National Gallery of Art Post Impressionism Gallery 83 – Slides and Collage

 

West Building Main Floor Gallery 83 – National Gallery of Art Washington DC – Post Impressionism

Click on any Image Below to Launch Slide Shows and See Details

Achille De Gas by Edgar Degas

Scene from the Steeplechase by Degas

Four Dancers by Degas

Before the Ballet by Degas

Dance Lesson by Degas

Olive Orchard Van Gogh

Girl in White by Van Gogh

Roses by Van Gogh

La Mousmé by Van Gogh

Self Portrait by Van Gogh

Gauguin Bathers

Gauguin Te Pape

Gauguin By the Sea

Breton Girls Dancing by Gauguin

Haystacks in Brittany by Gauguin

Gauguin Landscape

Gauguin Self Portrait

Still Life with Peonies by Gauguin

National Gallery of Art Focus on Impressionism and Post Impressionism Visual Map of the Collection

The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC Houses its Collection of Impressionism and Post Impressionism in the West Building — on the Main Concourse — at the West End.

I love the work of Rembrandt and Frans Hals.  That is on the same floor but on the other side of the Rotunda.  I also love Matisse; and that is in another area, too.  Yet, if I had to choose just one place to focus all of my time at the NGA, it would be in Gallery 83.

and in its neighboring galleries–the areas of Impressionistic and Post impressionistic Art

Click on the following Image to see the Visual Layout of the Main Concourse of the Entire West Building:

 

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Edgar Degas The Dance Lesson

From Wikipedia:

“The Dance Lesson (sometimes known as The Dancing Lesson) is an 1879 oil-on-panel painting by the French artist Edgar Degas. It is currently kept at National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. There is at least one other work by Degas by this title, also made in about 1879, which is a pastel.^[1]

The painting is the first of a series of about 40 pictures that Degas painted in this horizontal, frieze-like format. ^[2] It measures 38 x 88 cm.^[2]

To the far left is a double bass with an exhausted dancer wearing a bright orange shawl sitting on it.^[2][3]There was also an open violin-case, which although painted out, is still visible.^[2] In the centre of the painting is a dancer in a pink shawl sitting on a chair with another dancer, turned away, standing just behind her adjusting the dark coloured sash of her dress.^[2] To the far right, at the back of the room, is a group of dancers practising their moves in the light from a large window.^[2]

The painting was carefully composed and shows the inspiration Degas drew from Japanese prints, with figures deliberately placed off-centre or cut off at unexpected angles and the large expanse of floor which appears to tilt upwards.^[2]

The painting The Dance Lesson is currently kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.^[4] Prior to its donation in 1995, the painting was part of the collection of Paul Mellon, who purchased it in 1957.^[5] Prior to this it had been loaned to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the 1920s and was loaned to a 1937 Degas exhibition in Paris by its then owner, Mrs Fiske Howard.^[5]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a painting titled Dancers in the Rehearsal Room with a Double Bass, dated 1882-85, which is possibly the second painting in the sequence.^[6] Another painting from the sequence, Before the Ballet (1890/1892), is also in the National Gallery of Art.,^[7] and Ballet Rehearsal (La salle de danse, c.1885) is in theYale University Art Gallery.^[8] When placed side by side in a frieze format, the paintings take on a decorative aspect although were not originally intended to be hung this way.^[9] It has been suggested that the 40-odd paintings collectively show how Degas examined his theory that the “intervals between figures and space were the basis for creating ornament”.^[9]

References

1. Jump up^ “The Dance Lesson (pastel)”. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
2. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g} “The Dance Lesson”. National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
3. Jump up^ Willis, Margaret (30 September 2011). “Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement Exhibition”. Balletco. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
4. Jump up^ “The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas”. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
5. ^ Jump up to:^a b “Provenance of “The Dance Lesson””. National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
6. Jump up^ “Dancers in the Rehearsal Room with a Double Bass”. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
7. Jump up^ “The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas (page 2)”. National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
8. Jump up^ “The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas (page 5)”. National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b “The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas (page 5a)”. National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 10 July 2012.

