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Dear Friends,
We are close to conclude this introductory section to my forum
on the Great Master Art Works in the World History, which will
only comprise one or maybe two more releases dedicated to the
Eastern Painting before we get started on the main part of the
exhibition.
Today I present Fishing in Spring, a masterpiece almost
unknown to the general public by the most famous
representative of post impressionism, Vincent Van Gogh. At a
certain stage in his life, Van Gogh became interested, like many
other European artists of his time, in Japanese master prints of
the eighteen century such as Hiroshige's Bridge In The Rain
and Eisen's Courtisan, which he reproduced
in a most approximate fashion yet always maintaining his own
characteristic style. Fishing in Spring has obvious
influences of the Oriental Art, though I must warn the visitor
that the general color of the reproduction below has been
changed to a rather yellowish hue at Olga's Gallery -
which I have unfortunately been forced to use as my image source
today since the photographic reproduction on the website of the
Chicago Institute of Art is, in fact, extremely poor.
Another great representative of the post impressionism is the
slightly less famous painter Paul Gauguin.
As usually, I am happy with the good feedback received. Your
posting at this forum is always appreciated.
Thank you,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
GREAT MASTERS OF PAINTING
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Fishing in Spring, Pont de Clichy (1)
by
Vincent Van Gogh
born March 30, 1853, Zundert,
Netherlands
died July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, France
Profile
(2)
in full Vincent Willem van Gogh Dutch painter,
generally considered the greatest after Rembrandt, and one of
the greatest of the
Post-Impressionists. The striking colour, emphatic brushwork,
and contoured forms of his work powerfully influenced the
current of
Expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's art became
astoundingly popular after his death, especially in the late
20th century, when his work sold for record-breaking sums at
auctions around the world and was featured in blockbuster
touring exhibitions. In part because of his extensive, published
letters, van Gogh has also been mythologized in the popular
imagination as the quintessential tortured artist.
Van Gogh, the eldest of six children of a Protestant pastor, was
born and reared in a small village in the Brabant region of the
southern Netherlands. He was a quiet, self-contained youth,
spending his free time wandering the countryside to observe
nature. At 16 he was apprenticed to The Hague branch of the art
dealers Goupil and Co., of which his uncle was a partner.
His artistic career was extremely short,
lasting only the 10 years from 1880 to 1890. During the first
four years of this period, while acquiring technical
proficiency, he confined himself almost entirely to drawings and
watercolours. First, he went to study drawing at the Brussels
Academy; in 1881 he moved to his father's parsonage at Etten,
The Netherlands, and began to work from nature.
Largely on the basis of the works of the last three years of his
life, van Gogh is generally considered one of the greatest Dutch
painters of all time. His work exerted a powerful influence on
the development of much modern painting, in particular on the
works of the
Fauve painters,
Chaim Soutine, and the German
Expressionists. Yet of the more than 800 oil paintings and
700 drawings that constitute his life's work, he sold only one
in his lifetime. Always desperately poor, he was sustained by
his faith in the urgency of what he had to communicate and by
the generosity of his brother Theo, who believed in him
implicitly. The letters that he wrote to Theo from 1872 onward,
and to other friends, give such a vivid account of his aims and
beliefs, his hopes and disappointments, and his fluctuating
physical and mental state that they form a unique and touching
biographical record that is also a great human document.
Technical data
(3)
Fishing in
Spring, Pont de Clichy (Asnières),
1887
Oil on canvas
50.5 x 60 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL,
USA
Gift of Charles Deering McCormick, Brooks McCormick,
and Roger McCormick,
1965.1169
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