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Breaking van Gogh

Page 13

by James Grundvig


  To make such a big move, Andries needed assistance. He got a helping hand from an old friend of Vincent’s, the young man he befriended at the artist’s funeral—Emile Bernard. It is well documented that Emile Bernard, together with Andries Bonger, “classed, put in order, [and] prepared the packaging and shipping of Van Gogh’s works” for Jo van Gogh-Bonger’s journey back to Holland.159 He also took photographs of some of the artwork and would later become a collector of van Gogh. Finally, he also wrote about the artist and his stirring paintings in several publications over the years.

  Bernard’s devotion to Vincent went further. By 1893, he began “publishing passages in Mercure de France from the letters he had received, accompanied by an extensive introduction.”160 After four such publications, he got permission from Jo to publish some passages from the letters between Vincent and Theo.161 Those letters, combined with Jo and Andries working the galleries and exhibits in and around Bussum, Netherlands, located southeast of Amsterdam, humanized van Gogh and provided exposure for his artwork.

  Jo van Gogh-Bonger did not limit her promotional work to Netherlands only; she never forgot about the Paris art scene. By 1895, she was doing business with Ambroise Vollard, a prominent Parisian art dealer and one of van Gogh’s early champions. He bought several of Vincent’s paintings to “flip” them for a higher price.

  In early 1896, Johanna organized two dedicated exhibitions in Holland: one in Groningen in February, where 101 works were shown, and a second in Rotterdam in March, where 52 pictures were shown. In September of that year, Vollard was finally permitted 56 paintings by Van Gogh at his new premises on Rue Lafitte in Paris.162

  Jo also allowed Vollard to purchase a few paintings but “deliberately marked some of the best pictures as ‘not for sale.’”163 Not trusting the men she dealt with, she came up with ways to ensure that he wouldn’t get his hands on all of them. By doing so, Vollard as an art dealer and businessman would have to prove his salt in making sales at market prices to build a long-term relationship with her.

  In the end, “Johanna and Vollard disagreed on the high prices she put on the works, and by February Vollard had sold only two drawings.” As more exhibitions followed, Jo made sure she didn’t work herself into a corner with the influential art dealer, working with other dealers and galleries so as not to become too dependent on any one dealer or exhibition.164

  In 1896, Vollard put on two one-man shows: one during the summer, the second in the fall. “It was from the first of these that it is believed the Sutros bought their painting. The van Goghs acquired by the Unwins and the Sutros were among the first of the artist’s works to be sold by dealers in Paris.”165 Thomas Fisher Unwin acquired a van Gogh “flower still life sometime in the early 1890s from Père Tanguy in Paris.” It was a painting that was not on the A. B. List, since Tanguy himself was the owner. British dramatist Alfred Sutro and his wife Esther were also art collectors from time to time.

  To put into perspective the enormous grassroots effort and long-term success of Jo van Gogh-Bonger in marketing and selling Vincent’s art, one can look at some other painters of the time: Gauguin sold his first painting in 1892, Cézanne in 1911, and Seurat in 1919. Britain and Berlin, and America for that matter, didn’t catch the wave of Impressionist work until the start of the twentieth century. By then, van Gogh was outselling his contemporaries.166

  Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (also known as Schuff) was a third-class artist when compared with the talent, vision, and dexterity of either his friend Gauguin or van Gogh. But he knew great art when he saw it, and he wanted to get his hands on van Gogh’s work early. Schuff purchased two paintings from Jo: the still life Les Fleurs for 300 francs, and Undergrowth with Two Figures for 200 francs. In a March 1894 letter, he recommended that she should embrace those prices; by his next letter to her, she did indeed accept his offer, though “by this time Tanguy’s widow had asked for a larger commission, so Schuffenecker ended up paying a slightly higher total, namely 525 francs.”167

  What few people knew about Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, who had met Paul Gauguin at a stock brokerage firm a decade before, was that he had inherited money from his parents and invested that bounty in a gold company, which took off. From that point forward, Schuff lived the life that Gauguin had always lusted for and dreamed about living … painting with no worries about money or concern about where the next paycheck or sale of a piece of art would come from.168

  Lacking sufficient talent, Schuffenecker did not become a great artist. Instead, he became a shrewd investor, often complaining that he was broke when in fact he wasn’t, remaining cheap and miserly, never telling his community that he was well off so that he could underpay for paintings he desired to poach from his peers, who were far superior.