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Edgar Degas Before the Ballet

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Edgar Degas Before the Ballet

Click for Detail

Before the Ballet is very, very small.  Compared to Four Dancers by Degas, Before the Ballet is dwarfed.  Again, this is difficult to perceive when you only experience art via photographs of paintings.

The following is from Wikipedia:

“Edgar Degas (French: [ilɛʁ ʒɛʁmɛ̃ ɛdɡɑʁ dəɡɑ]; US /deɪˈɡɑː/ or UK /ˈdeɪɡɑː/); born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas; (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. He is regarded as one of the founders ofImpressionism, although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist.^[1] He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his renditions of dancers, racecourse subjects and femalenudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.^[2]

“At the beginning of his career, he wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.^[3] …

“By the late 1860s, Degas had shifted from his initial forays into history painting to an original observation of contemporary life. Racecourse scenes provided an opportunity to depict horses and their riders in a modern context. He began to paint women at work,milliners and laundresses. Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source, exhibited in the Salon of 1868, was his first major work to introduce a subject with which he would become especially identified, dancers.^[28]

In many subsequent paintings dancers were shown backstage or in rehearsal, emphasizing their status as professionals doing a job. From 1870 Degas increasingly painted ballet subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother’s debts had left the family bankrupt.^[29] Degas began to paint café life as well, in works such as L’Absinthe and Singer with a Glove. His paintings often hinted at narrative content in a way that was highly ambiguous; for example, Interior (which has also been called The Rape) has presented a conundrum to art historians in search of a literary source—Thérèse Raquin has been suggested^[30]—but it may be a depiction of prostitution.^[31]

“As his subject matter changed, so, too, did Degas’s technique. The dark palette that bore the influence of Dutch painting gave way to the use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. Paintings such as Place de la Concorde read as “snapshots,” freezing moments of time to portray them accurately, imparting a sense of movement. The lack of color in the 1874 Ballet Rehearsal on Stage and the 1876 The Ballet Instructor can be said to link with his interest in the new technique of photography. The changes to his palette, brushwork, and sense of composition all evidence the influence that both the Impressionist movement and modern photography, with its spontaneous images and off-kilter angles, had on his work.^[26]

“Blurring the distinction between portraiture and genre pieces, he painted his bassoonist friend, Désiré Dihau, in The Orchestra of the Opera (1868–69) as one of fourteen musicians in an orchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience. Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of the dancers onstage, their figures cropped by the edge of the painting. Art historian Charles Stuckey has compared the viewpoint to that of a distracted spectator at a ballet, and says that “it is Degas’ fascination with the depiction of movement, including the movement of a spectator’s eyes as during a random glance, that is properly speaking ‘Impressionist’.”^[32]

“Degas’s mature style is distinguished by conspicuously unfinished passages, even in otherwise tightly rendered paintings. He frequently blamed his eye troubles for his inability to finish, an explanation that met with some skepticism from colleagues and collectors who reasoned, as Stuckey explains, that “his pictures could hardly have been executed by anyone with inadequate vision”.^[33] The artist provided another clue when he described his predilection “to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them”,^[34] and was in any case notoriously reluctant to consider a painting complete.

