Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

by Gregg Chadwick

Cypresses

 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)

 June 1889

Oil on canvas

36 3/4 x 29 1/8 in. (93.4 x 74 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

“To give an idea of Provence it’s vital to do a few more canvases of cypresses and mountains.

… It took me all the time to observe the character of the pines, cypresses, &c. In the pure air here, the lines which don’t change and which one finds again at every step.”

Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh, 

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Saturday, 4 January 1890 836

“Van Gogh’s Cypresses” is the perfect exhibition for this moment in time. In our pixel soaked, AI drenched, climate change endangered world we are in need of a sojourn to physical reality and a soulful engagement with the natural world. This exhibition at the Met in New York brings together Van Gogh's paintings, drawings, and illustrated letters that engage the theme of cypress trees. Many of the artworks are fragile and light sensitive, so are rarely loaned out. Expertly put together by Engelhard Curator of Nineteenth-Century European Painting Susan Alyson Stein, the current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York runs from May 22–August 27, 2023.

It was a pleasure to virtually venture through the exhibit by following Ms. Stein’s exploration of Van Gogh’s paintings of cypress trees and the mythological and historical lore hidden beneath Van Gogh’s richly hued paint in the video attached below and her masterful exhibition catalog.

 Over the years, I have seen most of the paintings illustrated in the catalog in their home museums in Paris, New York, London, Amsterdam and beyond. Yet, viewing them gathered in this volume, I seem to see them anew. Van Gogh’s richly textured oil paint shines in the reproductions. I can almost hear the wind and smell the air of Provence in these artworks. A bittersweet melancholy hangs over this collection of cypress inspired artworks and not only because these trees are often seen as guide posts or markers of the world beyond our corporeal bodies. Two of the most iconic artworks in this collection - The Starry Night and Wheat Field with Cypresses were painted by Van Gogh at the asylum in Saint-Rémy where he admitted himself after a psychological crisis. The swirls of paint in these artworks become trees and harbingers of galaxies beyond. 

Viewing these artworks through Ms. Steins prose, we are privy to a vision beyond mere depictions of nature. Inspired by his artistic colleagues Monticelli, Gauguin, Seurat, and Émile Bernard - Van Gogh was attempting to create paintings that evoked the deep past but were completely new at the same time. 

Susan Alyson Stein explains that “cypresses held an ineluctable allure for Van Gogh.” These inescapable cypress trees enabled Van Gogh to “bring his art to the next level and make his mark as a modern painter.”

Van Gogh spent two years and three months in the South of France. From February 1888 through May 1890, he put down with ink on paper and oil paint on canvas artistic themes that emerged from his deep observations of nature and his internal responses to the light and landscape of Provence. 

After leaving Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh died soon after he returned to Northern France. At Van Gogh’s funeral held on July 30, 1890, the catalog  informs us that The Moniteur des arts reported that Doctor Gachet “spoke a few touching words over his friend’s coffin, which disappeared under branches of cypress trees and bouquets of large sunflowers.”

The Starry Night

 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)

  1889

Oil on canvas

29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm)

Museum of Modern Art, New York

The paintings in the exhibition Van Gogh’s Cypresses have been gathered from across the globe. From the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, to collections in Cologne, Bremen, Essen, Otterlo, Copenhagen,  Paris, London, Cleveland,  Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New Haven, and New York, Van Gogh’s cypresses have been brought together for the first time since 1901. 

Country Road in Provence by Night

(Landweg in de Provence bij nacht)

 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)

  12-15 May 1890

Oil on canvas

36 x 29" (90.6 x 72 cm)

Kroller Muller Museum, Netherlands

The catalog has an introduction and five major sections. The intro and three of the sections are authored by  Susan Alyson Stein. These sections “The Roots of His Invention: Arles, February 1888-May 1889”, “The Making of a Signature Motif: Saint-Rémy, May-September 1889”, and Signing Off in Style: Saint-Rémy, October 1889-May 1890” take us through Van Gogh’s life and artistic production in Provence with the guiding lens of his cypress paintings. 

The fourth section entitled “Untangling Nature” by Charlotte Hale and Silvia A. Centeno explores the art materials used by Vincent and describes in depth his painting process. 

