A Wonderful New Book About Van Gogh
Paulc
concerning how and why, during the last seventy days of his life,
Vincent van Gogh was able to produce over seventy incredibly-beautiful
final masterpieces, the recent historical novel "The Last Van Gogh"
(Penguin) by the internationally acclaimed author Alyson Richman
provides some amazing insight. The author traveled to the French
village of Auvers-sur-Oise on a number of occasions and meticulously
researched the period during which Van Gogh lived there, even
interviewing a number of the village's elders, who knew his last
muse, Magaret Gachet, the daughter of the homeopathic doctor who was
treating Van Gogh at the time. It's truly an amazing novel,
beautifully written and I recommend it highly. It just came out in
paperback a few months ago. (I got mine at Amazon.com.) For anybody
who loves Van Gogh's works, this book should prove unbelievably
fascinating. [Incidentally, Ms. Richman is also the author of the
highly-reviewed novels "The Mask Carver's Son" (Bloomsbury -
2000) and "Swedish Tango" (Simon & Schuster - 2004).]
Paul
lyra
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(quote, excerpts)
Auvers-sur-Oise
You will see clearly that to come to an understanding of a country and
its way of life, to see other countries, is all to the good. -
Vincent Van Gogh - May 1890, upon his arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise
............................................................................................................................
Visit with a dead man. I seem to be visiting as many dead people on
this journey as live ones. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Victor Hugo
and Emile Zola. Voltaire. Jim Morrison...
Vincent sleeps next to his brother Theo in the tiny cemetery of Auvers.
Their graves covered in ivy and marked by flowers that dedicated souls
have brought to him as gifts. Symbols of life in a really dead place.
It's hard to imagine Vincent lying dead in there, that he is something
more than just this stone marking the spot. His vibrant work is alive
in the fields and people and homes of this little town next to the
river Oise. His work lives in museums and collections around the world.
He is known in this town by only one name - Vincent.
...........................................................................................................................
Auvers is very beautiful. There is among other things a lot of old
thatch, which is getting rare. One is far enough from Paris for it to
be real country, but nevertheless how changed since Daubigny; but not
changed in an unpleasant way - there are many villas and various
bourgeois dwelling-houses very radiant and sunny and covered with
flowers. - Vincent Van Gogh, May 1890
.........................................................................................................................
The town and the cemetery are surrounded by the fields of his
paintings. La Plaine d'Auvers, La Plaine pres d'Auvers (avec ciel
nuageux), Champ de ble aux corbeaux, and all of the others in my little
book of paintings. Leaving the cemetery and walking down the road
towards town, the first thing visible is the steeple of L'eglise de
Notre Dame d'Auvers-sur-Oise. Arriving at the church itself I find the
exact replica of Van Gogh's painting that is hanging in the Musee
d'Orsay in Paris.
Vincent had a way of seeing the life in what the general public thought
of as only inanimate objects.
.......................................................................................................................
I am now quite absorbed by the immeasurable plain with cornfields
against the hills, immense as a sea, delicate yellow, delicate green,
regularly chequered by the green of the flowing potato plants,
everything under the a sky with delicate blue, white, pink, violet
tones. I am in a mood of nearly too great calmness, in the mood to
paint this. - Vincent Van Gogh, July 27, 1890
...but we are still far from the time when people will understand the
curious relations which exist between one fragment of nature and
another, which nevertheless explain each other and set each other off.
Some, however, feel this silently, and that is something. ... -
Vincent Van Gogh, July 27, 1890
(from
http://www.artist-at-large.com/auvers.htm )
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................
lyra
Early life (1853 - 1869)
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, a village close to
Breda in the Province of North Brabant in the southern Netherlands.
Vincent was the son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh,
a minister of the Dutch reformed church.
He was given the same name as his grandfather-and a first brother
stillborn exactly one year before. It has been suggested[1] that being
given the same name as his dead elder brother might have had a deep
psychological impact on the young Vincent, and that elements of his
art, such as the portrayal of pairs of male figures, can be traced back
to this.
The practice of reusing a name in this way was not uncommon. The name
"Vincent" was often used in the Van Gogh family: the baby's grandfather
was called Vincent van Gogh (1789-1874); he had received his degree of
theology at the University of Leiden in 1811.
Grandfather Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers,
including another Vincent, referred to in Van Gogh's letters as "Uncle
Cent." Grandfather Vincent had perhaps been named after his own
father's uncle, the successful sculptor Vincent van Gogh
(1729-1802).[2]
Art and religion were the two occupations to which the Van Gogh family
gravitated.
(from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh )
.........................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................
lyra
Birth: 30 Mar 1853
Zundert, North Brabant, Netherland
Death: 27 Jul 1890
Father: Theodorus VAN GOGH
Mother: Anna Cornelia CARBENTUS
.............................................................................................................................
Theodorus VAN GOGH
Birth: 8 Feb 1822
Netherland
Death: 26 Mar 1885
Geldrop, Netherland
Father: Vincent VAN GOGH
m. Anna Cornelia CARBENTUS
.............................................................................................................................
Anna Cornelia CARBENTUS
Birth: 10 Sep 1819
Den Haag, Netherland
Death: 29 Apr 1907
Leiden, Netherland
Father: Willem CARBENTUS
Mother: Anna Cornelia VANDER GAAG
m. Theodorus VAN GOGH
.............................................................................................................................