References

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 31
2. Jump up^ Brown 1994, p. 11
3. Jump up^ Turner 2000, p. 139
4. Jump up^ The family’s ancestral name was Degas. Jean Sutherland Boggs explains that De Gas was the spelling, “with some pretentions, used by the artist’s father when he moved to Paris to establish a French branch of his father’s Neopolitan bank.” While Edgar Degas’s brother René adopted the still more aristocratic de Gas, the artist reverted to the original spelling, Degas, by age thirty. Baumann, et al. 1994, p. 98.
5. Jump up^ Werner 1969, p. 14
6. Jump up^ Canaday 1969, p. 930-931
7. Jump up^ Dunlop 1979, p. 19
8. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 43
9. Jump up^ Thomson 1988, p. 48
10. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 23
11. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p.29
12. Jump up^ “Michael Musson and Odile Longer: Degas’ aunt and uncle in New Orleans”. Degaslegacy.com. 1973-03-30. Retrieved 2013-03-18.
13. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p.33
14. Jump up^ Armstrong 1991, p. 25
15. Jump up^ “In the final inventory of his collection, there were twenty paintings and eighty-eight drawings by Ingres, thirteen paintings and almost two hundred drawings by Delacroix. There were hundreds of lithographs by Daumier. His contemporaries were well represented—with the exception of Monet, by whom he had nothing.” Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 37
16. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 26
17. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 34
18. Jump up^ Canaday 1969, p. 929
19. ^ Jump up to:^a b Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 56
20. ^ Jump up to:^a b Bade and Degas 1992, p. 6
21. Jump up^ Thomson 1988, p. 211
22. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 41
23. Jump up^ Hartt 1976, p. 365
24. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 11
25. Jump up^ Armstrong 1991, p. 22
26. ^ Jump up to:^a b Roskill 1983, p.33
27. Jump up^ Baumann, et al. 1994, p. 151
28. Jump up^ Dumas 1988, p. 9.
29. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Growe 1992
30. Jump up^ Reff 1976, pp. 200–204
31. Jump up^ Krämer 2007
32. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p.28
33. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 29
34. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p.50
35. Jump up^ Kendall, et al., Richard (1998). Degas and The Little Dancer. Yale University Press. pp. 78–85.
36. Jump up^ http://discovermagazine.com/photos/12-darwins-dystopias-ghastly-visions-inspired-by-the-theory-of-evolution
37. Jump up^ Muehlig 1979, p. 6
38. ^ Jump up to:^a b Thomson 1988, p. 75
39. Jump up^ Mannering 1994, pp. 70–77
40. Jump up^ Benedek “Style.”
41. Jump up^ Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 9
42. Jump up^ “Bailey, Martin, “Degas bronzes controversy leads to scholars’ boycott”, ”The Art Newspaper”, 31 May 2012. Retrieved January 4, 2013″. Theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2013-03-18.
43. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Werner 1969, p. 11
44. Jump up^ [1]^{[dead link]}
45. Jump up^ Nochlin, Linda (1989). Politics of Vision: Essays on 19th Century Art And Society. Harper & Row. Retrieved 2013-03-18.
46. Jump up^ Bowness 1965, pp. 41–42
47. Jump up^ Muehlig 1979, p.7
48. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p.46
49. Jump up^ Thomson 1988, p. 135
50. Jump up^ Mannering 1994, p. 6-7
51. Jump up^ J. Paul Getty Trust
52. Jump up^ Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 48

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Edgar Degas Four Dancers

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Edgar Degas Four Dancers

When you only see art that has been photographed for books/and or for websites, it is difficult to imagine the scale of the pieces.  Four Dancers is enormous–almost 6 feet wide.  Much of the painting is mere suggestion.  For instance, the dress has very little detail at all.  When rendered in a photograph, the image is compressed; and the viewer is able to quickly digest the brushstrokes–getting the “impression” that the painter was suggesting.  Yet, when the painting is viewed live–the way that it was actually painted–that visual compression is not there.  It is almost as though photographed art is art’s Cliff’s Notes or Art for Dummies.  This is especially true for the Impressionists and other art since that period.  Yet, while it may be easier to see the artist’s aim via photographed art, the true art experience is only available when viewing actual art–and not by mere glancing–but by actually seeing what the artist painted.

Click on the following small portion from the dress to see how very little detail there is.  The entire dress [dresses because it is the same dress repeated–just as it is the same model repeated] is like what you see in this square.

Now click on the faces to compare the detail — and/or lack thereof.

Now click again.

Now click again.

Click Again

This is what you miss, if you never visit a museum or gallery to see fine art first hand.

Let’s look at what the NGA has to say about Degas and his painting Four Dancers

“Degas studied his preferred subject, ballet performers, in hundreds of works. Four Dancers, one of the largest and most ambitious of his late works, exists in several variants that show different kinds and degrees of modification. While Degas suppressed descriptive detail elsewhere in the painting, emphatic dark lines shape the heads and arms, underlining the artist’s formal concerns. Theatrical lighting over the off–stage performers recolors the figures and creates a simple color scheme of complementary red–orange and green hues.

