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

Given the popularity of both artists with readers and museum audiences, the flood of books and special exhibitions about their art shows no sign of slowing down. Even now, for example, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in partnership with the Musee d'Orsay, Paris, is soliciting loans for the most complete exhibition to date of "Gauguin in Tahiti," slated to open in 2003. Surely the catalogue for that exhibition will need to take into account how Gauguin has been portrayed in "Van Gogh and Gauguin." Thanks to the historic Chicago exhibition, van Gogh simply cannot be left behind when the discussion of Gauguin's art moves along from Arles to the South Seas.

(1.) Philippe de Montebello, in "The Director's Foreword" to Ronald Pickvance, Van Gogh in Arles, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harry N. Abrams, 1984, p. 6, felt obliged to explain why the cotalogue contained color reproductions of works not actually in the exhibition: "Included in this volume are eight major works from Soviet collections. Regrettably, permission to lend has been with-held. We have decided, nevertheless, to retain them in the ctalogue ... because the paintings are integral to the conception of the exhibition."

(2.) Pickvance, p. 236. In their appendix to Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum and New York, Thames & Hudson, 2001, p. 357, Kristin Hoermann Lister, Cornelia Peres and Inge Fiedler claim that this particular Gauguin Self-Portrait had never yet been "firmly" dated to the Arles period. Indeed, although this work is on the jute support used in Arles, it was not painted there, as was pointed out in Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, "Van Gogh at the Metropolitan Museum," Burlington Magazine, January 1985, p. 62. Visible in the background is the mirror image of a work (In the Waves, Cleveland Museum of Art) which Gauguin painted in Paris or Pont-Aven in 1889. Presumably Gauguin packed up unused or partially used canvases when he abruptly left Aries at the end of December 1888.

(3.) See Lister, Peres and Fiedler, pp. 354-69. The diagram of the roll of jute appears on pp. 362-63.

(4.) Daniel Wildenstein, with Sylvie Crussand and Martine Heudron, Gauguin, Premier itineraire d'un sauvage, Catalogue de l'oeuvre peint (1873-1888), Paris and Milan, Wildenstein Institute and Skira, 2001, vol. 2, pp. 532-33 (number 321).

(5.) The single Gauguin work is Monsieur Ginoux, in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. For the entire group painted on pre-primed linen with a distinctive thread count, see the chart in Lister, Peres and Fiedler, p. 356. Van Gogh's receipt of the supply is indicated in the chart of canvas shipments, p. 361. See also Wildenstein, vol. 2, pp. 550-51 (number 328).

(6.) Druick and Zegers, pp. 182, 195 and 356.

(7.) Ibid., pp. 256, 356 and 391, n. 281.

(8.) Victor Merlhes, ed., Correspondance de Paul Gauguin, Paris, Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1984, p. 305 (letter 193).

(9.) Ibid., pp. 234-35 (letter 166). Gauguin relied upon the same image of his head in Self-Portrait with Halo, 1889 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ, 1889, (private collection); Self-Portrait with Idol, 1891 (Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio); and Self-Portrait with Hat, 1893-94 (Musee d'Orsay, Paris).