In January 1890, Vincent van Gogh’s work at last began to attract some attention. The critic Albert Aurier made him the subject of a long, rather overblown but insightful article, “Les Isoles: Vincent Van Gogh”, in the journal Mercers de France, and the avant-garde Belgian group Les Vingt invited him to exhibit at their show in Brussels.
Theo sent them a number of Vincent’s paintings, which stirred up some controversy: a Belgian painter, Henri de Groux, denounced them and as a result was almost involved in a duel with Van Gogh’s friend, Toulouse-Lautrec. At the exhibition itself, Van Gogh made his first sale in the public world of exhibitions and auctions: the painter Anna Boch, sister of the ‘poet’ whose portrait he had painted at Arles, bought The Red Vineyard for 400 francs.
Two months later, ten of his paintings were shown at the exhibition organized by the Salon de Independents. This was in no sense a popular success, but it represented a significant degree of recognition by his fellow artists. Pissarro and others examined the canvases by Van Gogh stored in Paris at Pere Tanguy’s; Gauguin wrote from Pont-Aven to congratulate and praise him.
Van Gogh’s reactions alternated between pleasure at becoming known and a masochistic rejection of it. In any case, his personal affliction was more immediately important. After three months of good health, two quite mild attacks in December 1889 and January 1890 led him to hope that he was beginning to get better. Then, at the end of February, he had a devastating seizure, worse than anything before, in which he tried to poison himself by swallowing his paints.
Significantly, this occurred shortly after Joanna van Gogh, wife of Vincent’s brother Theo, gave birth to a son. Almond Blossoms by Vincent Van Gogh was sent to Joanna as a form of congratulations from Vincent to celebrate the event.
No comments:
Post a Comment