"Van Gogh: Repetitions" looks at how the artist regularly created closely related versions of the same subjects. The canvases were not intended as "copies," but rather were opportunities to extend and perfect previous attempts. Van Gogh's early efforts built on the work of others— such as Millet's "The Sower" and Adolphe Monticelli's depictions of floral bouquets. Keenly interested in describing the life of the working classes, there are multiple versions of a weaver— three from a total of 20 Van Gogh executed, each in a different medium (one oil, one pencil and watercolor, one pen and ink drawing) arranged along a single wall in reverse chronological order, as if with each example we advance deeper into some imaginary artistic archaeological dig.
Family resemblances, one might say, unifies the various sets of works— paintings that maintain an essential integrity of scope and focus, but involve sometimes tiny shifts— the hue of a lamppost, the repositioning of door frames or the sizing of a window, the vigor or pattern of brushstrokes that comprise the sky— the reworking of a passage in order to subtly reconstitute the scene. One of the finest examples of this process is found in a pair of canvases that comprise the entirety of the first gallery, the Phillips Collections’ “The Road Menders” [1889] and the Cleveland Museum of Arts’ “The Large Plane Trees” [1889]. The two are magnificent works, Cleveland’s painted on site, the Phillips’ a later reworking. Overlays reveal very minimal variations of the objects and elements and, yet, the canvases convey palpably different moods.
Sometimes the “family resemblance” was literal, as with Van Gogh’s multiple portraits of the various Roulin family members during his time in Arles. “You have to paint several of them before you find a whole with the character,” Van Gogh wrote to brother Theo in a letter 14/15 July 1889 [#789]. The exhibition features several versions of the Postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine (in the form of “La Berceuse”), and their infant daughter Marcelle, as well as a single canvas of middle son Camille. Even though some of the canvases were familiar to me from visits to the Met or the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Van Gogh Museum, the Kroller-Müller Museum or special exhibitions, there was a delight in seeing them lined up side-by-side for close inspection. It had snowed the day before in Washington, so we had the galleries almost to ourselves at times. There was the possibility of time-taking, the pleasure of looking close then again from another vantage across the room.
The most pleasurable of the lot for me, though, was “Farmhouse in Provence,” which was not part of any set in the exhibition, though it clearly derived from Van Gogh’s love of Millet. The harmony of color within the frame was nothing short of musical— a blue of sky over the simple farmhouse that radiates a tranquil turquoise, offset by wisps of cloud; feathery saffron-tinged grasses across the field that a solitary farmer wades through; a jutting stone wall which the farm lies behind, acting like a barrier that holds the domesticated world at bay; bursts of red-blossomed flowers waving in the light. And, though by rights a canvas is silent, Van Gogh’s countryside seemed anything but frozen, it felt marvelously alive. The air full of the thrum of crickets and buzzing unseen insects, the murmur of a breeze flowing through grasses and leaves. Writing to Theo about one of his tiny studies of the Roulin infant, Vincent wrote to Theo that “A newborn baby has the infinite in its eyes.” One senses that Van Gogh sought to see through those same eyes.
“Van Gogh: Repetitions” has been extended at The Phillips Collection until next Sun, February 2nd. Entry is $12 for adults, $10 for students. For other details, see www.phillipscollection.org
