 by Vincent Van Gogh, has been fully authenticated by specialists at the Van…){kind=link}
After nearly 30 years of doubt, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s painting, “Vase with Poppies”(c. 1886) by Vincent Van Gogh, has been fully authenticated by specialists at the Van Gogh Museum.
The painting came to the Wadsworth in a bequest from the writer and French Impressionist collector Anne Parrish Titzell in 1957 along with works by Renoir, Monet and Redon. “Vase with Poppies” has been difficult to confidently attribute since questions about Van Gogh’s practice remained unresolved.
Experts in Amsterdam, following scientific and art-historical inquiry, determined that the painting technically and stylistically concurs with Van Gogh’s documented work in 1886. This work joins Van Gogh’s “Self Portrait” in the Museum’s collection.
“Vase with Poppies” fits stylistically with a group of works the artist made shortly after arriving to Paris in the spring of 1886. Van Gogh took advantage of the easy access to flowers as he reinvented his stylistic approach after two years of depicting peasant life in Nuenen.
His embrace of a more vibrant palette and light filled renderings of humble subjects, such as flowers, nuts, fruit, is evident in this simple composition of cut poppies in a plain cylindrical vase. In his words in an 1886 letter to fellow artist Horace M. Livens:
“And now for what regards what I myself have been doing, I have lacked money for paying models else I had entirely given myself to figure painting. But I have made a series of color studies in painting, simply flowers, red poppies, blue corn flowers and myosotys, white and rose roses, yellow chrysanthemums–seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red and green, yellow and violet seeking les tons rompus et neutres to harmonize brutal extremes.”
The painting will return home to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut just in time for the opening of the 38th Annual Fine Art and Flowers on Friday, April 26, 2019.
Afterwards, “Vase with Poppies” will next go on loan to Europe for the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany’s exhibition: “Van Gogh: Still Lifes” (October 26, 2019 to February 2, 2020) where it will join a number of these transitional works, allowing the public and scholars alike, access to this exciting development through side-by-side display.
For more information, www.thewadsworth.org