  This deception led to a difference of perception of the two art buyers vying for van Goghs. While Schuffenecker was wise, acquiring van Goghs directly from Jo van Gogh-Bonger and through other art dealers, Vollard earned a reputation as an art “stealer”—so nicknamed—driven by his overt greed. Vollard would try to fool and manipulate Jo and, when that didn’t work, cajole her, trying to blind her to get her to agree to his awful terms. She learned to walk away, to not answer his letters. By the end of 1896, Jo had other ideas. As a businesswoman, with a son growing up fast, she had acquired thick skin.

  Still, the Parisian art dealer Vollard pushed forward, convincing Jo to loan him the artwork that would mirror a retrospective she had done in the early 1890s in the Netherlands. For that one show, she agreed to provide “works on paper [including] forty-three drawings, thirteen watercolors, and a lithograph.”169

  But the exhibit tanked; few showed up for the van Gogh retrospective. The press ignored it. “Vollard lamented to Johanna, people and art enthusiasts ‘won’t concern themselves with this exhibition.’”170

  Shaming the art dealer for his failure to execute, Jo began to phase Vollard out from doing business. Still, “Vollard did not give up promoting Van Gogh’s works. However, he was forced to find other sources to stock his gallery because Johanna effectively refused to do business with the hard-bargaining dealer after relinquishing to him a half dozen canvases and ten drawings for a paltry sum in March 1897.”171

  By the end of the decade, Jo van Gogh-Bonger was running out of art dealers whom she could trust in lending, negotiating, and selling van Gogh’s paintings. Vollard was proving unsuitable. She also broke off a relationship with another Paris art dealer, Lucien Moline, in 1895.

  Learning that Emile Schuffenecker had bought several van Goghs and had helped put the paintings in shows in Oslo, Norway, and seeing the art market rise at the turn of the century, Jo decided it was time to make a big move with Vincent’s paintings, some of his iconic classic artwork.

  That break would arrive at an exhibit in 1901.

  18

  1901 Making a Name

  In 1898, Emile Schuffenecker painted the Portrait of Julien Leclercq and his Wife, a pastel on paper. It was a tribute to the friendship between Schuff, the investor—middling artist and art collector—and Leclercq, the French poet and art critic.

  The portrait, which hangs today at Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York,172 was also a token of appreciation to Leclercq for persuading Jo van Gogh-Bonger to provide a few van Gogh paintings to the contemporary art exhibition in Oslo that the art critic had arranged. Jo had grown accustomed to brushing off art dealers that irritated her through the years, but Schuffenecker knew when to approach her and when to recede into the shadows and not bother her. Although he owned several van Goghs by the end of the century, in addition to “owning one of the finest art collections in Paris,”173 he needed an intermediary to deal with Jo when he felt their business relationship was a bit tense and frayed, from the poor introductions he made and from sales of van Gogh paintings not going through. That intermediary was Julien Leclercq.

  Leclercq was married to Fanny Flodin, a Finnish pianist. Sculptor Hilda Flodin was her sister.174 Wit
h a Scandinavian wife and a sculptor sister-in-law, who was connected to Finnish royalty and the art world, it was only natural for the art critic Leclercq to organize the Oslo exhibition. As more art dealers and collectors acquired or sought to acquire the artwork of van Gogh, who was finally becoming a household name at the end of the decade, Leclercq and Schuffenecker foresaw the increased momentum in the market at the turn of the century. Together, they plotted to get their hands on more of the Dutch painter’s masterpieces, while also seeking to broaden van Gogh’s name recognition and drive up the value of his art.

