vincent van gogh

I spent the early part of the afternoon down at the National Gallery today. I went mainly to see the photography exhibition: Paris in Transition, which did have some pretty cool photographs. I recommend checking it out while it's here. There were a couple of Stieglitz's photographs there, especially this one taken in the rain in Paris that he had printed on a paper used for watercolors in order to get a texture on the print to make it actually look a little wet.

Anyway...the title of my post is not Paris in Transition, so I'll get to the point. I'm currently reading a collection of Vincent van Gogh's letters, which is actually pretty fascinating. On a side note, I didn't know that in his early years, before he started painting, he actually thought of becoming a pastor and went through a pretty religious period. And also that the myth isn't true, that he didn't only sell one work during his lifetime. And for whatever reason, I was under the impression he cut off his ear because of a woman, but it turns out it was after an argument with Gauguin.

The security guard who glanced through my bag saw my book on van Gogh and suggested I check out the Impressionist collection upstairs, which I have seen before. And I thought "eh...maybe, if there's time." I ended up going up to look at them and saw three (there were more, but these were the first ones I saw) van Gogh pieces next to each other. The one if the middle, something along the lines of flower fields in Holland, looked more realistic than something say...his "Starry Night." And I thought, this must have been done before he went to Paris.

The next painting was of an olive field during a harvest, and it was down in the sharp, thick strokes of the van Gogh we all know and love. This, I began to think, had to have been done after his trip to Paris and the south of France when he met the Impressionists. I checked the dates: The first painting was done in 1883. The second was 1890. In his letters, I'm currently finishing up the year 1888, and he's mentioned his idea of painting a starry night.

It was kind of cool to have all that background info and to be able to apply it while looking at art. I don't think it was really analyzing, but it really helped me to see how he progressed, and then of course I wondered what his painting would be like had he not gone to France. You can also sense the color change too. His colors in the later years were much more vibrant, and he comments about this in his letters to his brother, how in Holland the color scheme is more grey, and then in France they're much brighter.

I will be buying more artist biographies now. I have a biographical novel of Michelangelo in my to-read pile, but I have two more books I have to read first. Let me know what you think of the photography exhibition if you like it. And also...I love that the NGA has so many Monets. They're beautiful!