Anna Cornelia VANDER GAAG
Birth: 21 Jun 1792
Den Haag, Netherland
Death: 14 Apr 1855
Den Haag, Netherland
Father: Arie VANDER GAAG
Mother: Clara VAN NIEROPPERHOU
m. Willem CARBENTUS
..............................................................................................................................
Arie VANDER GAAG
Birth: Abt. 1754
<Loosduinen, S. Holland, Netherland>
m. Clara VAN NIEROPPERHOU
..............................................................................................................................
Clara VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Birth: 1758
Christening: 21 Apr 1758
Loosduinen, S. Holland, Netherland
Death: 29 Aug 1827
Den Haag, Netherland
Father: Pieter VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Mother: Cornelia SLUIMERS
m. Arie VANDER GAAG
..............................................................................................................................
Pieter VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Birth: 1719
Christening: 8 Jan 1719
Loosduinen, S. Holland, Netherland
Father: Anthony VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Mother: Klaartje HUYSMAN
m. Cornelia SLUIMERS
..............................................................................................................................
Anthony VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Birth: 1687
Christening: 25 May 1687
Loosduinen, S. Holland, Netherland
Father: Pieter Claaszoon VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Mother: Ariaentjen VAN TOL
m. Klaartje HUYSMAN
Marriage:
m. also Cornelisdochter Annetje BESEMER
..............................................................................................................................
Pieter Claaszoon VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Birth: 1642
Christening: 3 Aug 1642
Loosduinen, S. Holland, Netherland
Father: Claas VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Mother: Aechten GROEN
m. Ariaentjen VAN TOL
..............................................................................................................................
Claas VAN NIEROPPERHOU
Birth: Abt. 1616
<Loosduinen, S. Holland, Netherland>
m. Aechten GROEN
..............................................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................................
lyra
Elisabeth Huberta Vrijdag
(1790-1875)
m.
Vincent van Gogh
(11 February 1789 - 7 May 1874)
http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/family_tree.htm
................................................................................
Elisabeth Huberta Vrijdag
(1790-1875)
Vincent's grandmother came from a Swiss family. At least half of her
six sons married girls from the Carbentus family.
http://www.vggallery.com/photos/grandm.htm
.........................................................................................................................
Memoir of Vincent van Gogh
By Johanna Gesina van Gogh - Bonger, Vincent's sister in law
The family name, Van Gogh, is probably derived from the small town Gogh
on the German frontier, but in the sixteenth century the Van Goghs were
already established in Holland.
According to the Annales Généalogiques by Arnold Buchelius, a Jacob
van Gogh lived at that time in Utrecht, "in the Owl behind the Town
Hall."
Jan, Jacob's son, who lived "in the Bible under the flax market,"
sold wine and books and was Captain of the Civil Guard.
Their coat of arms was a bar with three roses, and it is still the Van
Gogh family crest.
In the seventeenth century we find many Van Goghs occupying high
offices of state in Holland, Johannes van Gogh, magistrate of Zutphen,
was appointed High Treasurer of the Union in 1628; Michel van Gogh -
originally Consul General in Brazil and later treasurer of Zeeland -
was a member of the Embassy that welcomed King Charles II of England on
his ascent to the throne in 1660.
In about the same period Cornelius van Gogh was a Remonstrant clergyman
at Boskoop; his son Matthias started as a physician in Gouda, and later
became a clergyman in Moordrecht.
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................
Vincent's Grandfather
In the beginning of the eighteenth century the social standing of the
family was somewhat lower. David van Gogh, who settled at The Hague,
was a gold-wire drawer. His eldest son, Jan, followed the same trade,
and married Maria Stalvius; both belonged to the Walloon Protestant
Church.
David's second son, Vincent (1729-1802), was a sculptor by profession,
and was said to have been in Paris in his youth; in 1749 he was one of
the Cent Suisses.
With him the practice of art seems to have come into the family,
together with fortune; he died single and left some money to his nephew
Johannes (1763-1840), his brother Jan's son.
Johannes was at first a gold-wire drawer like his father, but he later
became a Bible teacher and a clerk in the Cloister Church at The Hague.
He married Johanna van der Vin of Malines, and their son Vincent (1789
-1874) was enabled, by the legacy of his great-uncle Vincent, to study
theology at the University of Leiden.
This Vincent, the grandfather of the painter, was a man of great
intellect, with an extraordinarily strong sense of duty. At the Latin
school he distinguished himself and won all kinds of prizes and
testimonials. "The diligent and studious youth, Vincent van Gogh,
fully deserves to be set up as an example to his fellow students for
his good behavior as well as for his persistent zeal," declared the
rector of the school, Mr. de Booy, in 1805. He finished his studies at
the University of Leiden successfully, and graduated in 1811 at the age
of twenty-two.
He had many friends, and his album amicorum preserves their memory in
Latin and Greek verse. A little silk-embroidered wreath of violets and
forget-me-nots - signed, E. H. Vrydag 1810 - was wrought by the girl
who became his wife as soon as he secured the living of Benschop. They
lived long and happily together, first at the parsonage of Benschop,
then at Ochten, and from 1822 at Breda, where his wife died in 1875,
and where he remained until his death, a highly respected and esteemed
man.
http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/memoir/sisterinlaw/1.html