Two of the figures repeat poses of a model who appears in a unique set of three photographic negatives. Shot between about 1895 and 1898, the original plates solarized into colors that resemble, in reverse, the oranges and greens in Four Dancers. Degas owned the photographic plates and may even have taken the pictures. The same model, hair piled on her head and features indistinct or hidden, posed for all three photographs, and the four dancers in the painting resemble her. Eadward Muybridge’s sequential photographs may also have influenced the arrangement of the four dancers, particularly his 1887 book, Animal Locomotion. Their poses, a succession of preparatory gestures, depict a progression of intricate movements.”

Degas, Edgar

French, 1834 – 1917

Four Dancers

c. 1899

oil on canvas

overall: 151.1 x 180.2 cm (59 1/2 x 70 15/16 in.)

framed: 176.9 x 207.7 cm (69 5/8 x 81 3/4 in.)

Chester Dale Collection

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh Girl in White

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh Girl in White

The Texture on the Top of the Dress and in the Flowers is Striking

This is what the NGA has to say about Van Gogh’s Girl in White:

“Mme Johanna van Gogh-Bonger [1862-1925], the artist’s sister-in-law, Amsterdam; sold August 1908 to (J.H. de Bois [C.M. van Gogh], The Hague); sold 1908 to Richard Kisling [1862-1913], Zürich;[1] Mme Hedwig Glatt-Kisling, Zürich until 1929;[2] (Max Bollag, Zürich); by whom sold 1951 to Chester Dale [1882-1962], New York;[3] bequest 1963 to NGA.

[1]Walter Feilchenfeldt, Vincent van Gogh & Paul Cassirer, Berlin, Amsterdam, 1988, p. 120. See also Silvia Volkart-Baumann, Richard Kisling (1862-1917): Ein Schweizer Samler und Kunstvermittler der Moderne, Ph.D. diss, University of Zurich, 2005, p. 56-57.

[2]According to Volkart-Baumann, the collection was dispersed in 1929. The Swiss dealer Max Bollag sold privately and then held a public auction of the Kisling collection on 18 November 1929. This painting was not included in the 1929 sale and remained with Bollag until it’s acquisition by Dale in 1951.

[3]Date and source of acquisition according to Chester Dale papers in NGA curatorial files.” http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.46505.html

Gogh, Vincent van

Dutch, 1853 – 1890

Girl in White

1890

oil on canvas

overall: 66.7 x 45.8 cm (26 1/4 x 18 1/16 in.)

framed: 96.2 x 73.7 cm (37 7/8 x 29 in.)

Chester Dale Collection

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh Roses

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh Roses – I could hardly resist the urge to touch this painting.  I have seen this painting many times in books; and it is very much what I expected; yet

I could hardly resist the urge to touch this painting.

This is what NGA has to say about Van Gogh’s Roses:

Roses was painted shortly before Van Gogh’s release from the asylum at Saint–Rémy. He felt he was coming to terms with his illness—and himself. In this healing process, painting was all–important. During those final three weeks of his recovery, he wrote his brother Theo, he had “worked as in a frenzy. Great bunches of flowers, violet irises, big bouquets of roses…”

This is one of two rose paintings Van Gogh made at that time. It is among his largest and most beautiful still lifes, with an exuberant bouquet in the glory of full bloom. Although he sometimes assigned certain meanings to flowers, Van Gogh did not make a specific association for roses. It is clear, though, that he saw all blossoming plants as celebrations of birth and renewal—as full of life. That sense is underscored here by the fresh spring green of the background. The undulating ribbons of paint, applied in diagonal strokes, animate the canvas and play off the furled forms of flowers and leaves. Originally, the roses were pink—the color has faded—and would have created a contrast of complementary colors with the green. Such combinations of complements fascinated Van Gogh. The paint is very thick—so thick that both rose paintings were left behind when Van Gogh left Saint–Rémy on May 16, 1890. As he explained to Theo, “these canvases will take a whole month to dry, but the attendant here will undertake to send them off after my departure.” They arrived in Auvers by June 24.” http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.72328.html

Gogh, Vincent van

Dutch, 1853 – 1890

Roses

1890

oil on canvas

overall: 71 x 90 cm (27 15/16 x 35 7/16 in.)

Gift of Pamela Harriman in memory of W. Averell Harriman

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh La Mousmé

If your viewing of art has been limited to that online and/or in books, be prepared for surprises when you first see the work up close and personal.  Some of the surprises are disappointments–some are the opposite.

