‘Van Gogh in Auvers’ Study Day and Symposium

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months explored the last months of Vincent van Gogh’s life, which he spent in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890. The exhibition was a collaboration between the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (12 May to 3 September 2023) and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris (3 October to 4 February 2024).

Study Day

The Study Day gave a team of international Van Gogh experts, curators and conservators the opportunity to come together to study Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings in detail. The exhibition is the result of years of research into the final period of Van Gogh’s life, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance for these experts to see more than 40 paintings and 30 drawings and sketches by Vincent van Gogh that have never before been exhibited together.

In the first part of the Study Day, the Van Gogh Museum research team gave a presentation introducing the type of art-historical and technical research that was conducted, and how the chronology of the works was established for this last, very productive period of the artist’s life.

For the second part of the Study Day, the participants moved to the museum’s galleries, where specific paintings and drawings were observed and discussed in great detail, presenting new insights and raising new questions for future research.

Symposium

The Symposium was held in the museum’s auditorium and started with a word of welcome by Marije Vellekoop, Head of Collections and Research at the Van Gogh Museum.

The programme consisted of five talks that elaborated on subjects arising from the research, and complementing what was published in the extensive exhibition catalogue.

Louis van Tilborgh, Senior Researcher at the Van Gogh Museum and Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam, gave an overview of his new insights into the topic during his opening lecture Van Gogh in Auvers.

Senior Researcher Teio Meedendorp from the Van Gogh Museum presented Auvers-sur-Oise as an Artists’ Colony, with exciting new findings about the identity of several American artists working in Auvers around the same time as Van Gogh. Some of these artists even attended his funeral, which will be the subject of a forthcoming publication.

Laura Prins, PhD Researcher & Lecturer at Amsterdam UMC, presented The Concept of Creativity and Mental Health in the 19th Century, from the perspective of medical doctors who wished to understand the unfathomableness of the (genius) human mind, and from the perspective of artists such as Delacroix and Van Gogh, who had to deal with the real pressure of creativity.

Van Gogh Museum Associate Curator Sara Tas presented her research into Gachet and Van Gogh’s Etchings. Van Gogh experimented with Dr Paul Ferdinand Gachet’s etching press during his stay in Auvers, and produced an etched portrait of the doctor. Sara discussed the sequence of the artist’s proofs and the dating of the etching.

Finally, Bregje Gerritse, Researcher at the Van Gogh Museum and PhD Researcher at the University of Amsterdam, spoke about Van Gogh’s Early Reputation, giving a detailed overview of his reputation in the years leading up to his death in 1890 and shortly thereafter, whilst highlighting the important actors such as the artist Emile Bernard, the paint merchant Julien Tanguy and Vincent’s sister in law, Jo van Gogh-Bonger.