Partners in art: an international exhibition examines the art of van Gogh and Gauguin in light of their contentious yet crucial relationship. Combining a wealth of significant loans, fresh technical data and an inventive installation, the show promises to become a landmark of both scholarly research and museumship - Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South

Art in America, May, 2002 by Charles Stuckey

(10.) "If I got out of prison, I would find a job more easily [than I can as a struggling artist]," Gauguin wrote to his estranged wife on Nov. 24, 1887. See Merlhes, p. 165 (letter 136). While Gauguin makes no references to literary works in his surviving letters written before meeting van Gogh, his wife, Mette, was an avid reader, who eventually worked in Copenhagen as a translator of modern French novels. "[I] know that you love literature as being the most beautiful specimen of human intelligence," Gauguin wrote to her in early July 1886. See Merlhes, p. 130 (letter 102).

(11.) Girl with a Fan, 1880 (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). Another painting of the same model against a yellow background is in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

(12.) The original French text of this letter was first published in facsimile and transcription in Douglas Cooper, ed., Paul Gauguin: 45 Lettres a Vincent, Theo and Jo van Gogh, `sGravenhage, Staatsuitgeverij and Lausanne, La Bibliotheque des Arts, 1983, pp. 264-71. Awaiting a revised edition of van Gogh's correspondence, bibliographic references to particular letters are complex (see Druick and Zegers, Notes, p. 370). Curiously, the exhibition's catalogue omits any reference to one of the most complete and accessible "editions" of the letters now available, the Web site www.vangoghgallery.com, which is maintained by David Brooks in Toronto and also offers an on-line catalogue raisonne of van Gogh works. This particular letter is posted by Brooks as no. 572a.

(13.) Druick and Zegers, pp. 133 and 310. Gauguin's paintings of sleeping children include The Little Dreamer, 1881 (Copenhagen, The Ordrupgaard Collection) and Sleeping Child, 1884 (private collection). For these works, see Wildenstein, vol. 1, pp. 86-87 and 171-72.

(14.) Druick and Zegers, pp. 267-70, esp. fig. 12.

(15.) Ibid., p. 187.

(16.) Ibid., p. 85.

(17.) Ibid., p. 86.

(18.) He wrote his wife that he expected to live like a "savage" in Panama or eventually on the island of Tobago; by July 1887, while he was in Martinique, he expressed the hope that he could settle there with his family. See Merlhes, p. 147 (letter 122) and p. 157 (letter 129), and Wildenstein, vol. 2, pp. 304-08 (no. 238).

(19.) Druick and Zegers, pp. 214, 216, 321 and 333.

(20.) Ibid., p. 96. See Gauguin's Flowers, Still Life, also called The Painter's Home, Rue Carcel, 1881 (Oslo Nasjonalgalleriet). See also Wildenstein, vol. I, pp. 87-89 (no. 76).

(21.) Druick and Zegers, pp. 236-40.

(22.) See Gauguin's On a Chair, 1880 (private collection) and To Make a Bouquet, 1880 (private collection). The latter is reproduced in Druick and Zegers, p. 42 (fig. 53). See also Wildenstein, vol. 1, pp. 69-72 (numbers 62 and 63).

"Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South" debuted at the Art Institute of Chicago [Sept. 22, 2001-Jan. 13, 2002] and is currently on view at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam [Feb. 9-June 2]. It is accompanied by a 418-page, fully illustrated catalogue authored by the exhibition's curators, Douglas W Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, with the collaboration of Britt Salvesen and contributions by Kristin Hoermann Lister, Cornelia Peres and Inge Fiedler.