La Mousmé was a pleasant surprise for me.

I have always been partial to Van Gogh’s work that is predominantly delft blue, orange, and sunflower yellow.  I also like his interior with clunky chairs and beds and his self-portraits with purples and greens for skin.  I was prepared to walk by La Mousmé with little more than a glance; but La Mousmé is stunning.  The photographs do not do this painting justice.  The reds are brilliant.  Her dress is a festival.  This painting has become one of my new Van Gogh favorites.

This is what the NGA has to say about La Mousme and also about Van Gogh:

“The intention and determination that inform Van Gogh’s art can be obscured by the sensational legends that have arisen about his life. The artist’s correspondence, particularly from his brief mature period of 1888 to 1890, contradicts popular lore and attests to the deliberateness, sensitivity, and integrity of his work.

“On July 29, 1888, Van Gogh wrote his younger brother Theo, an art dealer in a Parisian gallery, that “if you know what a ‘mousmé’ is (you will know when you have read Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème), I have just painted one. It took me a whole week…but I had to reserve my mental energy to do the mousmé well.” Van Gogh’s literary source was a popular novel from the period, whose story of a French man’s affair with a Japanese girl reflected the French fascination with Japanese culture. One of the book’s protagonists, a young, pretty Japanese girl, was called a mousmé in the author’s parlance, which Van Gogh took as his inspiration for this portrait of a young Provençale girl. The carefully modeled face and the vigorous linear patterns of bold complementary colors that describe the girl are stylistic devices that express Van Gogh’s sympathetic response to his young sitter. In several descriptions of the painting Van Gogh mentioned the oleander buds in her hand. The significance of the flowers is unclear but may be related to the artist’s pantheistic beliefs in natural cycles of birth and renewal.

“Van Gogh wrote that La Mousmé was one of a group of portrait studies that were “the only thing in painting that excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else.” http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.46626.html

Gogh, Vincent van

Dutch, 1853 – 1890

La Mousmé

1888

oil on canvas

overall: 73.3 x 60.3 cm (28 7/8 x 23 3/4 in.)

framed: 99 x 86.3 x 10.1 cm (39 x 34 x 4 in.)

Chester Dale Collection

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait

National Gallery of Art Gallery 83 Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait

Click on the Palette To See UP CLOSE the Texture in the Paint Swatches

Click on the Detail To Study the Face Strokes & Color UP CLOSE

Before you visit the National Gallery of Art, go to the website and search for your favorite artist.  Find where his/her art is exhibited; and go there first.  Vincent Van Gogh and Matisse are probably my two favorite artists; yet, Van Gogh must trump Matisse because I searched for him first.  [Incidentally, at the time of this writing, the Matisse exhibit is not open].  Van Gogh is in Gallery 83.  Fortunately, that is where I launched my first visit to the National Gallery of Art.  It will require several days to tour all of the galleries at NGA.

After having seen art only in books for many, many years, I was almost afraid to see the actual paintings.  I was afraid that the work would not be as magnificent as I had imagined it to be; yet, that is not at all the case with Van Gogh’s work.  His art is even more magnificent first hand.  I knew that Van Gogh’s art is highly textured–thick, swirly, etc.; but I did not realize how brilliantly lit and colored much of his work is.  That is particularly true of this self-portrait, painted in the characteristic Van Gogh, delft blue and its complementary yellows and oranges.  The brilliance is also apparent in La Mousme, which I will discuss in another post.

Following is what the NGA site has to say about Van Gogh’s self portrait:

“The National Gallery’s self-portrait, painted at the asylum at St.-Rémy, where Van Gogh had committed himself following a mental breakdown, is among the last self-portraits he made. During his stay he suffered another collapse and remained confined in his room for more than a month, not even venturing into the garden. Once he was able to paint again, this was the first canvas he made, apparently in a single sitting. Van Gogh believed strongly that only work could restore his health. Here, as he had in two earlier self-portraits, he holds the tools that mark his identity as a painter, a palette and brushes, and he wears a painter’s smock. In his short career Van Gogh made almost 2,000 paintings and drawings and wrote more than 800 letters, most to his brother Théo, chronicling his aims and struggles as an artist. He worked long and very deliberately to perfect his art.

