Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996 bron Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996. Waanders, Zwolle 1996 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_van012199601_01/colofon.php © 2012 dbnl / Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh 7 Director's foreword The Van Gogh Museum is flourishing. The permanent collection is drawing a growing number of Dutch and foreign visitors, the exhibitions programme is simultaneously receiving a good press and reaching a public that is both large and involved. There have been a significant number of important acquisitions, not least two wonderful early landscapes by Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet, and the output of our academic staff has been considerable. At last the start of work on our new exhibition wing is also in sight, and the adjoining premises at Museumplein 4 have become available for the accommodation of the library and documentation centre. In a number of senses, the Van Gogh Museum now occupies a central position on Amsterdam's Museumplein. Meanwhile we have been hard at work on the renovation of the Museum Mesdag in The Hague, which reopened its doors to the public on 12 October 1996. While there is space in this volume of the Van Gogh Museum Journal for only the merest reflection of all these activities, the high points will be summarised in a Review covering the period up to the end of 1996. In this issue we have chosen once more to give centre stage to two facets of our work, the Museum Mesdag and our sculpture acquisitions. You will therefore find articles on the history, renovation and collections in The Hague; and also a concise catalogue of the young but fast-growing collection of sculpture in Amsterdam. In the second half of 1996, the startling exhibition The colour of sculpture 1840-1910 was a triumphant demonstration of the élan with which sculpture has made its debut in the museum. Beside these, in addition to a number of fascinating Van Gogh Studies, the regular sections feature articles in which items from the collection are placed in their respective contexts. As intended, this publication (whose first volume, we are happy to say, was received enthusiastically by our colleagues) remains firmly object-oriented. And with regard to this second volume, we are also delighted that the number of contributions by authors from outside the museum has already increased. It is certainly not without a certain sadness that, on 1 December, I will be exchanging the directorship of the Van Gogh Museum for that of the Rijksmuseum. However, I congratulate the Supervisory Board of the Van Gogh Museum Foundation for finding such an excellent successor in John Leighton, who for over a decade has been the outstanding curator of 19th-century painting at the National Gallery in London. The museum could hardly be in better hands as it approaches the fin de siècle and crosses the threshold of the new millennium. Ronald de Leeuw Director Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996 8 fig.1 The colour of sculpture, Van Gogh Museum, 1996 Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996 9 Review July 1994 - December 1996 On 1 July 1994 the Van Gogh Museum entered a new phase in its history, taking its first steps no longer as a national museum, but as a foundation subsidised by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. But even if there have been all kinds of changes in its day-to-day and financial management, the mission and the duties of the museum have, of course, remained largely the same. With the collection of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation as its unique source of inspiration, the museum has stayed on course as an innovative museum of international 19th-century art, and as the central deposit of knowledge on Vincent van Gogh. Acquisitions Even as a newly independent institution, the Van Gogh Museum makes its acquisitions in the name both of the state and of the collection the state entrusted to it, that of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. We also undertake incidental acquisitions on behalf of the Museum Mesdag. Although the Van Gogh Museum's impassioned plea to the government for an acquisitions subsidy fell anew upon deaf ears, we have nonetheless been able to acquire a varied range of works. For this we can thank the steadily increasing profits of the museum shop, and the highly-valued support of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation and of the Vereniging Rembrandt. A supplement to the September 1996 edition of the Burlington Magazine on these new acquisitions, which was accompanied by a very favourable editorial, was a reminder that acquisition can significantly enhance the museum's image. This Journal features descriptions and illustrations of every work acquired since 1 July 1994. Exceptionally, it has been decided to incorporate in the Journal all the acquisitions made in 1996. The reason is the departure on 1 December of the current director, who, after an eleven-year period of office, will be taking up the post of General Director of the Rijksmuseum. In this way we have been able to give a complete picture of the last acquisitions to be made during the author's directorship. Unfortunately, the museum has to go without the resources it would need to buy major works by Vincent van Gogh himself. An anonymous bequest made at the end of 1995 was therefore particularly welcome; this was a work painted by Vincent in 1885, Peasant woman digging potatoes. A canvas with this theme was not previously present in the collection. The representation of French landscape art prior to Van Gogh was also somewhat sparse, a situation that has now been much remedied by the acquisition of a number of pre-Impressionist landscapes. The canvas by Théodore Rousseau purchased at the beginning of 1994 was soon joined by works painted by Rousseau's contemporaries Chintreuil, Jongkind and Harpignies. These were capped by two imposing coastal views by Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet, which had been in private Dutch collections for over half a century, and which we have now been able to retain as part of our permanent heritage. Other works also came from Dutch sources. These included two works of history painting, Exhausted maenads after the dance by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (once the Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996 property of the writer and critic Carel Vosmaer); and Consummatum est, also known as Golgotha, by the French Salon painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, which was widely known as a print in the 19th century. Both pieces are now hanging in the newly-installed section on the art of the Salon, on the ground floor of the museum. Recently-acquired paintings by Gustave Boulanger and Lawrence Alma-Tadema have also been added, as well as sculptures by Barye, Carpeaux, Carrier-Belleuse and Cordier. An important new impulse over the last period has been the acquisition of sculpture. For this we are grateful for the closer contacts with collectors and art dealers gained during the preparations for the exhibition The colour of sculpture. Here, Prosper d'Epinay's expressive terracotta Medusa, the gilded silver Sappho by James Pradier, and the exuberant orientalist busts by Charles Cordier are just three of the high points. An exceptional Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996 10 piece of luck was the acquisition at a London auction of Jules Dalou's chef d'oeuvre Large peasant; now standing in dialogue with Léon Lhermitte's Haymaking, it is a masterful example of late 19th-century naturalism. The combination of paintings and sculpture has considerably enlivened and enriched the appearance of the museum's galleries. In August 1996, the sheer scope of acquisitions in this category made it necessary to devote an extra edition of the Van Gogh Bulletin to newly-acquired sculpture. Although the collection of drawings is currently growing at only a modest pace, it nonetheless makes a good showing: recent acquisitions include sheets by Doré and Tissot, two capital noirs by Redon from the former Bonger collection, and also a startling view of the Seine by the young Raoul Dufy. There is now a beautiful watercolour of the heath at Laren by Van Gogh's cousin and sole teacher, Anton Mauve, of which the version in oil is in the collection at the Rijksmuseum. A new development since 1996 has been the regular presentation on the second floor of the museum of the ‘drawing of the month,’ featuring the most important new acquisition. Loans from museums and private collections have also enhanced the quality and appeal of the permanent collection. While the Amsterdams Historisch Museum augmented the Salon installation on the ground floor with masterpieces by Decamps and Marilhat, the Stedelijk Museum loaned two large canvases by Alma-Tadema and Anton Mauve, as well as sculptures by Degas, Renoir and Rodin. Works on permanent loan from private collections included two early Picassos and fine drawings by Jan Toorop and Odilon Redon. The renovation of the Museum Mesdag necessitated the purchase of two specially designed display cabinets for the Colenbrander ceramics. Mr and Mrs Maingay-Mesdag donated a portfolio of engravings, reproductions, leather wall hangings and a lectern that were originally the property of Taco Mesdag. Conservation 1995 saw the virtual completion of the conservation work undertaken within the framework of the so-called Delta Plan for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The only ambitions now remaining unfulfilled concern the preservation of the old frames in the Museum Mesdag. A start has been made on the restoration of the collection of drawings, for which purpose a temporary conservation workshop has been instituted. In a project running parallel to the cataloguing of the Van Gogh drawings, Nico Lingbeek was called in for the conservation and, where necessary, restoration, of the sheets.