  By then, Julien Leclercq was already the owner of Starry Night, the masterpiece that hangs today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Van Gogh himself thought it was a subpar effort, telling Theo that his better works included the themes of olives, wheat fields, and sunflowers. Perhaps this was because of Starry Night’s connection to Christianity, the halos around the stars and Venus, and the embellished peaceful town beneath the night sky that gave a kind of Christmas feel to the painting. The other subjects were all connected to nature, tied to Vincent’s heart, his passion, and his life as a painter.

  In spring 1900, Jo loaned eight van Gogh paintings to the persistent Julien Leclercq, who had written several letters to her, each time emphasizing the fact that Vincent van Gogh’s artwork was on the brink of fame. In the end, he got through to her by suggesting that the loan coincide with the Exposition Universelle—the World Expo—in Paris that would begin on April 15, 1900.175

  Jo van Gogh-Bonger sifted through a box of the 1890s articles, reviews, and critiques of van Gogh’s artwork from critics, such as Aurier and Leclercq. She pulled out the 1890 review in the Mercure de France and reread what it had said about the artist:

  Like Salvator Rosa, he is a tormented spirit. His power of expression is extraordinary, and everything in his oeuvre derives its life from his own technique. His was an impassioned temperament, through which nature appears as it does in dreams, or rather, in nightmares…. At the Salon of the Indépendants there are ten paintings by Van Gogh that bear witness to a rare genius.176

  Jo knew Leclercq was an art critic and not an art dealer. He didn’t have his own gallery. But he did possess an understanding of Vincent’s artwork with a strong appreciation of his talent. By staying in Paris during Exposition Universelle, Leclercq would take advantage of the opportunity: his plan was to display the eight paintings in his apartment during the seven-month expo, which made a lot of business sense to her, as his place would be well trafficked by art enthusiasts; it made sense to Leclercq because he wouldn’t have to lease additional space for the exhibit.177

  When Leclercq received the eight paintings, he saw that the decade-old works, which had been stored haphazardly in Theo’s apartment and at the Tanguy shop in Paris, were in bad shape. They had to be restored: “A neighbor and friend of Leclercq, the painter Judith Gerard, notes in her memoirs that he ‘called in Schuffenecker, who taught drawing in one of the city’s schools and came each day, in return for a small payment, armed with a large box of colors to cover up the holes and glue back flakes of paint.’ Gerard observes that Schuffenecker became so enthusiastic about his work that he decided to ‘improve’ on several other van Goghs that he felt were unfinished.”178

  The paintings from the South of France needed to be restored in order to be presented at an exhibition, and, more importantly, sold to an art collector or dealer. As the restoration took place, there would be at least a six-month period for Emile Schuffenecker to copy them, one by one, out of everyone’s sight. It was especially convenient that the only person who was likely to detect a forged van Gogh, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, was living in Bussum, Holland, more than three hundred miles north.

  Copying other artists’ works during the time of the Impressionists was often a way for artists to improve their technique, experimenting with paints, colors, and brushstroke styles. Van Gogh himself had done it plenty. But for him, it wasn’t about copying or reproducing the exact painting, the way a camera would. It was more about translating what he saw into his own unique style. Still, for him as for other artists, it was common practice. For example, during his stay at the asylum, van Gogh completed twenty-one copies of Millet’s works, both in an attempt to define his own style and as homage to the painter.179

  At the start of the twentieth century, the art world was quite different than when van Gogh was at the asylum, however. The market for Impressionists and Post-Impressionists had taken off. Claude-Emile Schuffenecker was a man more concerned with making money than developing technique, more interested in squeezing people, even friends, in deals to pay the lowest amount possible while reaping the biggest profit.