“The fervor and fragility of Van Gogh’s life are told on this canvas by stark contrasts of color and restless brushstrokes. Heavy lines of paint seem to emanate from his head like a wavering force field, energized by his own intensity. This background sets off the complementary colors of his green-tinged face and orange hair, keying his image to a higher pitch.  “I was thin and pale as a ghost,”  Van Gogh wrote as he described this portrait to Théo. “It is dark violet blue and the head whitish with yellow hair, so it has a color effect.”

“Van Gogh worked on a second self-portrait at about the same time. Although its background is animated with swirling brushstrokes, the more muted color scheme lends the image a calmer aspect. The artist believed, however, that the painting seen here captured  his “true character.”

Gogh, Vincent van (painter)

Dutch, 1853 – 1890

Self-Portrait

1889

oil on canvas

overall: 57.79 × 44.5 cm (22 3/4 × 17 1/2 in.)

framed: 82.9 x 69.2 x 6.7 cm (32 5/8 x 27 1/4 x 2 5/8 in.)

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney

“Vincent van Gogh is instantly recognizable by his reddish hair and beard, his gaunt features, and intense gaze Van Gogh painted some thirty-six self-portraits in the space of only ten years. Perhaps only Rembrandt produced more images of himself, and that in a career that spanned decades. For many artists, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the self-portrait was a critical exploration of personal realization and aesthetic achievement.

The NGA only has one of Van Gogh’s Self Portraits.  Here are others:

About the Artist

Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh,1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Vincent van Gogh grew up in the southern Netherlands, where his father was a minister. After seven years at a commercial art firm, Van Gogh’s desire to help humanity led him to become a teacher, preacher, and missionary—yet without success. Working as a missionary among coal miners in Belgium, he had begun to draw in earnest; finally, dismissed by church authorities in 1880, he found his vocation in art.

Van Gogh’s earliest paintings were earth-toned scenes of nature and peasants, but he became increasingly influenced by Japanese prints and the work of the impressionists in France. In 1886 he arrived in Paris, where his real formation as a painter began. Under the influence of Camille Pissarro, Van Gogh brightened his somber palette and juxtaposed complementary colors for luminous effect. Younger artists like Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin prompted him to use color symbolically and for its emotional resonance.

Although stimulated by the city’s artistic environment, Van Gogh found life in Paris physically exhausting and moved in early 1888 to Arles. He hoped Provence’s warm climate would relax him and that the brilliant colors and strong light of the south would provide inspiration for his art. Working feverishly, Van Gogh pushed his style to greater expression with intense, energetic brushwork and saturated, complementary colors. Yet, his densely painted canvases remained connected to nature—their colors and rhythmic surfaces communicate the spiritual power he believed inhabited and shaped nature’s forms. His activity undisciplined; quite the opposite, he worked diligently to perfect his craft.

Van Gogh hoped to attract like-minded painters to Arles, but only Gauguin joined him, staying about two months. It was soon clear that their personalities and artistic temperaments were incompatible, and Van Gogh suffered a breakdown just before Christmas. In April, following periods of intense work interrupted by recurring mental disturbances, Van Gogh committed himself to a sanitarium in St.-Rémy. He painted whenever he could, believing that in work lay his only chance for sanity. After a year, he returned north to be closer to his brother Théo, who had been his constant support; in July he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/1998/vangogh.html

Also see:  http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/1998/vangogh.html

 

National Gallery of Art West Building Exterior Like Greek Parthenon

National Gallery of Art West Building Exterior Like Greek Parthenon

Upon entrance [Admission is Free], you are greeted by massive pillars of black marble and one of the gallery’s many fountains.

To visit my favorite part of the National Gallery of Art, turn Right and enter the Main Corridor of the West Building.  The Corridor is much longer than it appears in this photograph, Notice the Skylights, Live Trees, and Sculpture.  Unlike many large galleries, the National Gallery of Art is light and airy.  There are couches in most of the galleries.  

Sitting anywhere in the National Gallery of Art is restfully reverent and refreshing.

There are many, many fountains in and around the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery of Art pays attention to every aesthetic detail.