viewers will be able to see the sketch as an x-ray image through a specially crafted lightbox.

While it may be possible to separate the paintings, the process of removing the glue and cardboard will require delicate conservation work. Research is ongoing as to how that can be done without harming Head of a Peasant Woman.

The discovery has been described as “thrilling” by Professor Frances Fowle, senior curator of French art at the National Galleries of Scotland. She said: “Moments like this are incredibly rare.

“We have discovered an unknown work by Vincent Van Gogh, one of the most important and popular artists in the world.