The fifth section by Alison Hokanson with the assistance of Marina Kliger provides an overview of literary and artistic uses of the cypress tree theme. 

The French poet, critic, painter Albert Aurier praised Van Gogh’s paintings in an article where he described Vincent’s “cypresses shooting up their nightmarish silhouettes of blackened flames.” 

On view: May 22nd - August 27th, 2023

Learn more about the exhibition: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions... 

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents Virtual Opening

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Join Stephanie Herdrich, Associate Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, and Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge—both of the American Wing—for a virtual tour of "Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents." This ambitious survey reconsiders Homer’s work through the lens of conflict, a theme that crosses his prolific career. A persistent fascination with struggle permeates his art—from emblematic images of the Civil War and Reconstruction that examine the effects of the conflict on the landscape, soldiers, and formerly enslaved to dramatic scenes of rescue and hunting as well as monumental seascapes and dazzling tropical works painted throughout the Atlantic world. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Homer’s iconic "The Gulf Stream" (The Met), a painting that reveals his lifelong engagement with charged subjects of race and the environment. Featuring 88 oils and watercolors, "Crosscurrents" represents the largest critical overview of Homer’s art and life in more than a quarter of a century. The exhibition is made possible by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. Corporate sponsorship is provided by Bank of America. Additional support is provided by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, White & Case LLP, the Enterprise Holdings Endowment, and Ann M. Spruill and Daniel H. Cantwell. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. It is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Gallery, London. The catalogue is made possible by the William Cullen Bryant Fellows of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additional support is provided by the Wyeth Foundation

Season's Greetings!

Love the latest holiday card from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Happy Holidays to all.

Thoughts On the Exhibit "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Part 1)

by Gregg Chadwick

Intimately viewing the drawings of Michelangelo helps pull the veil of fame off of this towering figure. In spite of the title of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to give humanity back to artistic gods is no easy feat. The Met has done it twice in fourteen years. First was the 2003 exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and now those of Michelangelo in 2017. Both exhibits have given a sense of hope and human possibility back to viewers in times of struggle and uncertainty.

In its exhibition, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer the Metropolitan Museum has created a temporary museum dedicated to the life, times, and art of Michelangelo. It includes 133 drawings and poems created by Michelangelo that link the artworks to ongoing projects by the artist and his workshop. One of Michelangelo's earliest paintings is included and a small group of his sculptures in marble fill out the show. Also included are drawings by Michelangelo's mentors and artworks by his students and mentees. In a central gallery, a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling hangs as a canopy above the gallery.

Process and practice 

Like his older contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was able to create astonishing works of art out of the simplest means of chalk, ink and paper. In Renaissance era Florence, both Leonardo and Michelangelo learned from established artists. Leonardo was apprenticed to Verrocchio, and Michelangelo was attached to Ghirlandaio's artistic workshop. Complex painting projects such as the Tornabuoni chapel, that Ghirlandaio's workshop was engaged in from 1485-1490 while Michelangelo was there, began with quick idea sketches on paper that were then fleshed out with more involved studies. Apprentices would often pose for these studies. Perhaps the young Michelangelo inspired a figure somewhere on the walls of this chapel? Copying the master's work was also part of the training for young artists. Process and practice were the keys to the growth of a young artist in Renaissance Florence.

The Met's exhibition opens with a group of drawings by Ghirlandaio and then moves on to examples of Michelangelo's studies based on earlier Florentine artists. In many of the works, with quick strokes of the pen coupled with a dense cross-hatching to create shadow and form, Michelangelo sculpts a form out of the paper.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

Study of a Kneeling Man in a Cloak Seen from the Rear

pen and brown ink 11 1/2" x 7 7/8"

Albertina, Vienna

(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?)

Included with Michelangelo's early studies after the Italian masters is a richly pigmented fantasy based on an engraving by the 15th century German artist Martin Schongauer. ( I wrote about this painting in 2009 when the artwork was first exhibited at the Met as an  early work by Michelangelo - link here.)

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564)

The Torment of Saint Anthony (after Schongauer)

c. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel, 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Martin Schongauer

St. Anthony

engraving printed on paper 15th-century - German 

Emulation and Personal Discovery

The young Michelangelo absorbed the influence of his predecessors into a rapidly developing personal style based on an exploration of the human form. Moving from a faux antique look such as the recently attributed sculpture The Young Archer to poetically observed life studies, Michelangelo like Leonardo before him learned that "accurate understanding derives from investigation and experience." 

