Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998 bron Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998. Waanders, Zwolle 1998 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012199701_01/colofon.php © 2012 dbnl / Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh 7 Director's foreword This is an exciting period for the Van Gogh Museum. At the time of publication, the museum is building a new wing for temporary exhibitions and is engaged in a project to renovate its existing building. After eight months, during which the museum will be completely closed to the public (from 1 September 1998), the new wing and the renovation are to be completed and ready for opening in May 1999. The original museum building, designed by Gerrit Rietveld and his partners, requires extensive refurbishment. Numerous improvements will be made to the fabric of the building and the worn-out installations for climate control will be replaced. A whole range of facilities will be up-graded so that the museum can offer a better service to its growing numbers of visitors. Plans have been laid for housing the collection during the period of closure, and thanks to the co-operation of our neighbours in the Rijksmuseum, visitors to Amsterdam will not be deprived of seeing a great display of works by Van Gogh. A representative selection from the collection will be on show in the South Wing of the Rijksmuseum from mid-September 1998 until early April 1999. In addition, a group of works will be lent to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede. We have also taken this opportunity to lend an important exhibition to the United States. Some 70 works will be on show in Van Gogh's Van Goghs, shown first at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and then at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. While a huge amount of time and energy has been invested in the plans for the closure and reopening in 1999, the day to day work of the museum has continued apace. The museum enjoyed an exceptionally good year in 1997, with an attendance of over a million visitors - a tally only exceeded during the year of the Van Gogh retrospective in 1990. The exhibition programmes and their surrounding events were highly successful, and in particular the exhibitions Alma-Tadema and Vienna 1900 attracted wide interest. The work of the museum's curatorial and academic staff has also continued, amidst the distraction of the building works and the recent publicity surrounding debates over Van Gogh fakes. Some of the fruits of their labours are reflected in this, the third issue of the Van Gogh Museum Journal. Exceptionally, this volume covers two years. The basic aim of this Journal is to provide an interim catalogue of our acquisitions and to offer a forum for scholarship about Van Gogh and other aspects of our holdings. However, while our own collection provides the starting point, we are keen to stimulate research and scholarship across a wide range of issues in 19th-century art history. We are delighted that several distinguished colleagues from outside the museum have contributed to this Journal and we hope that this will continue in subsequent issues. The Van Gogh Museum Journal was established by former director Ronald de Leeuw and it is one of many concrete signs that scholarship flourished during his tenure at the museum. We would like to record our deepest gratitude for his leadership and vision at the Van Gogh Museum and we wish him every success in his new post as Director of the Rijksmuseum. This volume of the Journal is dedicated to Ronald de Leeuw in appreciation of his inspired directorship. John Leighton Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998 Director Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998 8 fig. 1 Director John Leighton (left) with architects Kisho Kurokawa and Martien van Goor (right), 1998 Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998 9 Review January 1997 - July 1998 Acquisitions Alongside its core holdings of Van Gogh and his contemporaries, on permanent loan from the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, the Van Gogh Museum strives to present a broad overview of international art from the period circa 1840-1920. In recent years there have been numerous important purchases and, for example, with the addition of sculpture in the displays, new parameters have been established for the collection. There are still many gaps, however, and while the collection has impressive depth in some areas of the 19th century, such as realism and symbolism, the representation of impressionism and certain aspects of post-impressionism remains unsatisfactory. It is pleasing to report, therefore, that with the purchase of an oil study by Georges Seurat, one very conspicuous gap in the collection has been filled. On more than one occasion Van Gogh expressed a wish to own a study by Seurat and he even thought of exchanging one of his own works with this artist. Unfortunately this plan was never realised, although Theo van Gogh did manage to purchase a very fine drawing, which remains in the collection. The new oil study (purchased with the support of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation and the Vereniging Rembrandt) is a splendid example of Seurat's early style, from the period when he was working on his famous masterpiece, A Sunday afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte (Art Institute of Chicago). The painting offers a fascinating comparison with Vincent's works from his Paris period and, when shown next to the latter's views of similar motifs, it underlines the importance of Seurat for the development of Van Gogh's art. Other notable purchases include the fine still life by Théodule Ribot, discussed in the present volume in an article by Gabriel Weisberg (pp. 76-87), while the collection of drawings has been further enhanced with works by Lhermitte, Dupré and Lebourg. An interesting portrayal of Van Gogh by the Scot A.S. Hartrick is a welcome addition to our collection of images of the artist. Hartrick was a fellow student of Van Gogh in the studio of Fernand Cormon in Paris and later published his reminiscences of this period. A spirited oil study by Gerard Bilders has been acquired for the Museum Mesdag. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, an important work by Mancini was added to the group of works by this artist in The Hague. The Bonger collection In December 1996 it was announced that the Dutch State had purchased the former collection of André Bonger and that these works would be placed in the Van Gogh Museum. The collection consists of over 100 paintings, drawings and prints, mainly by Odilon Redon and Emile Bernard. André Bonger (known as Andries to his friends) lived from 1879 in Paris, where he became friends with Theo van Gogh - Theo would later marry Bonger's sister, Johanna. Through Theo, Bonger came into contact with the Parisian avant-garde and he eventually became an avid collector, purchasing, for example, important works by Van Gogh and Cézanne. His greatest enthusiasm, however, was reserved for his friends Redon and Bernard, and it is particularly Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998 fortunate that so many of these works remained in the hands of Bonger's descendants. The collection that will come to the Van Gogh Museum contains over 50 works by Redon, adding in effect a second core to the museum's holdings. The Bonger collection will be transferred to the Van Gogh Museum in several stages over the following years and plans are already underway for an exhibition of these works, probably in the year 2003. Loans Loans play an important part in bolstering the displays of the Van Gogh Museum and we have received vital support from other institutions and from private collectors in our efforts to provide a rich context for Van Gogh's work. The long-term loan of a group of works from the neighbouring Stedelijk Museum has greatly enhanced the presentations with, for example, sculptures by Degas, Renoir and Rodin. Also included in this loan is Van Gogh's La berceuse (presented to the Stedelijk by V.W. van Gogh in 1945), which Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998 10 fig. 2 Georges Seurat, The Seine at Courbevoie, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum is now reunited with the Sunflowers, thus evoking Vincent's own ideas on displaying these subjects side by side. It is clear that the museum will continue to depend on the generosity of lenders, both public and private, if it is to fulfil its ambitions to be a museum of the 19th century. Further cooperation with the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk is essential, and discussions with these museums are continuing in an effort to develop a more coherent policy for the presentation of both Dutch and international art of the 19th and 20th centuries in the institutions on the Museumplein. Conservation The programme of conservation for the collection of Van Gogh drawings and paintings has made good progress. Parallel to the production of scholarly catalogues, all the Van Gogh drawings in the collection are being conserved and, where necessary, restored. A number of drawings by other artists are also being restored in preparation for the exhibition on Theo van Gogh in 1999. Conservation work was also carried out on several paintings in the collection, among which the most spectacular gain was the restoration by Cornelia Peres of the Almond blossoms. The sensitive nuances of blue, light pink and white in this work had been obscured by a layer of discoloured varnish. The removal of this modern, synthetic varnish turned out to be a painstaking task, but the freshness and vigour of this painting are now fully apparent.