In reply to the Van Gogh Museum’s loan request for the Portrait of Camille Roulin for the exhibition Van Gogh & Japan (March 2018), MASP invited a conservator from the Van Gogh Museum to come to São Paulo to examine the painting and give advice on its condition. This resulted in a fruitful collaboration between the two institutions.
Gaining insight
Not only regarding the exhibition Van Gogh & Japan, but also in the context of the Van Gogh Museum’s research for the third painting collection catalogue, the visit to MASP provided an excellent opportunity to study the Portrait of Camille Roulin, as well as the three other paintings by Vincent van Gogh in depth. Examining works from other institutions enables us to gain as much insights as possible into van Gogh’s studio practice and artistic development.
Saint-Rémy period
Besides the Portrait of Camille Roulin, which was painted in Arles in December 1888, MASP owns three paintings from the Saint-Rémy period: The Arlésienne, The Stone Bench in the Asylum at Saint-Rémy and A Walk at Twilight. While Nienke combed through all relevant documentary material from the museum’s archive, Kathrin had the opportunity to examine each painting for a full day in the conservation studio, studying them unframed and under the microscope, which led to valuable observations on the artist’s working methods. With Portrait of Camille Roulin she found another example of a painting in which Van Gogh made use of a palette knife to modify the surface of the paint. The Arlésienne herself as well as the books on the table in front of her were sketched in the form of an underdrawing prior to painting. In this work as well as in both The Stone Bench in the Asylum at Saint-Rémy and A Walk at Twilight the extensive use of organic red lakes was observed. In addition, samples were taken to determine the contents of the ground layers and to identify selected pigments for comparison with data collected from works in the Van Gogh Museum.
Camille Roulin travelled to Amsterdam
Furthermore, based on Kathrin’s conclusions from her examination in agreement with MASP’s paintings conservator Karen Barbosa, the director decided that the Portrait of Camille Roulin would be lent to the Van Gogh Museum for further technical research and to be shown in the exhibition Van Gogh & Japan. The painting is part of an important group of portraits that Van Gogh made in Arles at the end of 1888, in which he applied everything he had learned from Japanese art even more radically than before. With its bold hues, firm outlines and a vividly coloured background the Portrait of Camille Roulin is an important example of that approach. In the exhibition it was shown alongside The Arlésienne from The Metropolitan Museum in New York and La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle) from the Art Institute of Chicago, presenting a unique opportunity to view these masterpieces together.
We are deeply grateful to our colleagues in São Paulo for making this possible.