A Day in Amsterdam: VINCENT VAN GOGH
An exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam reveals Paris along the Seine, painted by Vincent van Gogh, Emile Bernard, Charles Angrand, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.
Vincent van Gogh, Bridges Across the Seine at Asnières, 1887, Oil on canvas, 53.5×67 cm Emil Bührle Collection, on long-term loan at the Kunsthaus Zürich.
This year has seen a series of remarkable exhibitions in Amsterdam, Paris and Chicago, devoted to the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). It ties in with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023 and its collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris and The Art Institute, Chicago, sharing their artworks. Three separate exhibitions focused on a different aspect of van Gogh's life. In Amsterdam, earlier in the year, the first concentrated on his family life growing up in Zundert and Nuenen, in Brabant, and his emergence as a painter. The second focused on his life and the 74 paintings and 50 drawings he created during two months in Auvers-sur-Oise - near Paris - before van Gogh took his own life in 1890. It is now on show in ‘Van Gogh in Auvers: The Final Months’, at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, until February 4th, 2024*.
On now at the Van Gogh Museum is the latest exhibition ‘Van Gogh along the Seine’, (until 14 January 2024), transferring from The Art Institure, Chicago, which explores the works the artist produced in Paris in 1886-87, painting scenes along the Seine. Van Gogh arrived in a hurry from Antwerp - having not paid his rent - around the end of February 1886, to stay with his younger brother Theo van Gogh Van Gogh (1857-91), an art dealer.
The areas along the river Seine, meandering through the Paris suburbs, were crucial to the development of the art of van Gogh, Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, Emile Bernard and Charles Angrand, not only in subject-matter but new ways of using colour and brushstrokes, particularly in trying to capture the multi-coloured surface of the river. Their works on show, prove this. It’s often Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, 1884 (National Gallery, London) that is used to illustrate this modern era in Paris. In fine weather, at the weekend, Parisians frequently took a day-trip by train, to have leisurely walks, picnics or swimming parties along the Seine. Asnières was known as ‘the holy city of boating’. Painters captured this juxtaposition of leisure with the industrialisation building up on the outskirts of the city.
From early May until the end of July 1887, practically every day, van Gogh set off on foot for Asnières, north-west of Paris, and to Clichy and Courbevoie, carrying his portable easel and paints. (He loved walking.) Some of his works were created on the river island, La Grande Jatte, too. This exhibition shows many scenes of that life along the river, including van Gogh’s, Bridges Across the Seine at Asnières, 1887. (See image above) He paints the river, the railway bridge – Pont du Chemin der Fer - and the steam train roaring across it, and beneath the bridge, empty rowing boats awaiting customers. He includes factories belching smoke in the distance. Seurat had picked up on the factory chimneys, and factory workers stripping off for a quick dip in the Seine, in his earlier ‘Bathers’ painting of modern life. His portrayals date from 1881.
This essay is a brief introduction to a fabulous exhibition, a great excuse, if you need one, to visit Amsterdam. It is one of my most favourite cities. Looking at the paintings made me want to be in Paris again but Amsterdam is a perfect city to find Vincent van Gogh. He visited in 1881 and 1885.
Text copyright Rosalind Ormiston, 18 November 2023.
Images of works in the exhibition, courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Main image: Vincent van Gogh, Bridges Across the Seine at Asnières, 1887, Oil on canvas, 53.5×67 cm Emil Bührle Collection, on long-term loan at the Kunsthaus Zürich.
In the gallery:
Asnières - Pont du Chemin de Fer, photograph, c.1905.
Vincent van Gogh, Banks of the Seine with the Pont de Clichy, 1887, Oil on canvas, 30.5 × 39 cm, Private collection.
Vincent van Gogh, Factories at Clichy, 1887, Oil on canvas, 53.7×72.7 cm Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri Funds given by Mrs. Mark C. Steinberg by exchange.
NOTES:
*I wrote a feature for The Arbuturian, on Vincent van Gogh’s final months in Auvers-sur-Oise, when the show was exhibited in Amsterdam in the summer. Van Gogh in Auvers: His Final Months | The Arbuturian
Vincent van Gogh’s letters are free to read online and brilliant guides to where he was and when (that’s an understatement). https://vangoghletters.org/
A link to Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/