  Leclercq, too, was not immune from the impulse to profit from the sale of van Gogh’s work. To maximize this profit, he needed to have his own art exhibition, with van Gogh as the main artist, in Paris. But Jo van Gogh-Bonger wasn’t keen on the idea, knowing that the art critic, who was also a poet, couldn’t bankroll or sponsor it. So she ignored his October 12, 1900, letter. Then, on November 25, Leclercq followed up with another letter, this time using “now or never” psychology, writing: “I am asking you to set the date for the exhibition of Vincent’s work, and I would like you to choose February 15th. Everything has changed in the meantime and I am no longer master of my own time.”180

  That last line had to give Jo a sense of lost opportunity if she didn’t relent, act, and exhibit van Gogh’s works in Paris in 1901. She agreed. Outside of transcribing and translating all of Vincent’s letters to his family, it would be the single best decision she had ever made. So Leclercq was going to organize the van Gogh exhibition, collecting a total of seventy-one artworks from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, his own collection, Schuffenecker’s collection, and other Parisian art dealers. The show would be held on March 17, 1901, at the renowned Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, a retrospective called Exposition d ’Oeuvres de Vincent van Gogh.181

  Going hand in hand with the Paris exhibition would have been the A. B. List. But, as mentioned earlier, all three of the Wheat Field with Cypresses paintings were missing from Andries Bonger’s list.

  Why is this important? When the former Met curator Charles S. Moffett, at the time the senior curator of paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, wrote the essays for the Emil G. Bührle Collection catalogue The Passionate Eye, he said the following about Wheat Field with Cypresses, painting No. 62 in the collection:

  The artist clearly regarded ‘Wheat Field with Cypresses’ as a work of special significance, for on 2 July (1889) he sent a drawing after the completed painting to his brother, and in September he made painted variants for his sister and mother.182

  That is one drawing and two paintings. The van Gogh letters of July and September back up the art expert’s assertion of how many versions of the drawing and painting of that particular study existed: one and two, respectively.

  So how does that stack up with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s claim that there were three paintings? Based on the brothers’ correspondence, we know that in September, Vincent painted, shipped, and directed Theo to send the Small and Final versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses to their sister and mother in Netherlands. But what if, during Vincent’s June 1889 study of the landscape, he only completed the drawing, never painting the so-called “First” version that the Met claims to own?

  If the late Charles Moffett were alive today, how would he weigh in, given his breadth of knowledge about the artist, his thorough understanding of van Gogh’s brushstrokes and impasto, and his insights on the painter’s symbolism?

  Why couldn’t his twenty-first-century counterpart at the Met, Susan Alyson Stein, curator of European art and Impressionism, come to the same conclusion that Moffett did when it came to the number of paintings in this study and the fact that the Small and Final versions of the painting were sent on to the van Gogh family in Holland from Vincent in Saint-Rémy through Theo in Paris?

  In the book she edited with Asher Ethan M
iller in 2006 for the Metropolitan Museum, The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which included texts by her, Colin B. Bailey, Joseph J. Rishel, and Mark Rosenthal, Stein wrote:

  One week later, on July 2, he (van Gogh) reported that he had done another “canvas of cypresses with some ears of wheat, some poppies, a blue sky like a piece of Scotch plaid,” also painted in … “Thick impasto” but now set in a “wheat field in the sun, which represents the extreme heat.” The canvas in question is the present “Wheat Field with Cypresses.” Van Gogh came to regard it as one of his “best” summer landscapes and repeated the composition three times.

  But, as I briefly discussed earlier, Vincent van Gogh Letter No. 784, dated July 2, 1889, which is the letter that Susan Stein cites above, didn’t mention the “Scotch plaid” multicolored sky in reference to Wheat Field with Cypresses. No, the letter referred to another painting, not a horizontal landscape, but that tall vertical one. It is a painting that the Met also owns, called Cypresses, that Stein also wrote about in her book. That tall painting was also donated by the Annenberg Foundation to the museum and hangs today on the wall not far from the Wheat Field with Cypresses.

  When the two paintings are seen side by side, it is clear that only Cypresses has “a blue sky, which is like a multicolored Scotch plaid.” The sky of Wheat Field with Cypresses doesn’t have anything remotely like tartan-patterned hues or design at all. The two main colors, with varying shades of both, are light blue and cotton white clouds depicted in van Gogh’s famous swirling brushstrokes that he invented for the Starry Night painting.

 

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