Van Gogh and the seasons in Melbourne

Van Gogh and the Seasons
Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series
The National Gallery of Victoria, and Art Exhibitions Australia

The big Van Gogh and the Seasons exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria is exclusive to Melbourne and is the largest collection of Van Gogh artworks to ever travel to Australia.

Even though Van Gogh's career as an artist was relatively short – less than 10 years – he produced a large body of work and a legacy that continues to inspire artists and captivate the public today. His instantly recognisable work is seen as accessible and he has become the stereotype of the driven, eccentric artist.

The exhibition explores Van Gogh’s connection to the seasons of nature through nearly 50 paintings and drawings. For Van Gogh the seasons represented the circle of life – birth, bloom, maturity and death.

This cycle embodied the greatness of nature and the existence of a higher force and he also saw this as linking with the cyclical lives of peasants. The artist painted scenes that evoked the sensory pleasures or deprivations particular to each season – springtime, with its blossoming orchards and flowering meadows; summer, with fields of ripe wheat shimmering under the hot sun; autumn, with bountiful harvests and solitary figures sowing seeds as dusk approaches; and winter, with peasants digging potatoes out of frozen fields, or sharing a meagre meal by candlelight.

The exhibition allows the viewer to get a sense of the artist’s developing styles, the use of certain themes and images such as the solo figure in the landscape, the moody light of winter and the heat of summer and the sun and the moon on the horizon. This not only provides an understanding of the artworks but also insights into the artist’s beliefs and visions.

The exhibition is presented within sections devoted to each of the four seasons as well as depicting the places he lived – the Dutch region of Brabant, where he was born in 1853, Arles, where he experienced his most defining period of creativity; Saint-Rémy de Provence, where he was treated for mental illness and Auvers-sur-Oise, where he committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 37.

While the most recognisable flower paintings such as his irises and sunflowers are not in the show, there are a couple in the exhibition that show his more complex approach to these subjects, which often have a symbolic meaning such as Vase with Honesty,  which builds on the Dutch still life genre. In this work the 30 silvery petals, called Judas, coins are seen as referring to the biblical story of Christ’s betrayal.

Then there is his Still Life with wildflowers and carnations from the late 1880’s, which are said to be among his attempts to enter the commercial market with the growing interest in flower paintings.

The most impressive works in the show are the landscapes, especially those with his signature flicks of paint, which seem to be of controlled energy and light, such as his Green Vineyard where we start to see his use of impasto paint or his Olive Grove with its sharp strokes of yellow and red.

Then there is his Trees and undergrowth where the viewer seems to be enveloped in a dark wood, or the golden light of Wheatfield. The landscapes in the exhibition culminate in Wheatfield with Cypresses where the broad strokes of colour, the flame-like trees and the energetic abstract clouds combine in one of his great expressions of emotional and visual drama.

The exhibition makes use of Van Gogh’s letters and, from research into his interests in literature and nature explores the influences and themes that dominate much of the artist’s work.

As part of Van Gogh and the Seasons the gallery has included two other exhibitions; Van Gogh’s Collection of Prints and Van Gogh and Japanese Prints, these two exhibitions are entertaining and instructive just on their own but they also provide insights into Van Gogh’s own work.

Van Gogh collected hundreds of prints and illustrations by notable artist as well as illustrations of religious themes and images of rural life. These included artists who are obvious influences such as Jean-Francoise Millet and Charles Jacques. These images formed the basis of many of his early works as well as later works. His Snow Covered field with Harrow (after Millet) of 1890 is a direct copy of an earlier Millet etching while many of his landscapes refer as much to the actual scenes as to works he had seen illustrated in magazines and prints.

His debt to the Japanese print is obvious in various ways, notably combining traditional Western perspective with the layering of foreground and background more common in Oriental art. There are also examples in his work where he has used black outlining around subjects as well as the contrast between silhouette and background

The exhibition includes a film about the artist’s life and concisely gives a background to the artist’s life and the theme of the seasons. The film consists of sequences, one for each season, with each episode exploring an aspect of the artist’s life and works, combining images of his art with images of the natural world.

The Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series were developed to attract national and international visitors to Victoria during what was traditionally the quieter tourism period. The exhibitions were also seen as a way of generating significant economic impact as well as significant national and international media exposure for Victoria.

The 22 exhibitions since 2004 will have generated a total audience of 5.5 million. Some of the biggest crowd draws were Tutankhamen (796,000), Monet’s Gardens (343,000) and Dali (333,000). The total economic benefit to the state of these exhibitions is put at close to $A500 million.

Next year (June to October) the NGV will be showing works from New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition includes works lent by leading international museums, including the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, which hold the two largest collections of works by Van Gogh in the world.

The show was curated by Sjraar van Heugten, independent art historian and former head of collections at the Van Gogh Museum.