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

The Young Archer

 37" x 13 1/4" x 14" marble sculpture ca. 1490

Lent by the French State, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs

In 1504, Michelangelo received a commission by the Republic of Florence for a grand mural of the Battle of Cascina in the Great Council Hall. At the same time Leonardo was working on his own mural for the grand space. Leonardo's chalk drawings for his battle scene are full of expressive movement and grand drama. After viewing Leonardo's powerful designs, Michelangelo, as evidenced in the Met's exhibit, went back to the well and drew a red chalk artwork inspired by the figures of Adam and Eve in Masaccio's fresco in the Brancacci Chapel. Curiously, in this chapel during his apprenticeship, Michelangelo was slugged viciously by a rival artist. His broken nose was never properly reset. Years later he went back to the scene  and reclaimed the space and Masaccio's art for his own use.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

Study of Adam and Eve after Masaccio

1504  red chalk, 12 13/16" x 7 3/8 "

Musée du Louvre

More Like Flesh than Stone

Moving on from his inspiration, Michelangelo began a series of evocative drawings for the planned Battle of Cascina. Jonathan Jones in The Lost Battles writes that "time is included in Michelangelo's vision" in these studies. Jones continues - "There is a tragic power to these drawings. He portrays young men in their full strength and beauty and yet shades them with intimations of ruin."

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 
Study of the Torso of a Male Nude Seen from the Back
1504  black chalk with lead white gouache highlights on paper 7 11/16" x 10 5/8"
Albertina, Vienna
(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?) 

These drawings are sumptuously beautiful, and set the stage for the rest of Michelangelo's artistic life. Michelangelo's touch is all over these works. The use of chalk in many of the drawings, rather than pen and ink, opens up a sensuous physicality that feels more like flesh than stone. Remarkably to me, in the Met's exhibit, a few of the drawings feature a model sporting a hipster worthy mustache who could have walked out of 21st century Brooklyn.
A map of desire seems to be drawn across the back of many of Michelangelo's figures. In the gallery I think of the poetry and art to come - Cavafy, Isherwood, Bachardy, Bacon, and Hockney.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 
Study of the Torso of a Male Nude Seen from the Back
1504  black chalk with lead white gouache highlights on paper 7 11/16" x 10 5/8"
Albertina, Vienna
(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?)

Coming up soon on Speed of Life - Part 2 on "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

*All photos of exhibit and artwork by Gregg Chadwick 2017

Aristotle With The Bust of Homer - A Memoriam to Walter Liedtke

Rembrandt van Rijn
Aristotle With The Bust of Homer
56 1/2" x 53 3/4" oil on canvas 1653
Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

With the sad news that Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Walter Liedtke was killed in this week's horrible rail crash in New York, posting his powerfully narrated web episode of 82nd & 5th: "The Choice", for me, helps keep this wonderful man's passion for Rembrandt alive. Below is the  Metropolitan Museum of Art's label text for Aristotle With The Bust of Homer:

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) rests his hand reflectively on a bust of Homer, the blind epic poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey. A medallion representing Alexander the Great, whom Aristotle tutored, hangs from the heavy gold chain. The philosopher contemplates material rewards as opposed to spiritual values, with the play of light and shadow on his features suggesting the motions of his mind. Painted for the great Sicilian collector Antonio Ruffo, the picture also refers to Aristotle's comparison of touch and sight as a means of acquiring knowledge.

The Observer posted a link to Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas P. Campbell's statement on  Instagram, with an image of Rembrandt’s Aristotle With The Bust of Homer that was featured in an episode of the museum’s web series “82nd and Fifth,” narrated by Liedtke:

"Walter Liedtke, killed last night in the train crash at Valhalla. Walter was one of the preeminent scholars of Dutch and Flemish painting, whose contribution to the field lives on in a range of scholarly and popular publications. Here, a still from Rembrandt’s “Aristotle with the Bust of Homer” about which Walter memorably spoke in his recent “82nd and Fifth” webisode."

Walter Liedtke, Curator, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York